Branding: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #527

by Robert Jones

Branding is possibly the most powerful commercial and cultural force on the planet. Iconic names such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Manchester United, Harry Potter, and Google are known and recognized by millions of people worldwide. As the market economy spreads across the world, brands are becoming ever more prevalent. The Apple brand has been valued at $98 billion - more than the GDP of Slovakia. Every day, we're exposed to more than 3500 brand messages. And even though people are increasingly brand-aware and brand-sceptical, they are nevertheless seduced by brands. We may reject the whole brand system, but we still wouldn't be parted from our Apple Macs. Brands are impossible to escape.
In this Very Short Introduction Robert Jones discusses the rising omnipresence of brands, and analyses how they work their magic. He considers the incredible potency of brands as a commercial, social, and cultural force, and looks at the many different kinds of brands that exist - from products, services, and artistic properties, to companies, charities, sports clubs, and political parties. Defining what we mean by the word 'brand', he explores both the positive and negative aspects of brands. Finally Jones considers the business of branding, and asks whether the idea of brands and branding is starting to decline, or whether it has a long future ahead.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, History, Economics

160 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2017

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you read a book titled "a very short introduction", I think its only fair to judge it at that level. I have several of these books from the OUP. Whilst they are of variable quality, generally I have found them to be good entry points to a topic. I have quite a few of their philosophical introductions, but this is the first one I've read on a practical subject like branding.

Overall, I think the author does a good job of explaining the concept of branding, and dealing with the nebulous nature of a topic that means so many different things to different people. I think the first couple of chapters of the book are particularly good. I liked the fact that whilst he talks about the design side of branding, such as logos, he is clear this is only one small part of branding overall. I was not so interested in the parts of the role of branding managers. It was, a few times, a little more academic than I expected. That suits me as I like to understand the intellectual foundations of subjects, but it may not be what everyone wants.

I am reading this in 2017, when the book was published. It will be interesting to see if this book still feels relevant in a few years time given the dynamic nature of branding.

You won't finish this book an expert in branding, you may not even find your understanding has deepened that much, but if its a subject you want to get into more and you want to get your head around the scope and dimensions of the topic, this book successfully fits the criteria of what I would expect a "very short introduction" to do.

[idkhello]

Slayyy finally finished a one(1) book for my uni lmao

[Carys · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5? Maybe?) this book is really, really informative and insightful - Jones REALLY knows his stuff, and I agree with him that branding is more than just a logo. The book took me a while to read (I took about a week off from it) because it’s so dense; there’s so much information on every page and it’s hard to take in! A really good book overall, would recommend to anyone interested in the wider scope of branding than just a logo - just make sure you have the endurance for it!

[Katrina Sark · Rating 3 out of 5]

p.5 – Brands have been around for centuries, but the idea has become central to our lives since the 1980s. in the last thirty yeast or so, branding has become pervasive, reaching into even the poorest parts of the planet. In fact, it has become a defining characteristic of the modern world.

Branding connects ordinary things with larger idea. This larger idea has the power to change what people do: in particular, to buy more and pay more. Coca-Cola is just flavoured, sugared water. It’s the brand that makes it possible to charge good money for it, and that therefore makes money for the company. Disney’s larger idea is “family fun,” Volvo’s is “safety.” That is the essence of branding.

It’s a technique used by the owners to create meaning that make us feel good about the product, so that we’ll buy it. Coco-Cola invests in communication that connects its product with ideas of progress, optimism, and happiness. When this communication works, these meanings form the Coco-Cola brand. Branding changes how people think, fee, and act.

p.10 – Google’s ngram viewer is a clever bit of software that counts the occurrences of a given word in all the books that Google has digitized, and shows how the number of occurrences changes over time. The graph for the word “brand” is flat until 1900, grows slowly until 1940, plateaus, then climbs again from 1980s onwards, accelerating rapidly at the end of the millennium. The academic study of branding, focusing on the concept of “brand equity” also took off in the 1980s.

p.11 – Human beings have always needed meaning, a dimension beyond the utilitarian, beyond the mundane things we all have to do from day to day. People need a sense of identity (who am I?) and belonging (where do I fit?). in the past, these meanings came from family, village, religion, nation – but all have been undermined by urbanization, secularization, and globalization. Materialism creates a vacuum of meaning – and then branding tries to fill that vacuum. Consumers need not just “value for money” but “values for money.”

p.14 – Because the logic of the market is now so ubiquitous, and the need for a shared sense of identity has become so urgent, branding has become a defining characteristic of the modern world.
Through branding, boring things like detergents, everyday things like soft drinks, and intangible things like websites have acquired personalities and meanings, so that people recommend them, feel partisanship, forgive them their failings – all because organizations need to compete, and people need to feel and share meanings.

p.21 – for the purposes of this book, a brand is:
• A set of ideas and feelings about a product
• Shaped by what that product says and does
• And recognized through a distinctive style

p.103 – Endless dissatisfaction – Brands trick people into buying things they don’t need. You could say that this is the essence of branding: to create desire. Branding gets people to pay more than they need to; to buy and consume things they don’t need; and to buy things that are bad for them, from cigarettes to sugary drinks. For some they become an addiction, they become label addicts.

p.105 – Branding for social change – the most effective branding is ethical, in the sense that it’s the projection of a truth: branding that lies tends not to last.

