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ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability and Sustainability of Brands
A book by Nick Wreden
Review by Christen Arden
This book has been endorsed by such marketing luminaries as Philip Kotler and Donald Schultz.
It's easy to see why.
ProfitBrand: How to Increase the Profitability, Accountability and Sustainability of Brands, as the title suggests, presents a results-driven view of branding, that any CEO or CFO would applaud.
Wreden asserts that "branding has a dirty little secret - it doesn't know how to count... branding goals centre upon 'awareness', 'visibility', 'impact', and 'image'." He looks to remedy this by providing a comprehensive metric-based approach that focuses on accountabilities, measurement and sustainability.
ProfitBrand begins by charting the shift from the 'mass-economy' (1920-1995), through the 'customer economy' (1995-2006), to the coming 'demand economy' era - "where customers won't want just offerings; but service, support and offerings just for them - now", and identifies implications for branding. Wreden sets up his argument by looking at the ineffieciences of traditonal branding strategies that stress acquisition. From marketing's promotional focus, to compensation schemes based on immediate sales, customer acquisition has star billing, whilst retention is treated as the poor cousin. Yet customer loyalty is key to delivering profitability, so how it is managed and measured is fundamental to a 'ProfitBrand'. A ProfitBrand is defined as 'a long-term profitable bond between an offering and customers. This relationship is based on trust and loyalty, backed by everyday operational excellence and measured by customer equity'. The book presents segmentation, optimisation, pricing, and communication strategies as well as exploring accountability systems such as six sigma, CRM, and scorecards. It delves into the need to own the customer experience, explores loyalty schemes, and the means of leveraging allies as brand ambassadors.
ProfitBrand takes a refreshing all-encompassing view of branding whilst providing marketers with the tools to support how brand acivities link to bottom-line results.
Buy this book.
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