BUILDING STRONG BRANDS

As industries turn increasingly hostile it is clear that strong brand-building skills are needed to survive and prosper. In David Aaker''s pathbreaking book MANAGING BRAND EQUITY managers discovered the value of a brand as a strategic asset and a company''s primary source of competitive advantage. Now in this compelling new work Aaker uses real brand-building cases from Saturn General Electric Kodak Healthy Choice McDonald''s and others to demonstrate how strong brands have been created and managed. A common pitfall of brand strategists is to focus on brand attributes. Aaker shows how to break out of the box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits and by introducing the brand-as-person brand-as-organisation and brand-as-symbol perspectives. A second pitfall is to ignore the fact that individual brands are part of a larger system consisting of many intertwined and overlapping brands and subbrands. Aaker shows how to manage the brand system to achieve clarity and synergy to adapt to a changing environment and to leverage brand assets into new markets and products. As executives in a wide range of industries seek to prevent their products and services from becoming commodities they are recommitting themselves to brands as a foundation of business strategy. This new work will be essential reading for the battle-ready.