Product Description

For deeper, more loyal customer relationships and enhanced profit margins, companies must "live" the brands they sell. The approach is called "integrated branding" and it's not just a communications strategy. A company must demonstrate to itself and its customers that its external brand image is a reflection of what's inside the company. The brand and the company are inseparable, and this realization must pervade the entire organization, from new product development to human resource management.

Integrated branding is an overall way of doing business, and a way to make certain a company's products are based on the right answers to two mutually reinforcing questions: "What do customers value?" and "What does the company do best in relation to what customers want?" The tools to accomplish these goals are called "drivers". In this updated edition of their acclaimed guide, LePla and Parker show how drivers work and how to apply them. Also included are discussions of how to determine brand structure, how an integrated brand applies to marketing communications and how integrated brands can help companies when they go public.

Essential reading for marketing professionals, corporate strategists, and those who make decisions that determine an organization's future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #768382 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 299 pages

Review
"'Integrated Branding' is essential reading for all business and marketing students and professionals." -- Internet BookWatch

"A comprehensive yet practical tool for any organization seeking competitive advantage in the increasingly sophisticated and crowded marketplace..." -- David Reyes-Guerra, Manager, Corporate Identity and Product Naming, Xerox Corporation

"I would recommend this book to any organization that is serious about finding its focus." -- Kathleen P. Wilcox, JD President, Washington Software Alliance

Review
"Integrated branding is the means of effectively doing business in today's fiercely competitive marketplace . . . The tools to determining what customers value and what the company does best in relation to what customers want are shown clearly and comprehensively. Integrated Branding is essential reading for all business and marketing students and professionals." -- Internet Bookwatch

From the Publisher
F. Joseph LePla has worked with a broad range of companies for more than 20 years helping to develop their brands. He now runs the Parker/LePla consultancy which shows companies how to implement their Integrated Branding Model.

Customer Reviews

Takes brand out of the company handbook and into action.
Integrated Branding is loaded with great tips for businesses of all sizes to effectively develop and use brand tools. Parker and LePla speak with authority on what works, and what doesn't work, in creating messages that resonate with customers and employees. They take brand out of the company handbook and into the everyday actions of employees. This book gives lots of entertaining examples of how to make sure everyone in the company is using the same principles to guide the way they represent the company--through customer interactions, product development, corporate communications, and more.

Learn to develop deep customer relationships with this book
What is branding? A common misconception is that branding in the business world is like branding on the cattle ranch. Company A hires company B to brand them. Company B rustles up some research and then proceeds to place a brand on Company A. Nothing could be less effective, or farther from the truth. Parker and LePla do a great service in clearly and simply explaining this in their excellent book, Integrated Branding.

Integrated Branding shows that every company has a brand waiting to be revealed. What a company doesn't need is a "brand" presented to them by an ad agency. What that company needs, and what this book will teach it, is learning how to recognize and develop their existing brand and then live that brand all the time.

Integrated Branding maps out a process that merges research of what an organization's customers/audiences want/need/expect, with the strengths and assets that a company has to offer. With that process the author's show you step-by-step how to develop (and use) all of the brand tools at the core of the integrated brand - principle, mission, values, personality, story, and association

Integrated Branding also explains how to introduce the brand from top to bottom into every level of the company, and to every employee --from CEO to receptionist-so that they learn to live that brand.

Following the Integrated Branding process will help your organization to reveal what brand assets it already has, and some that it may choose to aspire to. It helps provide each employee with tools to guide them throughout every decision and communication -- from announcing company news, to hiring, to product development. If a company truly lives its brand, customers will respond with increased loyalty, a willingness to pay a price premium and shortened purchase processes; and employees will pitch in for the long haul. How many books can provide you with a method to do all that?

Integrated Branding should be the bible for anyone who is embarking on a brand program with any type of organization, big or small, corporate or non-profit. Your company - and your customers - will thank you for reading this book.

--Rob Crowther

Effective branding as it should be
Confused about what branding actually is? Not convinced of how important it is in the success of your organization? Integrated Branding provides a comprehensive view on what branding can do when properly implemented. The unique view on how branding is more than consistent marketing collateral and a fancy logo, Integrated Branding takes the branding process (and results) to a whole different level. This book discusses the process of driving your brand from every facet of the company, and more importantly, why it works.

If you are looking for the best place to start in building your company's brand equity, this is the book for you.