Branding that Means Business: An Economist Edge Book

by Matt Johnson, Tessa Misiaszek

'The most insightful book on branding of the last 20 years' Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy

Now, more than ever, your brand is either loved - or it's noise.

In a world defined by digital products and immediate gratification, how can your brand stand out? When consumers can easily have anything, how can your brand be the one thing they can't live without?

To rise to this challenge, brands must shape not just what consumers buy, but how they act, feel and connect. This requires a new perspective, one that goes beyond business and into the fundamentals of human behaviour.

Branding that Means Business combines the latest business thinking with psychology, sociology, and anthropology to show that a brand can't serve a business unless it connects with people.

Equipped with these human-based perspectives, you'll have the tools to create, enhance and distinguish your brand in new and impactful ways - and make it a must-have in the minds and lives of your consumers.

Genres: Business

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2022

About the author

This is a common name with many authors. Please use the correct spacing when adding a book:

1. Matt^Johnson - unknown/catch-all
2. Matt^^Johnson - Basketball
3. Matt^^^Johnson - ORENDA thriller author
4. Matt^^^^Johnson - drama/fiction
5. Matt^^^^^Johnson - Amazon How To's
6. Matt^^^^^^Johnson - Art/History
7. Matt^^^^^^^Johnson - Christian
8. Matt^^^^^^^^Johnson - Aviation
9. Matt^^^^^^^^^Johnson - Independant fiction
10. Matt^^^^^^^^^^Johnson - Medical

Reviews

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book that’s a must-read for any business, and it definitely has some great advice for individual entrepreneurs as well. Johnson and Misiaszek do a fantastic job explaining the importance of branding and how you build a loyal customer base by doing branding the right way. This book doesn’t have as much neuroscience and psychology as Johnson’s previous book Blindsight, but I enjoyed it just the same because it provided so much value and some great reminders about how to do branding the right way.

I think the best chapter on this book was about activism and brands taking a stance. This is a topic that nobody wants to talk about, but the authors actually had the guts to do it. These days, people are looking for brands to align with them morally and ethically, and this book teaches you the do’s and don’ts of how to do this the right way without it just seeming like PR.

[Kelsey Weekman]

don't want to give this book a bad review, but it definitely was not for me and i didn't finish at 10%. i always love to take a peek into how people talk about marketing and branding, but i could tell this just wasn't for my demographic. sure it's great for those its targeting, though! DNF

[piltri · Rating 3 out of 5]

overview of the branding fundamentals. some notes:

- brands matter only when they matter to humans. The same things that bind us to people bind us to brands
- to best meet consumers needs often is by meeting their their societal aspirations too- purpose far beyond utility of the products
- Brand loyalty=Warmth and competence. Once those are known we can get into details
- our brand is one of the first things we consider when meeting someone new + Strong predictors of loyalty
- brands are evolving to become more political themselves- benefit when they align with their target customers views
- importance of internal principles
- importance of caring about environment/social causes. Csr is good
- Drive+ Clarity of thought—>being able to explain things in an easy way

3 ⭐️ because it didn’t teach me a lot of new things, but stood out when talking about internal principles/alignment with target audience

[Kaitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid review of branding principles and fundamentals. Even though it wasn’t necessarily anything new, the content was thought provoking and sparked new ideas around the practice of branding. Audiobook listen but would read the hard copy for note taking + book marking benefits. The last few chapters were a little blah for me but that’s fine.

[Peter Green · Rating 1 out of 5]

It’s such a useless book (maybe good for beginners but tbh I doubt it) that I went on a quest to find where I got the recommendation from. Thanks to Goodreads I’ve traced it to Rory from Ogilvy whom I saw on Lenny’s podcast. Lesson is: don’t trust recommendations by people whose taste you don’t know.

[An Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of interesting stories, great insights into branding

[Daniel Olshansky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://olshansky.info/book/branding_...

## Summary

I wish I had read it earlier in my engineering career and entrepreneurial journey.

It's a great book that helps build foundational intuition around branding, but is not very tactical if you already have that baseline.

As a technical leader who spent many years doing software engineering, it took me some time to understand the importance of product, the customer, the business, distribution, marketing and branding. Having already learnt those lessons the hard way, this book acted as a reinforcing agent to solidify those lessons with a few new learnings. But, it didn't fundamentally shift my thinking.

It wasn't mind blowing, but the content was still good and helpful. I stared getting a bit bored by the 4th chapter. It felt more like a PhD dissertation than a novel. A podcast episode or an essay could have been enough rather than writing a whole book.

My only complaint about the book is that they referenced huge brands: Apple, Google, AirBnb, Coca Cola, etc. Though those brands act as north starts, and leverage the same lessons, it would have been nice to reference smaller and more niche brands along the way as well. We need to see the stepping stones :)