The book Six Rules for Brand Revitalization: Learn How Companies Like McDonald's Can Re‐energize Their Brands is a guide to the revitalization of a faded brand. One of the authors of the book, Larry Light, worked as a Chief Marketing Officer at McDonald's during its revitalization phase between 2003‐2005. That professional, but also personal, engagement served as an inspiration for the book, which is conceptualized as a presentation of the actions McDonald's took in order to revitalize its brand. The book is also enriched with references to other successful brands that underwent similar processes. The book greatly benefits from the author's personal experience, offering many insights from the inside, thereby adding to the manuscript's credibility and integrity.
The manuscript is divided into ten chapters. The first chapter sets the stage by introducing McDonald's situation from 1997 to 2002, when it became clear that McDonald's was sliding down in terms of earnings and reputation. In 2002 it reported its first ever quarterly loss since it went public 37 years before. It was to stem this slide that Jim Cantalupo became a new CEO and Charlie Bell a new COO. “[Their] leadership focused in rebuilding the McDonald's brand with a renewed sense of urgency” (p. 24). This chapter provides the set‐up to the new strategy they implemented to prevent a disastrous end of McDonald's decades‐long success. As the result of their endeavor, six important rules are identified that any endangered brand should obey in order to successfully revitalize. The second chapter of the book introduces these six rules. Chapters 3 to 8 each detail one of the six rules and present actions that should be undertaken within the given rule. Each of these chapters also ends with a Do's and Don'ts type of summary. For example, with regards to the first rule, one of the Do's says:
Be specific: Compose and articulate a simple, nongeneric purpose statement that can be easily communicated to everyone in the organization (p. 56).
Towards the end of the book, the penultimate chapter offers a description of the plan to win, which is a summary of the six rules systematized in the three sections of the plan: brand direction, brand action, and brand performance. The last chapter gives proof of how the application of the six rules in McDonald's resulted in its brand's revitalization.
The first rule, “refocus the organization,” is essentially aimed at defining where an organization is going. According to the authors, four points should be taken care of: explaining brand purpose and goals, exercising financial discipline, enforcing operational excellence, and employing leadership marketing. The second rule, “restore brand relevance,” focuses on stressing the importance of knowing the marketplace; defining the market segments in a who, why, what and context dimensions; and prioritizing those prospective segments, as well as creating brand pyramid and brand promise. The third rule, “reinvent the brand experience,” speaks about the importance of five action P's; that is, people, product, place, price, and promotion, in creating the desired brand experience. In that respect, employees should be treated with respect and trained for lifetime; products should be innovated; places should be inspiring; prices must be based on value; and promotion should be multidimensional. The fourth rule, “reinforce a results culture,” stresses the importance of setting the right measurable milestones along all five action P's and reaching them in a balanced way. The fifth rule, “rebuild brand trust,” focuses on the importance of corporate sincerity, openness, and responsibility towards its consumers and society as the only way to build trust among consumers and consequently remain successful. The sixth rule, “realize global alignment,” particularly underlines the importance of achieving unity on a global scale, so that the brand offers unique recognizable relevant experience around the globe.
Overall, although the book is evidently arranged to be a combination of a lively story and a bullet‐pointed summary, the story perspective of the book does not fully capture readers' attention, making it more a cook book with recipes of practical advice. However, the bundle of advices is very comprehensive and provides the reader with new ideas, perspectives, and action avenues ranging from some obvious but neglected to very innovative and unconventional suggestions. Because the described revitalization process is observed from an operational and a step‐by‐step perspective, the book is primarily adequate for troubled practitioners who need to act upon their problems immediately and concretely. On the other hand, because of the delayed knowledge application, students might find detailed lists of advices very exhaustive which might distract them from grasping the overall concept.
