Brand Simple, by Allen P. Adamson, a Managing Director for Landor Associates, is marketed as the book about brands. It’s 226 pages of full text with some black and white pictures and informative diagrams. Also included is a Foreword by Sir Martin Sorrell.

“How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed” is the motto for the book. Simplicity in a world and time that has complicated itself with millions of brands. Mr. Adamson talks about what products and brands are, what it means to brand, what is branding and how to succeed at it. Although he basically makes the point throughout the entire book that to succeed you have to keep it simple. If you create a brand that simply describes the entire product or company, propagate that brand within the company, advertise it, then your product and company will be very successful for using that brand. This is basically what I got out of the book. What the reader may miss are those segments Adamson gives you advice in how to make those brands succeed. The best one would be where to put your advertising money - where you interact with your customers the most. If you are a company that does a lot of customer service for example, then you should put effort into training your representatives with your brand, to live the brand, and to also make the entire process the customer goes through as efficient and comforting as possible. I think he could have spent a good chapter on practical examples to drive home how a great brand in the end succeeds, but at least he does a good job at reminding us at the end of the book about these examples. (I’ve listed them at the end of this post in short.)

What this book is great for is finally defining what these terms mean - brand, branding, advertising, slogan, logo, etc. THANK YOU Adamson, because you finally defined these terms in a more efficient manner than anyone else could. The second thing this book is great for is its examples. I would say 80% of the entire book’s contents are examples of brands and companies. I felt like I got a great history lesson and a stash of references to use at my disposal. In fact I used an example out of the book the other day when talking about Ann Taylor, the clothing designer and fashion company. He gives useful and memorable examples and tells us how they failed or succeeded in their branding ventures. Now, I do think he takes 20 pages to explain something that could have been done in 1-2 and that sometimes you will feel an irresistible urge to skip over some pages or examples. It’s okay to feel that way, but keep reading, I promise you that he makes a point somewhere in there that you should probably read.

Top 10 things you will learn in this book:
(Taken in part straight out of Chapter 9: “Ten Mental Files to ‘Save As’ “)

• Understand that brand and branding are different concepts. The “ing” makes a huge difference in meaning. A brand exists in your mind. It’s a collection of associations or feelings people have about a particular product, service or an organization. Branding is the tangible process of creating the signals that generate these associations.
• Establish a differentiated meaning for your brand that the consumers you want to reach care about-find relevant-before you try to being branding.
• Know exactly who you want to talk to-that is, know your audience.
• To find a different and relevant brand idea, look for the obvious.
• Make sure your brand idea aligns with your business strategy.
• Capture the essence of your brand idea in a brand driver-a simple statement of what your brand stands for.
• Draw a map of the customer’s journey with your brand.
• Pick your battles.
• Remember, only the paranoid survive.
• Remember that brand building is a marathon event.

Buy this book if you are in marketing, design or have any influence into your company’s branding. Just try and keep reading through those boring segments and spend some time after reading it to connect the dots. Adamson brings us essential, practical material that is worth “saving as”.

Buy it on Amazon.com - They rated it 5 out 5 stars and have “search inside” available for this book.
BrandSimple.com - the Book’s main web site