What Great Brands Do
The Seven Brand-Building Principles That Separate the Best from the Rest
Book Edition Details
Summary
Brands that leave a mark on the world don't just happen by chance. In "What Great Brands Do," Denise Lee Yohn unveils the blueprint behind the success of giants like Apple and Nike, showing that their greatness isn't an accident but a crafted reality. With her two and a half decades of experience, Yohn offers a revolutionary approach: treat your brand as the very essence of your business, and watch it transform not only your profits but your entire company culture. This isn't just theory; it's a hands-on guide filled with insights from top players like Frito-Lay and Sony. Whether you're steering a start-up or a global enterprise, this indispensable read reveals how to elevate your brand to legendary status.
Introduction
In today's hypercompetitive marketplace, many organizations struggle to understand why their marketing efforts fail to translate into lasting success. While countless companies invest heavily in advertising campaigns and promotional activities, only a select few manage to build truly great brands that withstand market turbulence and inspire genuine customer loyalty. The fundamental challenge lies not in what brands say about themselves, but in how they operationalize their brand promise throughout every aspect of their business. This systematic approach to brand building transcends traditional marketing tactics by establishing brand as the central organizing principle that drives culture, operations, and customer experience. Rather than treating branding as a superficial layer applied to existing business practices, this framework demonstrates how exceptional organizations integrate their brand identity into the very DNA of their operations. The methodology reveals why some brands achieve remarkable resilience and growth while others, despite substantial resources and market advantages, ultimately fail to maintain their competitive position. The theoretical foundation examines how brands function as strategic management tools that align internal culture with external market positioning, creating sustainable differentiation through authentic value delivery rather than promotional messaging alone.
Start Inside: Building Brand Culture First
The principle of starting inside represents a fundamental shift from traditional brand-building approaches that prioritize external communication over internal alignment. This framework recognizes that authentic brand experiences emerge from organizational culture, making internal brand development the foundational prerequisite for sustainable market success. Great brands understand that culture serves as the operating system that determines how every stakeholder interprets and delivers the brand promise. This cultural foundation encompasses shared values, behavioral norms, and decision-making frameworks that guide employees, partners, and vendors in their daily interactions with customers. The principle requires organizations to establish clear brand values that transcend departmental boundaries and hierarchical structures, creating unified understanding across all levels of operation. Consider how companies like Southwest Airlines built their distinctive market position not through advertising campaigns, but by cultivating an internal culture that naturally expressed their brand values of accessibility, humor, and customer service. Their employees genuinely embody these principles because the culture supports and rewards such behavior, making the external brand experience an authentic reflection of internal reality. This alignment eliminates the disconnect between brand promise and brand delivery that undermines so many organizational efforts. The practical application involves developing comprehensive brand toolkits, conducting brand engagement sessions, and ensuring that recruitment, training, and performance evaluation systems all reinforce the desired cultural attributes. When organizations truly start inside, their brand becomes self-sustaining because every stakeholder understands their role in bringing the brand to life.
Avoid Products: Create Emotional Connections
The counterintuitive principle of avoiding product-focused messaging recognizes that customers make purchasing decisions based on emotional rather than rational criteria. This approach shifts brand positioning from functional benefits to emotional resonance, creating deeper and more sustainable customer relationships. Products represent merely the vehicle through which brands deliver emotional value, not the source of differentiation itself. This framework acknowledges that in mature markets where functional parity exists across competitors, emotional connection becomes the primary differentiator. The principle requires organizations to identify the underlying emotional needs their products address and position their brand as the solution to these deeper human desires rather than focusing on features and specifications. Nike exemplifies this approach through campaigns that inspire personal achievement rather than highlighting shoe technology. Their messaging connects with customers' aspirations for athletic excellence and personal transformation, making the product secondary to the emotional journey the brand enables. This emotional positioning allows Nike to maintain premium pricing and customer loyalty despite the availability of functionally comparable alternatives. The methodology involves ethnographic research to understand customer motivations, developing brand narratives that speak to emotional needs, and designing experiences that reinforce these emotional connections at every touchpoint. Brands that master emotional connection create customers who become advocates, defend the brand against criticism, and remain loyal despite competitive pressure or occasional service failures.
Ignore Trends: Lead Cultural Movements
This principle distinguishes between superficial trends and meaningful cultural movements, advocating for brands to lead rather than follow market developments. The framework recognizes that trend-following creates commoditization and reactive positioning, while cultural leadership establishes sustainable competitive advantage. Trends represent short-term market fluctuations driven by novelty and imitation, often lacking the depth necessary for long-term brand building. Cultural movements, by contrast, reflect fundamental shifts in values, behaviors, or social consciousness that create lasting change. Great brands identify emerging cultural movements before they reach mainstream awareness and position themselves as pioneers rather than followers. The approach requires organizations to develop sophisticated environmental scanning capabilities, monitoring developments across multiple domains including technology, demographics, social values, and lifestyle patterns. Rather than responding to what competitors are doing, brands must anticipate where culture is heading and align their positioning with these emerging directions. Starbucks demonstrates this principle by recognizing the cultural movement toward community gathering spaces and positioning their locations as the "third place" between home and work. This cultural insight allowed them to transcend the coffee category and create an entirely new market space. Their success came not from following restaurant trends but from leading a cultural shift toward experiential retail and community connection. The practical implementation involves establishing cross-functional teams to monitor cultural developments, developing scenario planning capabilities, and maintaining the organizational courage to pursue unconventional positioning when cultural evidence supports such directions.
Brand as Business: The Integrated Approach
The culminating principle of brand as business represents the full integration of all preceding elements into a cohesive management philosophy. This framework treats the brand not as a marketing function but as the central organizing principle that drives strategic decision-making, operational excellence, and stakeholder engagement. Brand as business requires organizations to align every aspect of their operations with their brand promise, eliminating the traditional separation between brand strategy and business strategy. This integration encompasses everything from product development and customer service to supply chain management and financial planning. The approach recognizes that authentic brands emerge from consistent execution across all touchpoints rather than from communication activities alone. The framework operates through three interconnected dimensions: culture as foundation, strategic planning as direction-setting, and operational execution as value delivery. Each dimension reinforces the others, creating a self-sustaining system where brand strength drives business performance and business success reinforces brand equity. This integration eliminates the common problem of brand promises that cannot be fulfilled by operational capabilities. Companies like Apple exemplify this principle by ensuring that their brand values of simplicity, innovation, and user experience permeate every aspect of their business, from product design and retail environments to customer support and corporate communications. Their brand is not applied to their business but rather emerges from their business practices, creating authentic differentiation that competitors cannot easily replicate. The implementation requires senior leadership commitment, cross-functional collaboration, and measurement systems that track brand health alongside traditional business metrics. Organizations must develop the discipline to make decisions based on brand consistency rather than short-term convenience or cost optimization.
Summary
Great brands succeed not through superior marketing communications but through the systematic integration of brand values into every aspect of organizational operation, creating authentic experiences that build lasting customer relationships and sustainable competitive advantage. This comprehensive approach transforms brand building from a tactical marketing activity into a strategic management discipline that drives long-term value creation for all stakeholders. By mastering these principles, organizations can build brands that transcend product categories, inspire customer loyalty, and maintain relevance across changing market conditions, ultimately achieving the kind of enduring success that withstands competitive pressure and economic uncertainty.
Related Books
Download PDF & EPUB
To save this Black List summary for later, download the free PDF and EPUB. You can print it out, or read offline at your convenience.
By Denise Lee Yohn
