Brand Manners: How to Create the Self-Confident Organisation to Live the Brand

There is simply no other book on this subject that comes even close to providing the new thinking, insights and perspective that Pringle and Gordon do. BRAND MANNERS should be required reading for every executive in every organization, especially those who aspire to be leaders over the next decade. At a time when brands and branding play an increasingly more critical role to the fundamental success of every business, readers will find this a truly invaluable (and actionable) guide.

My impression is that this book is the most original addition to our literature since Kapferer's first edition of Strategic Brand Management in the 1990s. This does not necessarily mean that it will find a large audience though I hope it does.Organisational brand linkages are embedded in the Brand Manners 4-dimensional framework by presenting two sides to every dimension : the customers and the company's. The four dimensions of the brand promise are named: Rational (What?) Emotional (How?) Political (Why?) Spiritual (Whither)The customer according to this model uses each of these dimensions to evaluate how integratedly a brand's promise is 'created', 'conveyed' and 'kept'. On the corporate side, the mirror image to integrate is labeled as 'Encounters' with customers, 'Behaviours' involved and 'Rewards' that result. This provides 24 (ie 2 times 4 times 3) entries interlinked through The Brand Manners Book of Life....Methodology represents about half the book. This is complemented by a rich variety of case studies, and a collection of practitioner briefs. These are called "brand manners how to guides" and are provided for each of : Chief Executive, Marketing Director, Employee, Management and Customer!

Quite frankly, for most people, branding is all about crating a beautiful facade through advertising, PR etc. Now, for the first time, Pringle and Gordon go the extra mile to explore the true and rocksolid core of corporate brands. Most importantly, the authors do not come up with academic lectures, but zero-in on best-practice essentials. On each page, this book offers a wealth of intriguing case studies, insights, wisdom, bonmots, and meaningful anecdotes. Reading it is not only an inspiring and enlightening experience, but will also point clear directions to anybody who is serious about reinventing and bringing alive his corporate brand.

At last, the idea that a brand is an organic and potent means not only in competitive warfare but in securing the affections and loyalties of human talent. As more and more workers work for multiple 'employers', so a recognition of the values and uniqueness of the workplace of the moment becomes urgent, even essential. Gordon and Pringle cleverly make the jump between BRAND as external tool and as a bonding mechanism for employees, alliances and customers. Brands create communities, and, in an increasingly depersonalised world, the ability for brand to anchor meaninful dialogue and community has never been more essential.The book wittily explains that brands have to be organic to take changing opportunity, environment and ever smarter customers/workers into account. For this reason, getting the brand 'right' is less important than keeping the brand contemporary and ahead of the pack. Being surpriseful (as much as strategically well-focused) is a theme of the book.Most 'brand' texts view brand as a subset of marketing and product-positioning. Brand manners, however, takes a wider view where brand and culture/identity meet, and behaviour stems from that interface. It's marketing meets human-capital. I also liked the fact that old and new economy get equal attention rather than the unrealistic tilting to the latter.Adroitly written, great cartoons, and unexpected case-studies. This makes Brand Manners a good book for a long plane-journey (I read mine when snowed up at Boston airport). It will be fascinating to see if Accenture (William Gordon is a VP there) will take Brand Manners to their heart as a guide to what their brand new brand can and might be.