What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles that Separate the Best from the Rest

I heard Denise Lee Yohn on Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation podcast last month. She was promoting her new book, What Great Brands Do and it piqued my interest.Denise's marketing book unravels seven principles that demonstrate what the great brands do…They start insideAvoid selling productsIgnore trendsDon’t chase customersSweat the small stuffCommit and stay committedNever had to “give back”This book provides both strategic and tactical ideas on how to build a great brand.If it were just theory, it would weaken the concepts. But Denise takes her idea of operationalizing marketing and provides tools to help make it core to the culture of a company.Operationalizing marketing is a vital and important phrase in the book. It means that a company lives the brand in every part of a company. It is an idea not embraced by many companies where they think brands are solely the function of the marketing department. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing may be charged with communicating brand messages, but a company has to live its brand in everything it does. That includes logistics, quality, customer service, sales, operations, finance and on and on.What I enjoyed in this book is that it is so counter intuitive.It takes the obvious and flips it on its head, not to be provocative but to help make clear how brands can be frameworks and guideposts for companies. Yohn cites specific and clear examples of successes and failures throughout the book to illustrate her ideas.Goodbye Kodak MomentI love her explanation of what really went wrong at Kodak, a company that mattered a lot to me in my formative years. They were first to get digital. They had the technology. They recognized the threat to their film business.They just didn’t fully embrace how digital needed to be operationalized as part of the new Kodak brand culture. They never snapped into it changing the mindset of the company from an analog (film) business to a company based on the new world of digital photography.Companies like Amazon exemplify this notion of operationalizing a brand throughout the company. Their anthem is to be the most customer centric company in the world. Every decision, every day by every employee passes through this filter. If it doesn’t provide this benefit to their customers, then it is off brand. This isn’t coming from a marketing department but lives and breathes in every nook and cranny of the Amazon organization.A brand isn’t a logo or the colors on a package. A brand represent the real benefit derived by a company and is valued by the community they serve. Companies like Lululemon are dissected to help you understand why they behave the way they do – setting high retail prices with very fast turning inventory. They understand a core insight about their consumers that lives within the company’s brand and once again, isn’t a marketing function.I read a lot of marketing and general business management books to challenge my thinking and to give me insights into why companies behave the way they do. Yohn’s book offers a clear framework for thinking about brands today and I’d highly recommend.Perhaps my favorite quote from the book comes toward the end. She makes the succinct point that it doesn’t really matter what you say your brand is all about – ultimately it is what you do that matters.This book delivers on its promise and I'd urge those interested in business and marketing management to buy and read this well-written book.

This book serves as a phenomenal insight, guide, and if at minimum a very stimulating read. Yohn delivers a holistic approach, along with strategies based on years of experience, to the world of advertising on how to make a good brand great. Advertising and branding have usually given society a bad taste due to general mistrust and annoyance; however, Yohn's book turns these traditional senses of brand advertising on its head and redefines what it means to be a "brand". By walking through the glorious and often tragic stories of some of the most popular and well known brands on the planet, this insightful book breaks down previous barriers to how businesses should approach, not just their image, but the way that they do business. Yohn argues that a great brand is not based solely upon on image, but actually the culture, the identity, and reasons of why you are a company. The author presents the idea that your "brand" should be at the very core of your decision making process as a business, and that when tough choices need to be made, who you are as a brand should never be compromised. Yohn counters modern business practices by presenting the idea that great brands do not have to give back to build popularity, but rather, they contribute to society organically because it is who they are as a company, full of employees who believe in that company's identity and mission. In her seven principle book championing "brand as business", What Great Brands do is a must read for any person in the world of advertising or anyone involved in growing a business. However, if you are in neither then this book still quite relevant as you may not be able to help entertaining the looming question of, who am I as a brand? How might I be compromising my brand identity? What do I need to do differently? Whatever your background, one thing is guaranteed by reading this book: you will no longer see the world as just constructed of differences in prices and features, but rather, as intimate relationships with business personalities.

Great corporate examples, but not as insightful for a small business entrepreneur.

What Great Brands Do by Denise Yohn is an excellent book with well-researched insights for leaders desiring to elevate their organization toward maximum health and impact. You don’t have to be a business executive to appreciate this gem of a read. Yohn’s principles for brand-building and the behind-the-scenes look at their application in famous companies also make room for interesting sociological and philosophical reflection (brand-as-business, brand-as-being.)Before reading WGBD, I had a jaded view of business as mostly avaricious entities that manipulate images and storytelling to compel audiences emotionally to buy things. I’m relieved and impressed to find that achieving brand greatness, as Yohn defines, does not fixate on money-making. Rather, the principles she sets out for brand-building are often counterintuitive, but always hopeful and humane, with practical action steps and engaging stories of companies that have walked them out successfully.For me, the principle that initially seemed confusing and the biggest turn-off of the bunch (# 7 -- Great Brands Never Have to “Give Back”), ended up being the most surprising and inspiring. If only all brands could do business so redemptively.In WGBD, Yohn has produced a wise, impressive work that humanizes and optimizes the business/organizational process. Well done, and thank you, Ms. Yohn!

This book was exceptional. You will certainly learn a lot about the great and thoughtful approaches of Denise. High value book for all of us human! She is telling on this book what great brands do, and much more value above and beyond the title! Buy now!

Obwohl mir vieles bereits von Jim Collins und Simon Sinek bekannt war, begeistert mich dieses Buch durch die außergewöhnlich guten Beispiele und Fallstudien aus verschiedenen Branchen. Der neue Denkansatz „brand as business“ gibt dem Ganzen einen Hauch von Extravaganz und unterstreicht ganz deutlich, dass hinter dem Begriff Branding wesentlich mehr steckt als nur ein schönes und ausdruckstarkes Logo. Sehr empfehlenswert auch für Menschen, die noch nie in einem großen Konzern gearbeitet haben. Der Blick hinter die Kulissen lohnt sich.

Definitely an excellent book....It makes you think focus and refocusNor particularly innovative but rich in examples and case histories

This book changed my perception on BRANDS. Great content. Useful for any business.

This book is a must-read for any business manager and leader, but also most especially for any brand theory enthusiast, professor or student. The content is bang on what branding is all about. Cheers to hoping that more businesses operational use their brands using this book.