Brand Romance is defined as a state of emotional attachment (evoked in response to the brand as a stimulus) that is characterized by strong positive affect toward the brand, high arousal caused by the brand and a tendency of the brand to dominate the consumer’s cognition. (Patwardhan and Balasubramanian, 2011). This book is based on Stefano Marzano’s philosophy of “High Design”, according to which “‘High Design’ is completely human-focused and research-based, and it always uses a deep understanding of people’s needs as the starting point for the design process”. Stefano Marzano has been Chief Design Officer and member of the Group Management in Electrolux since January 2012 and had served as Chief Design Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Philips Design in Philips between 1991 and 2011. The managerial significance of applying principles of “High Design” to build and nurture brands of products and services lies in the facts that “every £100 that a design-conscious business spends on design increases turnover by £225” (p. 84) and that “the shares in design-led businesses outperform key stock market indices by 200 per cent” (p. 84).
The book contains 15 chapters divided into four parts. The authors describe these 15 chapters as the 15 commitments needed to build a “loved brand”. Part 1, “Know Who You Are” consists of only one commitment, which asks marketers to think of their brand as a person. It quotes Mahatma Gandhi:
Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.
These words of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Indian nation, assert the importance of integrating beliefs, thoughts and values in whatever we do in our lives. The authors here quote these words to extend the same concept to the process of brand building for any organization. They then explain the process followed by them, during 2001-2002, when they were part of the team searching values for Philips, which is more than 100 years old. The core messages derived from the hunt then formed a foundation for Philips’ brand-building exercise of Philips. “Company values and beliefs should be used as a confirmation of the company’s promise, a promise that should not be compromised for financial gain or short term business goal” (p. 24).
Part 2, “Know Your Audience”, consists of five Commitments. Commitment 2 focuses on understanding short- and long-term needs of the consumers in building a successful brand. Authors urge the marketer to understand the distinction between needs (a necessity) and wants (something merely desired). “If your company truly loves its audience then you will not only need to consider its short term satisfaction, but also anticipate its long term happiness” (p. 31). Commitment 3 delves into the process of co-creating the design of product by involving the consumer from the initial stages of product development rather than just getting the feedback during the test marketing phases. As the consumers are found to be saying something different from what they actually feel, the authors suggest the applications of the methods of “consumer neuroscience” in the process of marketing research. The authors refers to Daniel Kahneman’s theory of System 1 and System 2 (Kahneman, 2011) to explain the two styles of the consumer decision-making process: intuition and reasoning.
Commitment 4 advices the marketer to take a people-focused approach in product development for which it is needed to understand how people experience the events in their lives. The authors explain five separate stages of experience: imagination, impression, discovery, use and memory. Memory forms an important component of experience, as the research suggest that only 20 per cent of an experience can be credited to the customer’s memory, while the remaining 80 per cent results from an individual’s own cognitive process of interpretation. Commitment 5 talks about right measurement and optimizations of the new launches of products by any corporation. It discusses the importance of determining the key functions and achievements that marketers want from a particular touch-point. The authors introduce the readers to “face value tests”, which refers to comparing a new concept design with a competitor’s design by asking people which one’s look they prefer; however, the authors also advise:
If you are the first to market with a unique proposition such as the Senseo coffee make from Philips, there is no reason for you to compare the looks of the product design with other drip type coffee makers from competitors (p. 76).
Commitment 6 deals with evaluating the design performance. It introduces the concept of “Net Promoter Score (NPS)”, which illuminates the link between business growth and design’s contribution, and can be used to review, monitor and possibly improve the performance of both.
Part 3, “Know What You Will Bring Your Audience”, consists of three commitments. Commitment 7 emphasizes building clear brand architecture through clustering the range of products into higher-level propositions. “The main purpose of a brand architecture is to offer brand product and service propositions to the market in a clear, consistent structure from an outside-in point of view” (p. 97). The authors propose three types of branding approach which are simple, yet fulfill all business needs: Monolithic – Corporate or Umbrella brands; Endorsed – endorsed brands and sub-brands; Stand-alone – individual product brands. Commitment 8 elucidates the role of continuous innovation in long-term sustainability and success of the brand. The importance of having breakthrough ideas and concepts lies in bringing them to the market and making them successful for the brand and business.
