The Global Brand: How to Create and Develop Lasting Brand Value in the World Market [Paperback]

Book review of The Global Brand

Nigel Hollis actually career turned an interesting point about in 1996 when working for Millward Brown. He worked on the team that developed Brand Dynamics a Brand equity research method. Brand Dynamics was developed to create a easy to understand metric to guide the understanding of a brand's health. In addition to this marketing teams needed a detailed understanding of what comprised that brand health in order to know what action to take. Fast Forward to 2008 Nigel Hollis has written a book about his work experience with Millward Brown and managing Brands on a Global basis. The book is entitled The Global Brand. This book is a must read for anyone working in marketing on a brand either in a local market or on a Global Basis. He has made it easy for the reader to follow his thoughts. The book is divided into three parts. Part one Strong Global Brands Create lasting Value, Part two Building Strong Brands is challenging and Part three Practices that help build Successful Global brands. Every chapter has a key points to take away section and Questions to consider section., exceptionally helpful.
In Part one he starts at the beginning and discusses what is a brand. In this chapter he discusses a very important concept for the book and that is the brand promise. He provides a table of Brand Promises and taglines as well for us to review very helpful. He continues his discussion and discusses the Global brand and provides some interesting anecdotes of people who work on Global brands. At this point he now leads us into a discussion on Millward Browns Brand Dynamics and its metrics in analyzing brands. Throughtout the book he provides us with tables that are useful in helping us understand what he is attempting to illustrate to us. He provides a very interesting table on Global brands that assists us in understanding the points he wants to make. The book is not entirely written by Nigel Hollis in fact some chapters are written by his associates. One such chapter written by his associate Joanna Seldon at Millward Brown Optimor who tells us who Strong Global brands create lasting value. She states in the chapter that strong brands create greater profits, a more stable revenue stream and improve shareholder returns. Most importantly and this is a continuing theme throughout the book is that to manage a brand properly you must its value and through research quantify it in some manner. Measurement assists with Management.
Part Two discusses an issue most Global marketers face and that visiting the Global brand but having a local taste. He discusses the challenges facing marketing the brand in China, India, Brazil, Russia and Africa. Emerging markets that definitlely a part of a Global brand management system. He goes on to discuss how to be part of the local culture and provides some good examples as well. Part of the discussion centres around adapting products and services to meet local needs and tastes. Once again he does not disappoint and provides some excellent of firms that are meeting this challenge like General Motors.
Part three discusses practices that help build successful global brands and this is the part that I found the most interesting. He discusses how to find common themes yet still address the differences a brand has in different markets. As I stated earlier he initially discussed the brand promise and in part three devotes an entire chaper to it. This chapter is a definite read for those involved in this issue. The table on Positive and negative archtypes in this chapter is very interesting and very helpful if you are considering changing your positioning. Of course once you have identified and confirmed your brand promise you must now communicate it. Here he discusses marketing touchpoints mentioning that TV advertising in the 21st century is not enough you need to develop an integrated marketing communications programme. Pretesting your concept is a good idea and Nigel takes us through the benefit of using research to assist you in understanding your brand for profitable growth. As a researcher he tells of case studies on how firms have taken the message and improved their organization.. He finally leaves with some thoughts for the future.
All in all the book is a fascinating read and highly informative. The only disappoint I have with the book is that it did not have storyboards to show the commercials he discussed. I was so interested in the book that I was unhappy it was only over 200 pages long. I would have been happy to read 400 pages on this subject. As you can tell this is my favorite subject matter Global brands. I worked on Global in terms of my career and found this book highly illuminating. A must read for all marketers

Regards,

John G Schneider
Managing Director
Marque Metrix