What Great Brands Do: The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best From the Rest

The author calls this "brand as business." And, in this book, you'll learn what these seven principles are, and how to apply them to build your own brand. There are plenty of case studies throughout the book to show you what these principles look like in action. You'll also get plenty of tools, tips, and strategies to help you along the way.

This makes "What Great Brands Do" a useful handbook for managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs interested in building or transforming their brands.

Denise Lee Yohn is a consultant, speaker, and writer. She's helped build brands like Sony, Frito-Lay, New Balance, and Oakley, and has been featured in Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

So, keep listening to find out how to make your values come alive in the workplace, why it pays to rethink what business your organization is in, and how to use a simple equation to clarify your brand positioning and target customer.

"What Great Brands Do" is not a long book by any means. There are eight chapters, and seven of those cover each of the seven principles you'll be applying to transform your brand.

Before we dive into these principles, let's take a quick look at what being a great brand really means. According to the author, your brand is what your company does and how you do it. It's not what you say you are. It's what you do.

The world's most influential brands have integrated their brand identity into every part of their business. This might seem like common sense, but only a few companies do it.

According to research, 64 percent of chief marketing officers say their brand doesn't influence the decisions made at the company. Their brand is used for marketing and other communications, but little else. Many of these companies are spending millions on marketing, without aligning their business strategies to the values and messages they're communicating to customers.

So, the goal here is to have a brand that you and everyone in your organization believes in, and to integrate this brand into your corporate culture, so that the brand drives your decisions and strategies.

To do this, you need to implement the seven key principles found in all truly great brands. These are worded briefly and somewhat provocatively. The author says: "Great brands start inside, avoid selling products, ignore trends, don't chase customers, sweat the small stuff, commit and stay committed, and never have to give back."

Let's start by looking at the first principle, great brands start inside. This explores culture, and how important it is to building your brand. In fact, the two are inexorably linked. Your brand has to align with your culture, or you're not going to get anywhere at all.

One way to create this alignment is to make your culture matter. This doesn't happen until every employee is using your company's values to inform their daily behavior.

Changing and building a strong culture isn't easy, and it takes a lot more than just communicating corporate values to your team. These values explain what the brand is and why it's important. They explain what the brand stands for. And, these values help people understand what's expected of them.

But your team needs to feel these values in their heads and their hearts – and that's no small feat.

One way to make sure your brand values and your culture values are aligned is to incorporate them into your team's everyday life at work. One case study that illustrates this concept tells the story of the soap-maker Method Products. Three of Method's values are not unusual, emphasizing care, collaboration, and innovation. But they have two additional values that really make the company stand out from other brands. One is "keep Method weird," and the other is "What would MacGyver do?" MacGyver was a fictional secret agent and troubleshooter in a popular U.S. TV show.

The company's founders wanted to keep these values in front of every employee, every day. So, they printed a deck of flashcards highlighting behaviors that live these ideals. The cards are held together by a key ring, making them easy to hang by a desk for easy reference.

An idea like this might not work for your own organization. But this example shows that it helps to get creative and use hands-on tools to keep your values and culture alive and thriving in the workplace.

The author calls this approach "the brand toolbox," because you're creating tools your team can use to really live your values. We like this idea because many organizations just talk about their values. But if you take the time to create a toolbox that explains and illustrates what these look like in practice, your employees are far more likely to act on them.

The author provides some good tips about what should be in your toolbox, and what should be left out.

The next principle is great brands avoid selling products.

At first glance, this principle sounds a bit odd. After all, of course your organization has to sell products or services. That's why it's in business, right?

What the author is saying here is that your brand needs to sell more than just a product or service. Great brands sell emotion. They sell experiences. And, a great brand can inspire its customers to do great things.

One example is Nike's "Just Do It" campaign, which ran for a decade from the late 1980s. The commercials showed amateur and pro athletes alike talking about the emotional rewards of exercise. They were simple, sincere, and powerful.

After the first ads came out, people called and wrote to Nike to tell their stories of how the "Just Do It" campaign inspired them to do things they were afraid to do, like start exercising, quit a lousy job, or leave a bad relationship.

