If a good brand is a promise, then a great brand is a promise kept. I don't know who came up with this saying. Many moons ago, I quoted it during a workshop and it kind of stuck. But I stole it from someone else, and the internet attributes the phrase to many. Either way, I like it, and it works. A brand signifies to a consumer that the good or service they are looking for is available. Inherent in a brand is a promise to deliver a set of values or benefits. The more a brand delivers on its promise, the stronger that brand becomes.

Brand valuation estimates the financial value of the brand. Companies such as Interbrand, Brand Finance and Kantar specialise in measuring the economic contribution a brand makes to a business. According to Kantar, the top 100 global brands had a combined value of US$4.7 trillion in 2019.¹ The top 10 brands were Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Visa, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, McDonald's and AT&T. Many argue that the brand is the most critical part of a company and that divorcing the brand from the company is futile because, if done well, the brand is the company.

Seth Godin is a US marketing expert who summarises brand value in this way:

A brand's value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.

It's not the supply chain, staff, marketing, machines or capital expenditure, networks or the things they make. The value — the thing that people pay for — is called ‘brand equity'. This is the value people ascribe to the brand over and above an unbranded copycat alternative. ‘Brand value' is an inward-looking term, meaning the value the organisation puts on the brand. If you're an old-school accountant (and I can't imagine there are many reading this book), brand value roughly translates as ‘goodwill', the intangible value in a company that permeates everything it does. If that argument doesn't cut it for you, try iconic punk songwriter and performer Patti Smith's take on it. In a short sentence she distills the difference in value from what one does (music), to asking the big question: ‘Rock and roll is dream soup. What's your brand?'

But my intention isn't to convince you about the value of brands. I'm imagining you've come to this book knowing a bit about marketing and branding. Instead, I want to explore how businesses inadvertently devalue brands and make them generic. It's a significant issue in the world of marketing at the moment. If you own a company, business or brand or have a degree of influence over a brand, then look at what you can do to maintain a robust, distinctive and ultimately valuable brand. You see, the world of branding has become a little screwed up. When a business isn't clear about its brand, it risks becoming generic and leaving money on the table. I believe the main reason businesses are doing this is because they're listening to the one person they shouldn't. The customer.

Years ago, I worked at the legendary advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi (the only advertising agency your parents have heard of) and Old El Paso was one of my first accounts. In a nice twist of fate, I'm working with the brand again. When Saatchi signed on, the team had a three-day induction with Old El Paso's parent company, General Mills. At the end of the first day, we watched a video that showcased the wonderful achievements of General Mills during its century of operation. I haven't forgotten the dramatic voice-over at the end of the video proclaiming something to the effect of ‘the company's brand is now in your hands, so please don't stuff it up'. I loved the honesty of this corporate video despite the abrupt ending. My take-home message was that brands can't just tick along on their own. They need to be managed, and, if poorly managed, they'll die.

A brand is both valuable and sensitive. It's difficult and expensive to create a brand that stands for something in a consumer's mind. This understates the challenge. Many elements need to go right to create a brand that's motivating, credible and differentiated. It needs to create strong associations, be salient and leave the impression that the brand will help satisfy wants and needs. In prioritising the customer, and taking a customer-led approach, I worry it's at the expense of brand-led thinking. And it's making brands less robust. This book will reveal why brands are becoming weaker and less valuable and how marketers are losing their nerve. It's not all doom and gloom with advice and suggestions for how to build strong brands.

This book includes interviews with industry leaders, research from marketing sciences, anecdotes from my life as a psychologist and advertiser and a fair whack of pure opinion. I've thrown each of these ingredients into a mixing bowl, given them a stir, baked them in the oven and plated up. I hope the result is a tasty, satisfying dish.

Apparently on the outside of a building of the University of Chicago is a plaque that reads, ‘Within these walls contain no wisdom. Only the ability to weigh and consider'. Whether or not this plaque actually exists, the message applies to these pages as well. I've structured the book as follows:

The Background:

• Chapter 1: ‘Stop the consumer obsession' explores the proposition that we are consumer-led and not brand-led. It suggests this is the fundamental issue facing business today.

The Issue:

• Chapter 2: ‘Consumers lie' outlines the dangers of putting the consumer first. Consumers can't be believed and are unreliable witnesses of their own behaviour, and even worse predictors of their future behaviour.
• Chapter 3: ‘Listening to the consumer eliminates value' discusses the fundamental issue with listening to the consumer: it eliminates value from your business. The more you listen to consumers, the less valuable your business becomes.
• Chapter 4: ‘Listening to the consumer makes your business homogeneous' argues you not only eliminate value, but your brand will start looking like the others. Homogeneity in brands is a significant issue, with people finding it difficult to distinguish one brand from another. The more a company listens to consumers, the worse this becomes.

The Hope:

• Chapter 5: ‘They who hear their brand' outlines how brands that don't listen to the consumer are the most successful. It also goes beyond consumer brands to look at the arts and political polling. The less we listen to consumers, the stronger companies become.

The Solution:

• Chapter 6: ‘Create the category' encourages marketers to make a brand that operates in an entirely new space. This is hard to do, but invaluable. If a marketer can create this, that's great. If not, chapters 7 to 10 may help.
• Chapter 7: ‘Define the brand' looks at my business's formula for brand-building, BXB4CX.
• Chapter 8: ‘Gonzo marketing 1: Fire the CEO' looks at the ideal organisational structure to be brand-led in your thinking. Spoiler alert: if the CEO doesn't get it, it's going to be an uphill battle. Another spoiler alert: if your company has a marketing department, you might be in trouble too.
• Chapter 9: ‘Gonzo marketing 2: Put the customer second' looks at the roll-out of a brand to ensure everyone understands it from the inside out.
• Chapters 10 and 11 examine two themes that never emerge in consumer research. Both explore the positives of the negative, or the strengths in weakness. Chapter 10: ‘Embracing the negative' explains how to embrace negative ideas strategically, while chapter 11: ‘Creating weakness' offers practical suggestions to make consumers pay attention through friction, mistakes and waste.
• Chapter 12: ‘Ask what the consumer can do for you' suggests you stop asking what you can do for the consumer and ask what they can do for you. This is the kind of thing you won't discover in a focus group.

A Final Word:

• Chapter 13: ‘The closing argument' is a brief recap.

Experts I've spoken to or exchanged emails with include Australian tennis legend John Newcombe; celebrity turned technology entrepreneur Jules Lund; vice chair of Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland; Australia's current number one chief marketing officer, Lisa Ronson; marketing sciences sensei Wiemer Snijders; and founder of pleasure business OMGyes, Rob Perkins. To you, and others who appear throughout this book, thank you for your time and insights.