By Dipak Jain,
professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Building the Brand-Driven Business brings great value to the marketing literature by identifying the brand as the element that links the multiple elements of a successful business. Winning the battle for customers and profitability, the authors claim, depends upon utilizing great strategic brand skills and integrating business and brand strategies. In effect, Scott Davis and Michael Dunn promote a way of thinking about the purpose of a company in very conceptual terms and then implementing it with practical policies. By recommending that firms ask “who are we and what do we do?” the authors imply that a good answer to this question will automatically improve the bottom line. The argument essentially establishes the brand as the article of faith that will keep each company focused on its strengths and weaknesses. That focus in turn translates into marketing strategy, product development and a corporate culture that keeps the core values of the company in mind at all times, especially during dealing with customers.

Ultimately, in Building the Brand-Driven Business, the authors are really talking about creating a new vocabulary for a company as a means to clarify the way that people communicate about it. This applies both to the intra-company dynamics – the way management speaks to employees – as well as interactions with customers. The idea of what the company is about becomes more easily articulated to everyone who comes into contact with the firm when the vocabulary is clearly defined and also represents a true passion on the part of employees. In recognizing the need for a language in which to express a deep passion for the company, the authors establish the centrality of brand touchpoints – those places at which the brand interacts with customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The main point is to keep true to the expectations that have been set and the promises that have been made. Indeed, this is the key message of the book – customers, employees and other stakeholders will truly believe in what the company is offering if positive experiences reinforce the core values of the firm.

One potential limitation of the authors’ focus on brand building is that exemplary leadership is required to do it well. Davis and Dunn appear to underestimate the difficulties that this poses in their excessive enthusiasm for attributing turnarounds and long-term success exclusively to branding.

These hasty conclusions undermine the credibility of some of the success stories that Davis and Dunn select. They choose highly persuasive examples of strong leaders that believed in the brand and communicated the inherent values it represented, but by referencing CEOs like Herb Kelleher and Jack Welch, Davis and Dunn are being slightly disingenuous. Those men possessed other intangibles that went beyond merely adhering to a brand strategy. Brand is crucial and this book certainly helps illustrate how it is effectively implemented and maintained, but the other factors behind successful firms should not be underplayed.

[Reading Tips] [Critical commentary] [Further readings]