Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The Smell of a Broken Brand Promise, 26 Feb 2005
By A Customer
A basic principle of branding is to keep your promise. Brand Sense failed to do this for me.
Lindstrom's latest offering argues that when building brands marketeers need to plan how they will influence all the human senses. True, but to position this book as a breakthrough in branding is simply a gross overstatement and sets the reader for a big disappointment. It simply does not deliver on its promise. The book assembles a plethora of prestigious brand thinkers, practitioners and research authorities to illustrate and provide testimonials to support his arguments. Books by Noel Kapferer, Aaker, Chris Macrae, Gavin Morgan, Klaus Schmidt, Alan Mitchell offer far more breakthrough thinking than this book. Lindstrom's examples on "sense branding" do contain some interesting anecdotes about brands using touch, smell and taste and how they could benefit from thinking a bit more about adding "sensual" aspects to their brands and communication channels. In that it is a useful reminder and maybe a creative stimulant for the brand manager. I found much repetition of his ideas to the point that at times it creates a feeling of deja vue, and makes the book much longer than it needs to be. The chapter on Brand as Religion I found bizarre and hard to link its relevance back to the senses theme. It felt a bit like padding. The research background conributed by Millward Brown feels a bit bolted on, and could have been more integreated into Lindstrom's arguments. This section does, however, give a glimse into the way deep quantitative research studies are designed and analysed. What I felt missing was any consideration that people may have preferences for different senses, an argument at the heart of areas like NLP. Also senses vary in their impact for different people in different contexts. After all, we all experience and construe the world differently, even with the same senses. There are the obigatory new models, processes to structure a brand sense audit, but these are not articulated enough to do really feel like you could do something with them on Monday Morning. They struck me as being a set of new words around existing concepts. Maybe you need pay to go on Lindstrom's seminars and workshops to experience their value? The hype (masterfully being created) around the book and its Dual-Book website will certainly enhance the surface of "Lindstom brand", but when the informed brand reader examines the substance, I think they will FEEL very disappointed. Not a memorable experience. P.S It was a shame the book itself had not be perfumed to make Lindstrom's point directly.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sound, words & pictures: 2+2=5, 4 Jun 2007
***** Accessible
***** Inspiring
**** Practical
**** Relevant (to audio branding)
**** Well-grounded
BRAND sense isn't a book (although, without qualification, it's one I recommend that anyone with an interest in business strategy, branding, marketing or communications should read!) It's a fountainhead of inspiration, ideas, and practical approaches via a whole community of innovators in anticipating a future certainty: consumer behaviour, attitudes and expectations of brands are radically changing. In his forward, Philip Kotler puts his finger on the resulting imperative: "Distinctive brands (must) deliver a full sensory and emotional experience ... It pays to attach sound, such as music or powerful words, or symbols. The combination of visual and audio stimuli delivers a 2 + 2 = 5 impact."
The BRAND sense offerings have an evangelical tone of voice you will recognise from the world of internet marketing and social media (be warned, if this is not your thing!). They include a web community at www.dualbook.com (which you can access free of charge using a unique ID code in the book) plus the weekly video blog BRANDFlash, bring to life the always inciteful words of Benjamin Franklin: "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I'll understand."
As an audio branding specialist, I'm intrigued to what extent Martin's prediction - estimating that 40 per cent of the world's Fortune 500 brands will include a sensory branding strategy in their marketing plan by the end of 2006 - has come true. "Quite simply, their survival will depend on it. If brands want to build and maintain future loyalty, they will have to establish a strategy that appeals to all our senses. This is a fact that no serious brand can ignore." While I agree (well, I would, wouldn't I!), its interesting to map the impact on these views of the continuing fragmentation of the media, and the diversity of way people are engaging with low cost technologies, be they the web, mobile phones, palm held devices, interactive television, touch sensitive displays, and so the list continues.
BRAND sense is a first step down a long road to try to interpret future customer needs, and to create the emotionally-charged brands that meet them.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Interdependence of Branding and Sensory Awareness, 7 Mar 2007
As Philip Kotler explains in an especially perceptive Foreword, "distinctive brands...have to be powered up to deliver a full sensory experience. It is not enough to present a product or service visually in an ad...The combination of visual and audio stimuli delivers a 2 + 2 = 5 impact. It pays even more to trigger other sensory channels - taste, touch, smell - to enhance the total impact. This is Martin Lindstrom's basis message, and he illustrates it beautifully through numerous cases with compelling arguments." Bernd Schmitt is among others who make precisely the same point. In Experiential Marketing (1997), for example, he and Alex Simonson assert that "most of marketing is limited because of its focus on features and benefits." They then presented what they characterized as "a framework" for managing those experiences. In Experiential Marketing (1999), Schmitt provides a much more detailed exposition of the limitations of traditional features-and-benefits marketing. Moreover, he moves beyond the sensory "framework" into several new dimensions, introducing what he calls "a new model" which will enable marketers to manage "all types of experiences, integrating them into holistic experiences" while "addressing key structural, strategic, and organizational challenges."
In Brand Sense, Lindstrom provides a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective methodology by which to plan, implement, and then sustain effective sensory marketing. As he correctly points out, approaches to marketing have changed significantly in recent years. In the 1950s, branding belonged to the unique selling proposition (USP); by the 1960s, a focus on the emotional selling proposition (ESP) emerged; then in the 1980s, many brand managers adopted the organizational selling proposition (OSP); by the 1990s, "brands had gained enormous strength bin their own right, and the Brand Selling Proposition (BSP) took over." Inevitably, it now seems, the me selling proposition (MSP) emerged. What's next? Again I quote Lindstrom:
"There's every indication that branding will move beyond the MSP, into an even more sophisticated realm - reflecting a brave new world where the customer desperately needs something to believe in - and where brands very well might provide the answer. I call this realm HSP - the Holistic Selling proposition."
With meticulous care, Lindstrom explains how and why the methodology he recommends will enable all organizations (regardless of size or nature) to drive sales and profits with a commitment to the HSP. To his credit, he devotes far more attention to the "how" and "why" than to the "what," although he duly acknowledges the importance of creating or increasing demand for a worthy product or service.
Readers will especially appreciate Lindstrom's provision of a set of "Action Points" at the conclusion of most chapters. These will suggest how to apply the material to which they refer, and, will facilitate and expedite a periodic review later to ensure that effective follow-through has been accomplished. Obviously, it would be foolish to attempt to implement all of Lindstrom's suggestions. It remains for each reader to determine what is most appropriate to her or his organization's immediate and imminent needs. However, whether committing to Lindstrom's methodology or to any other, it is important to understand and - yes--appreciate the barriers to change initiatives when introducing any methodology which challenges, as James O'Toole so aptly characterizes them, "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."
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