Product Description

Five Steps to an Unforgettable Brand

Today's customers face a dizzying array of choices, whether they're buying a car, choosing a school, or contributing to a charity. As a result, brand is often the critical differentiating factor in a customer's decision-making process. Yet for most companies, there is a yawning gap between how the brand is viewed within the company-and how it is perceived out in the world.

Marketing veteran Mike Moser argues that the problem isn't that executives don't "get" their brand. It's that they don't know how to funnel that knowledge into a form that is easily communicated and understood by every person-whether employee, partner, customer, or investor-who comes in contact with it.

In United We Brand, Moser unveils a hands-on tool he has developed over the course of two decades of branding experience with organizations ranging from brand giants like Reebok and Dell Computers to fledgling startups to nonprofit firms. The "Brand Roadmap" puts insights and strategies once available only through top flight consulting and advertising agencies in the hands of every executive, small business owner, and entrepreneur.

Step-by-step, Moser shows readers how to map out the four key components of brand strategy: identifying core values, creating a focused brand message, developing a distinctive brand personality, and choosing a consistent set of brand icons. He then provides a template for unifying these components into a customized Brand Roadmap that ensures:

" The same values and brand message are echoed in every interaction-both in and outside the company

" A consistent brand statement and identity drive all strategic activities and determine the allocation of marketing dollars

" Management and design experts have a common language with which to talk about brand execution

" Marketing materials and communications accurately reflect the core values and brand message

Filled with vivid case examples and practical worksheets, United We Brand offers a compass for guiding day-to-day branding decisions-and a roadmap for charting a company's path to long-term success.

BACK JACKET: "Mike Moser has written a highly informative and engaging guide to creating powerful brands. He has successfully distilled his years of experience helping build brands for a number of leading organizations into a practical step-by-step process that should be must reading for marketing leaders."

-Michael George, Chief Marketing Officer, Dell Computer Corporation

"Mike Moser's United We Brand demystifies the world of marketing, unlocking its secrets so that community groups, schools, and other groups without multi-million dollar advertising budgets can follow a step by step guide to create their own brand roadmap-rooted in their core values and imbued with their organizational personality."

-Carla Javits, President and CEO of the Corporation for Supportive Housing

"To be a good creative director, you must often be a teacher. That's exactly the approach Mike Moser takes in this 'textbook' on how to understand, manage, and articulate a company's image and reputation. Simply and clearly, he teaches you how to create a brand."

-Lee Clow, Chairman and Worldwide Creative Director, TBWA\Chiat\Day

"The simple steps outlined in United We Brand help define what a company has accomplished, what it does well, and how others perceive it in order to begin articulating where it wants to go in the future. The book defines a set of steps which allows an organization to articulate-and thus control-something as seemingly mysterious and elusive as a brand."

-Jeanie Kortum, Executive Director, A Home Away From Homelessness

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #331349 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781578517985
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Ad exec Moser, a veteran of some of the industry's highest profile campaigns, has composed an admirably simple guide for creating a powerful and enduring brand. This is a hands-on, forward-thinking workbook for executives who want a fast, clear primer on the basics of contemporary brand marketing, told in plain language rather than B-school jargon, mixing checklists and exercises with Moser's firsthand observations of what works. His focus is entirely on the initial stages of the branding process-defining what your brand stands for and the best way to tell customers about it-in which advertising agencies typically play a key role. His ideas aren't revolutionary; indeed, experienced marketers will recognize most as industry standards. Companies are assigned human values and personality traits, which in turn shape the way they sell and communicate. Or, as Moser exhorts, "Poof! You're a person, not a company," one who can be characterized as "honest," "aggressive," "nurturing" or "passionate." Those traits then establish an emotionally charged core message, to be echoed in the brand's name, logo and advertising. It's this holistic approach, in which a company's vision becomes part of the product itself, that's propelled brands like Nike, Apple and Saturn to superstardom. While Moser's book makes little attempt to explore the messy business of implementing this approach, it remains a delightfully breezy introduction to how marketers transform an ordinary sneaker into a statement of who we are and who we want to be.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Mike Moser, cofounder of Goldberg Moser O'Neill advertising agency, has worked in the industry for over twenty-five years serving a variety of corporations, startups, and nonprofit organizations. He has won over 300 national and international marketing awards.

Customer Reviews

Clarity, Cohesion, and Impact
Several hundred books on marketing and branding have been published since Ted Levitt's seminal article ""Marketing Myopia" appeared in the Harvard Business Review (September 1, 1975). He later wrote The Marketing Imagination (1986) which remains "must reading" for anyone directly or indirectly involved with marketing. There are several excellent recently published books on brand management and this is certainly one of the best. As its subtitle correctly indicates, Moser explains "how to create a cohesive brand that's seen, heard, and remembered." In the proverbial nutshell, that has become one of brand managers' primary objectives: To create a multi-sensory experience for the consumer which increases, enhances, and sustains the appeal of the given brand. Moser draws upon more than 25 years of experience in the agency world, having worked closely with a number of major corporations (e.g. Kia Motors, Cisco Systems, and Dell) to formulate a "brand road map" based on a template which, until now, has been inaccessible to most organizations. What he offers in this book is a step-by-step process by which to create cohesive brand strategies.

As Moser explains with meticulous care, citing examples along the way, there are four components of a brand: Core values (the foundation of any organization), brand message (the overall key message which must be communicated effectively), brand personality (the overall tone and attitude with which to deliver the brand message), and finally, brand icons (executional tools which help to deliver the brand message...all of the various elements that make all of an organization's marketing materials uniquely its own). These four components provide the foundation of a "brand road map" which, like all other roadways, requires conscientious maintenance to ensure expeditious delivery of the brand message to its destination.

Moser leaves no doubt whatsoever that this process is very difficult, requires an abundance of time and energy, and is subject to all manner of perils such as internal resistance which Jim O'Toole characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Why bother? "Capturing the essence of your brand [whatever or whoever it may be] and putting it into a form that's clear and concise will help ensure that your brand has the tools necessary to be seen heard, and remembered in the marketplace for years to come." Presumably Moser agrees with this follow-up thought which I now share: Even if Levitt and Moser personally worked closely with you and your associates on the formulation of a "road map" for your organization, it will be essentially worthless unless and until your brand (be it a product or service or both) is of the highest possible quality.

Readers of this brilliant book will be pleased and relieved that Moser's approach is eminently practical. His text is mercifully free of jargon. He seems determined to help any and all who would otherwise not have access to a step-by-step process which has been used for years by large corporations, branding experts, and brand consultancies as well as by multinational corporate identity firms and advertising agencies. Understanding this process will help those who read his book to achieve some of the same brand insights, brand focus, and brand consistency now delivered by various proprietary formulas.

The New Bible, by Mike Moser
Smart, relevant and witty.
And written for just about everyone at every level
of the communications business. Whether you're a Jr.
Copywriter, or a C.E.O. Moser gets to the heart
(and soul) of turning any business into a household word.
Finally, someone has written about the most difficult
task in advertising and made it incredibly clear, and
even more startling, incredibly easy.
The first textbook on branding that doesn't read
like a textbook.
And to think it was written by an Art Director.
Amen.

How to sell
My background is in law and network programming. What's amazing to me about this book is how well it translates to the needs of any business. Moser offers up a way to think clearly about how to sell whatever product/service you have. He also makes you aware of what is being sold to you and how! It's easy to read and offers invaluable advice. As busy as I am right now I'm glad I took the time to read it.