Creating Passion Brands: Getting to the Heart of Branding

Citation

Fitzmaurice, J. (2006), "Creating Passion Brands: Getting to the Heart of Branding", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 82-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420610650918

With Passion Brands as the title, one would expect the authors to passionately convey key insights they learned about branding. The beginning of the text does reinforce this expectation. The Introduction succinctly summarizes ten of the book's main themes and ideas. Each idea presented is insightful, and it is worthwhile for marketers, CEOs, brand managers and academics to reflect on their meaning and possible implications. One of these key ideas that continually resonated with me, whenever I picked up this book, was that today too often brands, and more precisely brand managers, are in a mesmerized trance when confronted with the verbatim uttered by consumers. Consumer focus groups, consumer interviews, and consumers' ideas, attitudes, and views are being embraced as if they are all worthy pearls of wisdom. However, the authors point out that dismal market share growth of these consumer‐led brands indicates that this path is not a fruitful one. Consumer‐led brands rob consumers of “delight” – the joyful unexpected. Brands need to “be good at something that is good for people” (p. 38), and this purpose, the authors state, is called belief. And so the first fifty pages grabs marketers' attention, presents an interesting story, and sets the stage for what is going wrong with so many brands. However, at this point, the book loses its sharp focus, and this reader felt that the middle section was wordy and not as impactful.

One of the book's strengths is that it includes a summary of many, very recent marketing studies. Although these are not presented as the main course, they are valuable tidbits to add to marketers' and academics' general knowledge bank. An example appearing later in the text is a Harvard Business Review study conducted by Davenport, Prusak, and Wilson (2003) who found that “idea practioners” can be found throughout an organization and that one common trait these individuals shared is that they all read widely and avidly.

However, a weakness for some readers may be that most of the examples are taken from British firms and consumer brands (e.g. Camper shoes, the Co‐operative Food Retail Store, the Co‐operative Bank). All is not lost, however, since some American and more universal brands are used as examples, too.

Finally, after a lengthy build‐up, the authors delineate the three major characteristics of passion brands: “1) They are brands with active belief, 2) They have confidence rooted in capability, and 3) They stay vibrant in an ever‐changing world” (p. 78). Tucked in the middle section of the text is a brief quantitative look at passion brands' performance using the BrandZ^tm database of 23,000 brands from around the world. An expanded presentation of this study would have been interesting and shift the balance away from individual brand examples to a greater emphasis on passion brands.

At this point, the authors move from explaining the “why” to explaining the “how,” and the two parts of the book bear these titles. In the introduction of this section, however, is a claim that the authors will present a methodology for transforming a brand into a passion brand. To do so, there is an analytic phase and a creative phase that must be completed. The analytic phase whisks together several commonly understood organizational behavior principles and practices (e.g. cross‐functional teams, the role of a brand champion, etc.) and a modified brand version of SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) that is called a four‐corner model. So the bottom line seems to be that a thorough, honest SWOT‐type analysis will help illuminate the path to becoming a passion brand. The detailed four corners/sections do present tools and techniques to consider, but many of them are vague from a practitioner standpoint (e.g. examine your current CSR programme, hang‐out, financial ratios, etc.). Tools in the consumer corner include interesting and more cutting‐edge approaches.

After sloshing through the middle section of the book, I found that the last forty pages return to the same appealing style and context characterizing the first part of the book. Don't miss out on reading the succinct six Passion Questions, which link two of the “corners” together: Herein lies the true value of that somewhat unimpressive model. In a snappy nutshell, six questions are posed to help stimulate creativity based on the brand analyses. Brand managers, marketers, product developers, R&D staff, consumer researchers, and others could be brought together, and these questions alone could stimulate a rich discussion and action plan. After all, one of the central tenets of the book is that passion brands are created in the environment of a dedicated and committed workforce who feels passionate about the brand and what it can offer its customers.

The introduction, beginning and end of the book really include the crux of the argument. Although the authors' writing style is verbose and meandering (especially in the middle of the book) the identification of consumer‐led brands as a negative phenomenon, the idea that some brands – regardless of category or share – can become passion brands, and the articulation of an insightful list of truly stimulating creative questions that can be used to inspire marketing imagination are some of the valuable contributions.