Summary of The Brand Flip: Why customers now run companies and how to profit from it by Marty Neumeier
Branding is evolving. Marty Neumeier’s new book (and previous ones) is a good testament of that. Marty starts with acknowledging (like all good writers) the function of any factual book – that is to communicate ideas in the most profound, efficient and direct way. To read The Brand Flip, using traditional reading methods, will take you about two hours to get the key messages. Unless you start at the end and read the key messages first – which is always a good idea to prime and give your mind a big picture – you can finish it in about 20 minutes. Read those key messages below. I do recommend going through the whole book though. If you’re new to branding, you’ll get a good understanding of how branding evolved over the last century and what branding is and isn’t. There are practical branding tips – for example, how much your logo is worth (a price of a good car – but you need to decide what kind of car). If you think branding doesn’t apply to your life, think again. We are all personal brands now and social media platforms are our market places.
“Any effort to get customers is marketing. Any effort to KEEP THEM is branding.”
Key messages of the book
“• An explosion of connectivity, and the power it gives customers, is turning companies upside down.
• Industry is undergoing a massive migration from a material-based economy to a digital one.
• The question isn’t WHETHER your company will be disrupted, but WHEN .
• Customers today don’t “consume.” HAVING more runs a distant second to BEING more.
• Today’s customers want more than features, more than benefits, and more than experiences. They want MEANING .
• They don’t BUY brands. They JOIN brands. They want a vote in what gets produced and how it gets delivered.
• A successful brand can become a touchstone in a customer’s life—a vivid symbol of what’s useful, delightful, and even magical.
• When a product becomes a symbol, the symbol becomes the product.
• In a flipped business, the product is not the innovation, the customer is. The company with the best customers wins.
• The best brand builders see greatness in their customers, and figure out ways to enable it.
• Any effort to get customers is marketing. Any effort to KEEP THEM is branding.
• The best question to ask a new product marketer is not “How big is the segment,” but “You and what army?”
• In the age of easy group-forming, the basic unit of measurement is not the segment but the TRIBE .
• To achieve authenticity with your tribe, you have to begin with company purpose—the reason you’re in business beyond making money.
• Each brand experience should be the brand in miniature, a representative sample of what your customers understand about the company and its offerings.
• You can’t DECIDE a great customer experience. You have to DESIGN it.
• Delight in the minimal, the ultra clear, the super simple. Never add without trying to subtract.
• The goal of designing prototypes is not to impress your customers, but let them impress YOU with their reactions, knowledge, and insights.
• We now live in a world of participatory theater in which we watch the performance and simultaneously judge the performer.
• Customers don’t want to be TOLD , they want to TELL . They long to be the heroes of their own journey.
• Empowered customers will move heaven and earth to ensure your success, happily attracting others to the tribe with their magnetic sense of commitment.
• A brand isn’t what YOU say it is. It’s what THEY say it is.”
To sum up, The Brand Flip: Why customers now run companies and how to profit from it by Marty Neumeier is a very neat presentation of what branding is becoming and how it can help your business and/or your personal brand. Follow the recipe and you’ll get results. Highly recommended.
Recommended books on branding:
Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team by Alina Wheeler
1) Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team by Alina Wheeleer
Good and practical approaches to branding as well as all key branding concept. The one to start with.
2) Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing by Alex Wipperfurth
Practical and less traditional – where branding is/was going.
3) Kellogg on Branding: The Marketing Faculty of the Kellogg School of Management by Philip Kotler
More academic but still practical with good summaries of different well-tested branding processes – this one I would buy later if you still need more info on branding.
4) THE BRAND AND THE BAND: Authentic brands through sonic branding by Laura Montarroso Daher
If you’re a musician or brander read this ebook on branding and music industry. A very well research book on key aspects of becoming a music brand, sound strategy in brand identity, history of music in advertising, contemporary strategies of advertising agencies, guidance for artists seeking brand partnership, advice for marketing professionals aiming to improve their music strategy, exclusive insight from leading figures in marketing and the music industry as well as case studies illustrating how music affects brand success. Free to read on Kindle Unlimited.