The Experts Praise

Branding Iron

The automobile industry is an ideal context to study brands because of the self expressive benefits attached to many ofthe brands. Branding Iron tells with insight and humor how blunders in brand strategy destroyed brands and damaged firms. A great read.

 

What a simple and practical concept. Branding sells products! That’s a cornerstone of effective marketing. The authors show us clearly, through the use of a product category we’re all familiar with—automobiles, that effective branding differentiates any product from its competitors and builds demand and sales. Well done!

Today, many marketers are suffering from the “lab coat” syndrome. The field is dominated by complexity, esoteric approaches, models rather than people, and fears of oblivion. Branding Iron recognizes that people still have practical needs, firms still face practical problems, and solutions still have to work in real life. The book conveys a pioneering spirit on how to be unabashedly great again. It goes beyond watching things happen or wondering what happened, and helps the reader to make
things happen.

One of the best books on branding I’ve seen in a long time. Branding Iron provides key branding and marketing insights for marketers in every industry. And, equally important, it shows a way out for those who find themselves in circumstances similar to this troubled industry.

 

Branding Iron should be required reading for every single person who aspires to be in business, let alone the automobile business, because it pounds into the reader the fundamental importance of, as Charlie Hughes and William Jeanes so eloquently put it: “standing for something, setting yourself apart, making a promise and delivering it in a well-designed experience. ”I would also like to give Hughes and Jeanes’ excellent “Brand Triangle” to every college professor charged with teaching marketing. Branding Iron doesn’t pull any punches, a style I can relate to, obviously—and when all is said and done it’s a must read. And with today’s tedious cacophony of blurred messages, two-bit pundits and frantic media overkill, that’s saying something.

 

Important lessons for any marketer who wants to avoid the auto makers’ troubles. And even more important, they don’t just pick mistakes part, they provide a map to a more successful future.

 

A first of its kind—the true story behind the auto industry. Branding Iron will supercharge your risk-taking batteries and fuel your brand-building strategies.

 

This is one of the best, most coherent, readable and actionable books on brands and branding I have read in quite a while. The failures of the automobile industry provide cogent lessons for all senior managers tasked with growing their organization under
highly competitive conditions. This is a veritable senior management manual on how to or, better said, how not to manage the most valuable asset the organization has: the brand. There are practical, useful lessons here that can be applied to any product
category.

 

The power of brands is nowhere brought to life more vividly or more authoritatively than in the pages of Branding Iron. This book is a marketing thriller that every marketer should read, racing along from one automotive intrigue to the next, illustrating at every turn the fundamental importance of good branding, or, even more importantly, the terrible consequences of bad branding. Branding Iron is an advanced primer on the ways in which marketing makes the crucial difference.

 

Automobiles are the archetypal product of all consumer interest, the perfect category to discuss 21st-century branding and business strategy. The “cowboy way” is an equally as perfect metaphor to engage you in the story ... courage and good judgment. Hughes and Jeanes impressively point out that if everybody’s thinkin’ the same way ... then somebody ain’t thinkin’ at all. A truly engaging book.

 

Branding Iron is an in-depth analysis of how to incorporate branding into what you build, and not just slap a pretend image on what you’ve already got. Filled with stories that that make the point—with specifics—this book captures the good and the bad. Where things went wrong and where things went right. Everyone from advertising to engineering should read this book!

 

Using a compelling narrative, the authors teach us that there is no more important business endeavor than building brands. By showing that branding is not simply an activity for marketing communications after the product is developed, Branding Iron teaches marketers in all industries and cultures how to convince others in the organization why branding must be everyone’s responsibility throughout the product lifecycle.