[mysilicielka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faktycznie, jak wskazuje tytuł, jest krótko i na temat. Gdybym chciała zacytować wszystkie trafne spostrzeżenia, to musiałabym przepisać pół tej i tak już krótkiej książeczki. Na około 130 stronach samego tekstu zawarto mnóstwo pożytecznych informacji w zasadzie dla każdego. Nie trzeba mieć dyplomu z zarządzania ani szczególnych zainteresowań w tym kierunku, bo w końcu wszyscy jesteśmy konsumentami i mamy swoje ulubione marki.

O większości przeczytanych rzeczy mniej lub bardziej zdawałam sobie sprawę. Codziennie dokonujemy setek wyborów, w których uczestniczą znane lokalnie lub też na całym świecie firmy. Dużym zaskoczeniem była dla mnie część historyczna, o pochodzeniu samej nazwy. Nie zdradzę, jak branding wyglądał na przestrzeni dziejów, ale mogę powiedzieć, że jego korzenie sięgają aż czasów starożytnego Egiptu! W pierwszej chwili to była szokująca informacja, ale po zastanowieniu doszło do mnie, że to przecież musiało towarzyszyć człowiekowi od dawien dawna.

Handel, reklama, budowanie zaufania, kreowanie własnej marki - doświadczamy tego na każdym kroku. W jaki sposób nasz organizm reaguje na marki? Marketingowcy korzystają nawet z narzędzi neurobiologii, by umiejętniej konsumentom coś sprzedać. To akurat brzmi trochę strasznie! Tak samo jak uświadomienie sobie takich prostych zależności, jak fakt, że rzecz o konkretnej nazwie zyskuje w naszym odczuciu pewną osobowość, a szczególnie przywiązujemy się również do czegoś, co sami zbudujemy, czy raczej złożymy... Brzmi znajomo? "Efekt IKEA" jest psychologom społecznym już dobrze znany.

Wracając do lektury, "Branding" Roberta Jonesa jest napisany prostym językiem, myślę, że żaden czytelnik nie będzie miał problemów ze zrozumieniem treści. Ta jest podzielona na krótkie rozdziały, autor opowiada, czym jest branding, skąd się wziął, dokąd dąży. Przywołuje wiele bliskich nam przykładów, uzupełnia treść ilustracjami. Polecam książkę jako zdecydowanie wartą lektury, na pewno znajdziecie w niej coś ciekawego.

Książka została otrzymana z Klubu Recenzenta serwisu nakanapie.pl.

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very lightweight book that attempts to describe what Branding is and what its roles are for different companies and organizations. It’s fairly straight-forwardly and clearly written, with a lot of relevant examples peppered throughout the book. My issue with it is that it felt to me more like listening to a TED talk directed to a crowd of naive freshmen year students trying to get them to buy into the massive importance and social significance of branding and marketing, as if in attempt to coax more bright minds into these industries. The book doesn’t feel like a genuine examination of branding as an idea and form of marketing, but feels more like an effort to justify why it’s actually a positive force in the world. There’s barely any semblance of objectivity here. It cloaks itself in faux-objectivity by occasionally mentioning criticism of brands, but never fails to quickly reject them right after bringing them up. Every incredibly powerful company it uses as examples of exemplar branding, from McDonald’s to Coca-Cola to Apple to Huawei, are framed in rosy glasses to make them seem worth emulating. There is little to no criticism of the effects of branding or these major companies on the world and the global markets. And the one section that is supposed to be about the “ethics of branding” is not only the shortest chapter, but half of it is spent arguing against the criticisms brought up, ultimately dismissing them as “appealing to the teenager in us, the rebel, the conspiracy-theorist,” and that instead we should see the branding as “a democratizing force,” and that the presence of monopolies “bring people closer together.” I really don’t recommend this book at all, unless you want to know how the industry thinks of itself, which I guess can also be interesting too.

I started writing this as a 3 star review but it’s going down to 2 now that I’ve articulated all I disliked about it.

[Sophie Hartl · Rating 4 out of 5]

the start of this book was really interesting and offered a great overview of branding, stating interesting and known things in a new way. However, the book got more and more repetitive & a bit less captivating nearing the middle and end. Overall still an interesting read, though :) 3.5/5

[Oliwia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bardzo dobra pozycja dla wszystkich początkujących z brandingiem. Autor pokazuje, w jaki sposób przedsiębiorstwa wykorzystują wszystkie elementy brandingu do pozyskania nowych konsumentów.
Idealna pozycja na start.

[Toros Yesja]

Of course a book on branding is something you read only when the alternative you have for not reading it is even worse (i.e at work and nothing to work on). Judging its merit in that context, yeah it's a nice little book about branding.

[Kapil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bang for every buck spent on this book.
It’s a cracker and must read.

[Reuben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Authentic and balanced.

[Andries · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to see more structure and less repetition in this kind of books. But in general interesting stories about different companies and briefly about how brand works. Yes, they make us to love the brand.

[Giovanni García-Fenech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Jones's view of how brands benefit society is much too rosy, but that aside, his book provides an engaging intro to the basic concepts and history of branding.

[Ragy Tawadros]

No matter how familiar you are with the subject, this book will give you just the right amount of information.

If you are looking for an overview, you will receive a very objective and balanced overview of the subject, as well as its relevant sub-aspects. If you are on your way to a more in-depth research on the matter, then this book will also put you on the beginning of your research track, and offer a number of topics that makes a very good subject for further research.

Finally, what I liked most about the book is that every idea is supported by an example, as opposed to strictly theoretical and academic explanation, making the read very interesting and remarkable.

[Karen Howells]

wonderful text