From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation, 2nd edition

Citation

Sevilla, E. (2007), "From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation, 2nd edition", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 155-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420710740052

Pity the wannabe brand guru. He or she faces few barriers to entry, other than PowerPoint skills, a catchy blog name, and a self‐proclaimed “big idea.” Nevertheless, he or she stares out upon a landscape dominated by publishing machines like Tom Peters, blue chip firms like Prophet, and legendary practitioners like Sergio Zyman, each of whom is a brand name in their own right. What is a self‐respecting marketing maven to do?

Enter Leslie de Chernatony. An academic who hails from Britain, de Chernatony has been teaching at the University of Birmingham and building a brand consulting practice in Europe and Asia over the past decade. His “brand promise” is simple: to offer a synthesis of best thinking from the academy and best practices from the field, packaged in a practical, easy‐to‐implement way. His first book, Creating Powerful Brands, received a positive reaction from academics and practitioners, mostly in Europe. Now he pushes the envelope further with his second edition of From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation.

De Chernatony's main insight is that branding theory and practice to date have focused too much on external audiences and too little upon the internal organization that defines and executes the brand. In From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation he sets out to redress the balance.

“In the new branding world, where the challenge is co‐ordination, brand management is less about a brand manager and rather about a brand's team,” he states:

Thus, this book is about• Having a more balanced perspective that looks both inside and outside an organization to satisfy stakeholders' needs, and• Developing integrated brands through a planning process that seeks to bring about a brand vision through an appropriate organizational culture with stretching objectives, which results in a novel brand essence, coherently enacted to meet the regularly monitored performance metrics” (pp. xii‐xiii).

Whew. On the performance metric of buzzwords‐per‐bullet point, de Chernatony far exceeds expectations with that particular snippet.

Therein lies the problem. While de Chernatony sets out to describe the branding landscape in a comprehensive yet easy‐to‐use manner, he ends up delivering a guidebook which is chock‐full of frameworks and exercises that are cheerily helpful, but glaringly obvious. The arrow diagrams and the buzzwords flow freely. It is a bit like setting out to create a gourmet meal by reading The Joy of Cooking: you are headed on a path that delivers in comprehensiveness what it lacks in inspiration.

Consider the chapters. In Chapter One, “A balanced perspective on brands,” de Chernatony declares that “in essence brands are clusters of functional and emotional values … What is needed is “a more balanced perspective on brand management, in particular aligning employees' values with the brand values so they are able and committed to deliver the brand's values” (p. 3). A simple four‐wheel alignment of employee values in the brand garage would do the trick, he seems to say, and a smoother ride for the organization lies ahead.

In Chapter Two, “The diverse interpretations of brand,” de Chernatony adds a more useful, broadening perspective. By categorizing different interpretations of “brand” into input, output, and time perspectives, he provides the reader with a handy toolbox that any brand manager in an organization can use to counter brand skeptics and build organizational support.

In Chapter Three, “A strategic process for building integrated brands,” the author seeks to “make readers aware of the need for an integrated branding programme” (p. 71). Experienced marketers will acknowledge with weary familiarity his caution that “an integrated branding process is more likely if a planning perspective is adopted” (p.72). Veering perilously close to attempting to become the “Dr Phil” of branding, de Chernatony cheerfully offers “a seven step brand‐building model” (pp. 86‐90).

In the remainder of the book, de Chernatony elaborates on each step of the model. Chapters Four through Ten emerge as a familiar litany to experienced marketers, and one wonders if de Chernatony is singing to the choir with his tried‐and‐true process:

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  Chapter Four: “Brand visioning”;

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  Chapter Five: “The importance of organizational culture in brands”;

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  Chapter Six: “Setting brand objectives”;

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  Chapter Seven: “Auditing the brandsphere”;

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  Chapter Eight: “Synthesizing the nature of the brand”;

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  Chapter Nine: “Implementing and resourcing brands”; and

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  Chapter Ten: “Brand evaluation”.

Still, there are theoretical and practical benefits to de Chernatony's approach. On the side of theory, de Chernatony's model introduces external and internal perspectives within each step,so he delivers on his promise of a “balanced approach.” From a practical perspective, each chapter has a handy “brand marketing action checklist,” bursting with exercises that could liven up decades of management off‐site meetings and board retreats.

By shining a light on internal organizations and processes, de Chernatony performs a valuable service for marketers. Given the proliferation of technology‐enabled consumer‐generated content, gathering at ever‐expanding distribution nodes such as YouTube and MySpace, today's brand managers stand face to face with their customers or else interact through other customers serving as self‐anointed intermediaries.

Marketers beware: It is increasingly likely that the brand message that your customers receive will not be your carefully crafted, purchased and delivered media message, but will instead be one that somebody in your organization will deliver to a customer through the direct exchange of the customer experience. Twenty‐first century marketers ignore internal organizations and processes at their peril, and de Chernatony provides a useful, balanced tonic.

This book is an informative companion to the library of any marketing academic or practitioner who spends time plumbing the depths of the branding ocean. Given the scale of organizational investments in brands, and the importance of brands in a global economy, de Chernatony's book is a practical one to carry. One never knows what rough seas lie ahead.

In the end, From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation lacks the bracing clarity of a Tom Peters manuscript or the relentless quantitative‐based logic of a Jim Collins tome. It is more like grazing at the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday or ordering from the massive menu at The Cheesecake Factory: while it is not the finest food, you are sure to get something that you like.