Hello everyone,
I have taken a 4 month hiatus from blogging. So, what have I been up to?
I’ve been on a quest to learn as much as I can about branding and account planning. As per the project that I embarked in December, I’m still in the midst of doing it. I have increased my reading list immensely. The main themes I have been able to extract from this extended reading list would be: Role of Account Planning, Market Research Methodology, Organizational Strategic Management, Branding, Role of Advertising, Sustaining Innovation and Human Behavioral Traits. My objective for this extensive reading list was to produce a toolkit for Account Planners and Brand Strategists. Far too often, as I had alluded to an earlier post, with so many choices available, it sometimes hampers our ability to make sound decisions. This toolkit will contain ideas that I have gathered through this extensive reading list to incorporate into any branding strategy.
While embarking on this project, I wanted to learn the theory but also practice it. Back in January, I took on two clients: one designs kitchen goods, and the other offers fitness services in the home and at the gym. The idea for both clients is to break apart from traditional branding methods and to create new opportunities. Both clients I’m working with have now are being connected closer to the customer via blogging, twitter, facebook and other social media. For both businesses, I have suggested that they engage the consumer through open source collaboration, where the customer is able to design their own kitchen tools. For the fitness services, incorporating cooking classes and social meet-ups would bring their community closer.
From all this reading that I have done, the biggest lesson that I have learned is that too many businesses equate brand building as selling. Brand building takes considerable amount of time. Advertising should be a communication vehicle for building the brand unless it is a business reply card or a direct sales piece. In addition, the role of advertising is used to ensure constant awareness of brand consideration for the customer. Advertising is not very effective in convincing people to switch brands. That is accomplished by having the customers try the product and service and having this experience exceed their expectations.
In case you are all wondering what books I have read they include the following:
For Account Planning:
King, Stephen. “A Master Class in Brand Planning.”
Steel, Jon. “Truth, Lies & Advertising.”
For Market Research Methodology:
Fortini-Campbell, Lisa. “Hitting the Sweet Spot.”
Laurel, Brenda. “Design Research: Methods and Perspectives.”
Mariampolski, Hy. “Ethnography for Marketers.”
McCracken, Grant. “The Long Interview.”
Morgan, David L. “Focus Groups qualitative research.”
O’Reilly, Karen. “Ethnographic Methods.”
Sunderland, Patricia L. And Denny, Rita M. “Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research.”
For Organizational Strategic Management:
Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail.”
Kim, W. Chan and Mauborgne, Renee. “Blue Ocean Strategy.”
Pine, B. Joseph and Gilmore, James. “The Experience Economy.”
For Branding:
Gerzema, John and Lebar, Ed. “The Brand Bubble.”
Grant, John. “After Image – Mind Altering Marketing.”
Grant, John. “The Brand Innovation Manifesto.”
Koster, Raph. “A Theory of Fun for Game Design.”
Morgan, Adam. “Eating The Big Fish – How Challenger brands can compete against brand leaders.”
Neumeier, Marty. “The Brand Gap.”
Olins, Wally. “Wally Olins on Brand.”
Vogler, Christopher. “The Writer’s Journey.”
Zaltman, Gerald and Lindsay. “Marketing Metaphoria.”
For Role of Advertising:
Fallon, Pat and Senn, Fred. “Juicing the Orange.”
Ogilvy, David. “Ogilvy on Advertising.”
Pricken, Mario. “Create advertising ideas and techniques from world’s best campaigns.”
Sullivan, Luke. “Hey Whipple, Squeeze this: Third Edition.”
Taylor, Jim. “Space Race: An inside view of the future of communications planning.”
For Sustaining Innovation and for Design:
Hara, Kenya. “Designing Design.”
Kelley, Tom. “The Art of Innovation.”
For Human Behavioral Traits:
Earls, Mark. “Herd: How to change mass behaviour.”
Surowiecki, James. “Wisdom of Crowds.”
Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. “Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything.”
Wegner, Etienne. “Communities of Practice.”
Other inspirational books:
Csikszenthmihalyi, Mihaly. “Flow: Psychology of Optimal Experience.”
DeBono, Edward. “Lateral Thinking – Creativity step by step.”
DeBono, Edward. “Six Thinking Hats.”
Ekman, Paul. “Emotions Revealed.”
Heath, Chip and Heath, Dan. “Ideas Made Sticky.”
Pease, Allan and Barbara. “The Definitive Book of Body Language.”
Pink, Daniel. “Whole New Thinking.”
Reynolds, Garr. “Presentation Zen.”
Young, James Webb. “A technique for ideas producing ideas”