The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It by John Gerzema, Edward Lebar, Edward Lebar, Peter Stringham (Foreword by), Peter Stringham (Foreword by)

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Synopsis

How to use brands to gain and sustain competitive advantage

Companies today face a dilemma in marketing. The tried-and-true formulas to create sales and market share behind brands are becoming irrelevant and losing traction with consumers. In this book, Gerzema and LeBar offer credible evidence--drawn from a detailed analysis of a decade's worth of brand and financial data using Y&R's Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), the largest database of brands in the world--that business is riding on yet another bubble that is ready to burst--a brand bubble. While most managers still see metrics like trust and awareness as the backbone of how brands are built, Gerzema asserts they're dead wrong--these metrics do not add to increased asset value. In fact, by following them, they actually hasten the declining value of their brands.

Using a five-stage model, The Brand Bubble reveals how today's successful brands--and tomorrow's--have an insatiable appetite for creativity and change. These brands offer consumers a palpable sense of movement and direction thanks to a powerful "energized differentiation." Gerzema reveals how brands with energized differentiation achieve better financial performance than traditional brands have. Plus, Gerzema helps readers develop energized differentiation in their own brands, creating consumer-centric and sustainable organizations.

Library Journal

These authors both hold senior positions at Young & Rubicam (Y&R), part of the largest ad agency holding company in the world, WPP Group. Their book sounds an alarm based on a gap in value between how consumers and investors perceive brands. The authors have a proprietary research tool that they use to measure value, and they've found that investors reward companies with greater brand awareness, even if consumers don't see much utility. The book presents recommendations on how to close the gap between consumer and company perceptions. Many other books present theories about branding. Al and Laura Ries's The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding offers a hands-on approach to branding, focusing on what works and not necessarily why, while Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart's Branded Customer Service attacks the problem of branding from the view of the customer experience. David A. Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler's Brand Leadership 's more quantitative approach and academic perspective can be compared most closely to this new book. The Brand Bubble is appropriate for a business school or corporate library and will be useful to marketers as well as investors.-Stephen E. Turner, Turner Devaughn Network, Abington, PA

Biography

John Gerzema is Chief Insights Officer for Young & Rubicam Group. One of the earliest founders of account planning in American advertising agencies, John has designed brand strategies for clients for almost twenty—fi ve years, guiding campaigns to international strategic and creative recognition that resulted in The One Show Best of Show award, numerous EFFIE’s and several gold lions from The Cannes Advertising Festival. Prior to joining Y & R, Gerzema oversaw the international network for Fallon, and founded offices in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sâo Paulo. He holds a master’s degree in integrated marketing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a B.S. in marketing from The Ohio State University.

Ed Lebar is CEO of BrandAsset Consulting Group. Ed manages BrandAsset Consulting around the world. He has helped grow BrandAsset Valuator into the largest brand model and database in the world, which now includes input from over 500,000 customers on 38,000 brands across 48 countries through 250 studies.
Before his career in marketing and advertising, Lebar was a professor of economics at CCNY and Finch College. He holds advanced degrees in economics from NYU and the University of Denver, and a B.A. from Syracuse University.