Summary of The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

Takeaway

• A brand is the way people feel about your company.
• You build a brand in five steps.
• Differentiate: who are you, what do you do, and why does it matter?
• Collaborate: a brand is the result of the work of everyone involved in building the company.
• Innovate: do something new.
• Validate: run some quick and easy tests.
• Cultivate: teach what the brand represents and make sure it keeps on moving forward with society.

Table of Contents

What The Brand Gap Talks About

The Brand Gap is a book written by Marty Neumeier. It’s a quick guide defining what a brand is and how to build a unique brand to differentiate yourself in the marketplace.

It’s a good book although almost all of the content is known and “makes sense” nowadays.

8/10.

Get the book here.

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Summary of The Brand Gap Written by Marty Neumeier

Introduction

Let’s define a brand by what it isn’t.

A brand is not:

• A logo
• The font, type, and design of a company.
• A product.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.

When enough people feel the same way about a company, that company has a brand. Brand management is the management of what differentiates you from your competitors.

People buy from a brand because they trust it. Trust creation is a fundamental goal of brand design.

Building a brand is about strategy and creativity but these most of the time, are not decided at the same time, leaving a gap between them – the brand gap. This results in an unclear brand that is full of clutter.

On the other hand, a brand whose communication is crystal clear is understood appreciated by people.

Among the hallmarks of a charismatic brand are a clear competitive stance, a sense of rectitude, and a dedication to aesthetics.

There are no dull products, only dull brands. Any brand, backed by enough courage and imagination, can become a charismatic brand.

Building a great brand comes down to the five following disciplines:

1. Differentiate.
2. Collaborate.
3. Innovate.
4. Validate.
5. Cultivate.

Discipline 1. Differentiate

The first thing you need to do is to answer the three following questions:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you do?
3. Why does it matter?

Unless you have compelling answers to those three questions, you don’t have a brand.

Together, these questions provide a litmus test for what makes you different, what gives your company its raison d’etre.

Eg: John Deere: We’re John Deere. We make farm tractors and related equipment. It matters because generations of farmers have trusted our equipment.

Differentiation works because of the way the human cognitive system works.

One of the ways companies differentiate themselves is through aesthetics because we rely a lot on our visual perception.

Design has five functions:

1. To identify
2. To inform
3. To entertain
4. To persuade
5. To differentiate

The reason for buying a product has shifted from features to benefits, to experience, to identity. A brand nowadays participates to the creation of a tribe.

Brands are the little gods of modern life, each ruling a different need, activity, mood, or situation.

The most important word in branding is focus.

An unfocused brand is one that’s so broad that it doesn’t stand for anything. A focused brand, by contrast, knows exactly what it is, why it’s different, and why people want it.

Most brands are driven by the need to make money and extend their brand to other products, but this almost always ends up badly as it dilutes the focus of the brand.

Discipline 2. Collaborate

In her book, The Nature Of Economies, Jane Jacobs writes that economic development is not just expansion, but differentiation emerging from generality, much like evolutionary or embryological development in nature.

A brand takes time to build and its result is the fruit of the interaction of clients, suppliers, owners, and consultants.

Building a brand today is a little like building a cathedral during the Renaissance.

There are three models for managing brand collaboration:

1. Outsourcing the brand to a one-stop shop: easier and helps maintain more coherence but the brand won’t feel real because it’s not built by the company.
2. Outsourcing it to a brand agency: the brand agency hires external consultants competent in what they do. The issue remains that the company loses control over its brand.
3. Stewarding the brand internally with an integrated marketing team: it’s probably the best way as it enables the company to work directly on its brand with competent professionals.

Discipline 3. Innovate

Execution—read creativity—is the most difficult part of the branding mix to control. It’s magic, not logic, that ignites passion in customers.

Innovation requires creativity, and creativity gives many business people a twitch. Anything new, by definition, is untried, and therefore unsafe.

Since you can’t be a leader by copying others, you need to innovate.

To achieve originality we need to abandon the comforts of habit, reason, and the approval of our peers, and strike out in new directions.

You know an idea is innovative when it scares the hell out of everybody else.

One of the most important things for your brand is the name.

A good name must be:

1. Distinctive
2. Brief
3. Appropriate
4. Easy to spell and pronounce
5. Likable
6. Extendable (must be suitable for brand play)
7. Protectable

Let’s talk about icons and avatars.

A brand icon is a name and visual symbol that communicate a market position. An avatar is an icon that can move, morph, or otherwise operate freely as the brand’s alter ego.

Brand icons rest on two principles found by Aristotle:

• Perception starts with the eye.
• The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.

When conceived well, an icon is a repository of meaning. It contains the DNA of the brand, the basic material for creating a total personality distinct from the competition.

Let’s talk about packaging.

Many retail companies spend a lot on packaging because it’s likelier to make money than just advertising.

Upon seeing a product, customers go through five reading sequences, which the design should take into account when being created.

1. The shopper notices the item.
2. The shopper wonders what it is, bringing the product name and category into play.
3. The shopper looks for why he should care, which is best answered with a very brief why-to-buy message.
4. The shopper experiences the desire to know more about the product.
5. The shopper looks at and compares the features of the item.

Your website must respect the basic rules of visual aesthetics, including contrast, legibility, pacing, and reading sequence.

Discipline 4. Validate

The communication between brands and customers is no longer uni-directional. With the advent of social media, customers want to interact with brands.

Test your ideas to ensure they resonate with the public – but don’t overly rely on those tests. It’s better to do quick easy tests than asking for long quantitative surveys.

The best test to carry is one in a realistic situation. Eg: if you’re wondering whether your design will sell, offer your product in a shop.

All brand expressions, from icons to actual products, need to score high in five areas of communication: distinctiveness, relevance, memorability, extendibility, and depth.

Discipline 5. Cultivate

Successful businesses are those that continually adapt to changes in the marketplace, the industry, the economy, and the culture.

Don’t try to be perfect. Business is a process and mistakes will be made – embrace them.

Brands can afford to be inconsistent —as long as they don’t abandon their defining attributes.

Living brands are not a stylistic veneer but a pattern of behavior that grows out of character. When the external actions of a company align with its internal culture, the brand resonates with authenticity.

As time passes, the brand becomes increasingly fragile due to the risk of a mistake being made. That’s why it’s important that the brand keeps its values in sight when it evolves.

The long-term success of any brand depends on the constant regeneration of corporate memory.

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