Brand Aid

July 28, 2003
What makes a Mercedes a Mercedes or a Coke a Coke? Popular brand names like these are more than just products. They're symbols that capture a wide range of ideas and emotions, thanks to the efforts of marketing masters like VanAuken, former director of brand management for Hallmark. VanAuken has distilled his enormous practical knowledge about the theory and practice of brand management into this smart but problematic volume. The book is packed with information and good ideas-so many, in fact, that it is virtually an encyclopedia of brand marketing dos and don'ts. Most of the material is presented as a densely compressed series of bullet points-often with 10 or more points to a page-which lack clear continuity. The result is a book composed largely of lists-easy to browse, but hard to read. This wouldn't matter if the book were truly effective as an "easy reference guide," but the lack of a technical glossary limits its usefulness in that area as well. While certainly a valuable resource for marketing professionals, this is more a collection of brilliant fragments than a practical road map for executives out to make their product a household name like IBM or McDonald's.