Today, Nike has turned "Just Do It" into a vital part of its culture. The company lives and breathes this phrase. And, customers have responded in kind. "Just Do It" is now part of our collective culture.

So it really helps if your brand can make an intimate emotional connection with your customers. One way to do this is to constantly ask the question, "What business are we really in?"

Nike made a choice not to be a running shoe brand. Instead, the company decided to focus on inspiring people to become who they hoped to be. This mission is now part of every decision they make. This is the business they're in.

Stop and think about what business your organization is really in. How are your products helping people on a deeper or broader level?

This isn't an easy or quick question to answer. It helps that the author includes several case studies that show you how some companies have transformed how they work to make a greater emotional connection with customers.

At this point in the book, the author shows you how to use a tool to map your brand. This graph helps you better understand the emotional connections people have with your brand's identity.

Another principle we particularly liked was number four: great brands don't chase customers.

You can probably think of several companies that chase their customers to an excessive degree. They're always redefining themselves to match a trend or appeal to a new market. Or, they're always putting products on sale to lure people through the door.

Lululemon Athletica does the opposite of this, and it's one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world. The company has worked hard to build a community around its stores and customers.

It offers free yoga classes and running clubs at its locations, even for people who never buy a thing. Employees are called educators, and they give customers a lot of time, advice, and attention.

But there are a few things that Lululemon don't do that might raise some eyebrows. They have a very strict returns policy that's enforced constantly. Their luxury clothes are priced much higher than those of their competitors. And, they rarely put items on sale.

Despite this, the company is experiencing skyrocketing growth. According to the author, that's because it's not chasing customers. Lululemon doesn't apologize for selling high-quality clothes at high prices, or for sticking to its guns about returns. The company is confident about what it's doing, and customers respond positively to that.

The author says that many companies are scared to alienate certain high-value customer groups. So, they cast a wide marketing net to appeal to a wide group of people. Because of this, they struggle to stay focused, set clear priorities, and stick to them.

What you need to do is find that core group of customers who really matter to your business. They are the people who share your values – they're the ambassadors for your brand.

When you identify this group, you can meet their needs more effectively and communicate your brand positioning more accurately.

The author includes a simple, common equation to help you sum this up.
"For X, we are the A who does B, because C."

In this equation, "X" is your target audience. "A" is the frame of reference. "B" is the unique value you deliver. And "C" is the reason or reasons why consumers should believe that you deliver that value.

Here's how a national, health-oriented restaurant chain reworked that equation to fit its own brand and target audience.

"For everyone who chooses to do something good for themselves, our brand is the convenient place for great-tasting healthy products that energize the way you live and feel, because we are considerate of what you put in your body, we make it enjoyable to be healthy, and we help create healthier communities."

OK, so it's a mouthful to say in one go. But the author breaks down this long statement so we can see where each part of the equation fits in. She also goes into a lot more detail about each element in the equation to help you better fill out your own.

This simple exercise can help you clarify who your target customers are, and why you're in the business of meeting their needs.

So, what's our last word on "What Great Brands Do?"

We were really impressed with this book, for several reasons.

First, it's engaging and easy to read. The author's writing style is insightful and approachable, and you feel like you're getting great advice from a trusted friend.
We thought the case studies in the book were really valuable and well written. These clearly demonstrate what each of the principles looks like in action.

There's a great example of this in chapter two, when the author talks about empathic research. This is when you try to see your product through the eyes of your customers, many of whom have different values, concerns, and emotional triggers than you do.

The author has worked with Sony, and used empathic research to figure out how they could make the early digital cameras more user friendly. What they discovered using this method destroyed all their preconceived notions about what people really wanted in a digital camera. And, these findings helped make Sony an industry leader for digital cameras.

This is just one of many good examples in the book. These case studies do a better job than most of illustrating the power of the author's suggestions, tips, tools, and strategies. And they're also fun to read.

We also appreciate that the book is so well sourced. Every newspaper and journal article, every research study, is sourced at the end of each chapter. This adds a lot of credibility to the author's ideas.

All in all, we have no trouble recommending this book. It's packed full of hands-on tools and useful advice. And, despite its depth of content, it's still an easy, fun read.

"What Great Brands Do" by Denise Lee Yohn is published by Jossey-Bass.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.