The authors explain the concept of co-innovation through the philanthropy by design initiative of Philips design, which led to the development of Chulha: a smokeless stove for users at the bottom of social pyramid. Throughout this Chulha project the team managed to build a strong network and working relationship with all stakeholders, including the end user of the product, which helped the team to form a basis for co-creating the infrastructure. “Co-creating with end users reduces the gap between the concept creation phase and the market introduction phase” (p. 122). Commitment 9 elaborates four design drivers to maximize brand value propositions. These four design drivers are: meaningful, distinctive, attractive and coherence. The authors also explain each of these four drivers through the mapping tools along with the examples of brand such as Apple, Dyson, Singapore Airlines, etc., which enables the readers to appreciate the practical applications of the tools explained for each of the brand drivers.
Part 4, “Know How You Will Bring It to Your Audience”, consists of the final six commitments needed to create a successful brand. Commitment 10 embarks upon the role of creating a clearly recognizable brand. “A brand gains its recognition by the ways it uses touch point to differentiate itself from other brands” (p. 139). The authors give the example of Audi, which maintains a very strong identity in all its products and all its ranges in each product and also “offers its audiences the emotional association of quality and trust (its slogan, Vorsprung durch Technik, translates as ‘advantage through technology’) and dignity and pride to its employees” (p. 139). The benefit of creating a unique identity for the brand forms association with quality of the product offered by the brand, which in turn leads consumers to trust the brand.
Commitment 11 discusses the three stages required to fulfill the principle of High Design which are – understanding and exploration, proposition and direction setting and 360° experience creation. One of the pieces of advice given by the author is to remain as consistent as possible throughout all the touch points, which is many times not followed by some brands, such as an Indian telecom service brand, Airtel (having around 300 million subscribers across the globe), often provides different information to consumers for the same query depending upon the mode of touch-point used, for example email, telephonic customer care or in-store customer care, which can lead to consumer frustration and eventually loss of brand trust.
Commitment 12 suggests the marketer create one vocabulary for the whole organization. The authors give the example of Dyson to describe how people can apply the proposition framework, proposed by the authors. Dyson used the unique iconic design to articulate the significance of its product and hence it differentiates its product from other manufacturers:
Design can be use its tools and skills to translate topics into tangible forms based on deep understanding of cultural meanings during the stages of the business creation process, and plays an integrator’s role by creating one vocabulary (p. 168).
Commitment 13 recognizes the role of two different kinds of people in creating a successful brand, the authors call the first the maestro and the second the virtuoso. The maestro is expected to have a thorough knowledge of, and insights into, his/her domain of work. “The maestro should be recognised as a key strategic partner – and expert – who is instrumental in generating business value with the company’s internal business stakeholder” (p. 173). The virtuoso, on the other hand, possesses a unique expertise in, and a keen focus on, his/her specific area. Virtuoso, “should lead the development of the competency to anticipate and support the long term needs of the business” (p. 175). Commitment 14 revolves around the issues of talent management among the design community. The authors talks about the problems faced by the companies in finding the right talent in both the maestro and virtuoso areas. The authors therefore propose a program, needed to nurture the talent in the area of design development. The program would be based on four steps explained by the authors, where each step would inculcate particular set of competencies in the participants.
Commitment 15 centers around creating one culture for both brand and company based on the brands values and beliefs. To bring the brand to life, marketer should be able to create a shared culture without the need of any “rule book”, as these rule books see the brand as grid and template and lacks emotional touch to the brands. The authors suggest that the design team should create cultural community and society, which evolves Just as the language evolves and develops, without control of any rule book, but by society – and the culture – that owns and uses it.
The uniqueness of this book is in integrating the concepts of design development for creating successful brands. The authors bring with themselves huge experiences in design thinking and implementation from global organizations such as Philips and Electrolux. This book is based on practical insights derived from the experience brought by both of the authors. The authors touch upon many aspects of “high design” that have not been previously discussed in other texts.
Each chapter opens up with an analogy from either the previous experiences of the authors or some general situation from the society, which helps the reader to better relate the concept to brand building for modern organization. Most of the Chapters contain brief case studies of top companies to practically explain the author’s theories. This book is a suggestible read for anyone interested to understand the role of product design development in brand creation.
