Brand Jammin': A review of Marc Gobé's new book, Brandjam
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was down in Fort Lauderdale for a few weeks. Getting there and back required I spend some time sitting in airports and crammed into jets. But, that afforded me the time to read Marc Gobé’s new book, Brandjam.
Brandjam came to me at a time when, to be cuttingly honest, design had lost much of its excitement for me. Crank out another website. Whip up a logo. Shoot out one more brochure. Yawn. Same, same. After doing this stuff for 30 some odd years, the thrill of it all seemed to have gone out the window. Marc’s book changed that by giving me back the desire I seemed to have misplaced.
Brandjam brought the human aspect back into the picture. As a matter of fact, the subtitle on the cover is, “humanizing brands through emotional branding.” The book is an extension and continuation of his previous, and highly popular work, Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People.
So, what happened to branding and marketing over the years? Here’s point-in-case. A few years ago, I walked into the lush conference room of a new client. Not a huge company, but not Lilliputian either. In walked their Director of Marketing. She was a nice enough lady, decked out in a gray worsted wool business suit. Without missing a beat, she started talking about stratified samples, non-response bias, quantitative measurements and ROI. Not a word about humans and their needs as consumers. She seemed to have forgotten that the folks she was trying to sell her company’s wares to are ... well ... living, breathing people, not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. And that is just what Brandjam reminds us. We design for people to meet their needs and help fulfill their expectations, desires and experience with our clients’ brands.
Gobé uses a metaphor that hit home for me – jazz. I play guitar and enjoy listening to jazz, although I confess that I don’t play it well. I’m better at Dylan. None the less, it’s an apt metaphor for branding in the 21st century. He refers to companies needing to “jazz up” their brands by incorporating instinct, along with research and finding new and inventive ways to touch the consumer on an emotional level.
Jazz is about innovation and improvisation. It’s about creating new and unusual harmonies with others. It’s about not being afraid to take risks to create something new and different. Something that stands out from the pack. Through numerous case studies, thoughts, ideas and concepts, Gobé will shake up what you thought you knew about branding and making a true impact on the audience.
Brandjam speaks to the notion that branding is a collaborative effort. It’s a partnership, not just with clients, designers, writers and the research crew, but also with the consumer. It’s about enhancing the consumer’s experience and building real trust. To do that, the old rule of buying more media in an effort to cajole consumers to buy stuff they don’t want doesn’t apply anymore. The idea is to find out what people really want, design it right and then find a way to bring it to them.
We live in an over-communicated world with smart chips in just about everything, in an effort to make things “easier” for us. But, here in the West, things tend to be fast-paced and high-stress. The research says we’re bombarded with roughly 3000 marketing messages each and every day. We have way too many choices when it comes to products and services. What will we buy and where will we spend our money? It’s my belief that the brands that win the consumer are going to be those that adopt and implement the concepts found in Brandjam.
Brandjam came to me at a time when, to be cuttingly honest, design had lost much of its excitement for me. Crank out another website. Whip up a logo. Shoot out one more brochure. Yawn. Same, same. After doing this stuff for 30 some odd years, the thrill of it all seemed to have gone out the window. Marc’s book changed that by giving me back the desire I seemed to have misplaced.
Brandjam brought the human aspect back into the picture. As a matter of fact, the subtitle on the cover is, “humanizing brands through emotional branding.” The book is an extension and continuation of his previous, and highly popular work, Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People.
So, what happened to branding and marketing over the years? Here’s point-in-case. A few years ago, I walked into the lush conference room of a new client. Not a huge company, but not Lilliputian either. In walked their Director of Marketing. She was a nice enough lady, decked out in a gray worsted wool business suit. Without missing a beat, she started talking about stratified samples, non-response bias, quantitative measurements and ROI. Not a word about humans and their needs as consumers. She seemed to have forgotten that the folks she was trying to sell her company’s wares to are ... well ... living, breathing people, not simply numbers on a spreadsheet. And that is just what Brandjam reminds us. We design for people to meet their needs and help fulfill their expectations, desires and experience with our clients’ brands.
Gobé uses a metaphor that hit home for me – jazz. I play guitar and enjoy listening to jazz, although I confess that I don’t play it well. I’m better at Dylan. None the less, it’s an apt metaphor for branding in the 21st century. He refers to companies needing to “jazz up” their brands by incorporating instinct, along with research and finding new and inventive ways to touch the consumer on an emotional level.
Jazz is about innovation and improvisation. It’s about creating new and unusual harmonies with others. It’s about not being afraid to take risks to create something new and different. Something that stands out from the pack. Through numerous case studies, thoughts, ideas and concepts, Gobé will shake up what you thought you knew about branding and making a true impact on the audience.
Brandjam speaks to the notion that branding is a collaborative effort. It’s a partnership, not just with clients, designers, writers and the research crew, but also with the consumer. It’s about enhancing the consumer’s experience and building real trust. To do that, the old rule of buying more media in an effort to cajole consumers to buy stuff they don’t want doesn’t apply anymore. The idea is to find out what people really want, design it right and then find a way to bring it to them.
We live in an over-communicated world with smart chips in just about everything, in an effort to make things “easier” for us. But, here in the West, things tend to be fast-paced and high-stress. The research says we’re bombarded with roughly 3000 marketing messages each and every day. We have way too many choices when it comes to products and services. What will we buy and where will we spend our money? It’s my belief that the brands that win the consumer are going to be those that adopt and implement the concepts found in Brandjam.
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