Given how few management books make a second edition, this is in itself some achievement for the writer. Perhaps a reason for the book's success is that in spite of the title it has much wider application than for marketing and branding.
The nearest comparison to this book is the Collins and Poras management bestsellers or 'great' companies. Like them, Living the Brand is more about the entire culture of business organisations rather than issues of branding and marketing communication.
It is therefore a practical demonstration of the elasticity of the brand concept.
Ind uses it to stand for the totality of the culture, values and emotional feel of an organisation and the basic argument of his thesis is that the stronger the culture, the more successful the business. This is not exactly a new idea, it's been around since the beginning of the literature of management and arguably it was a core message of the most successful management book of all time, In Search of Excellence.
But it is an idea that is now being accepted more widely and is closely aligned to the demand by employees for more 'meaning' in their work. With increasing prosperity, more people like to feel that the business they work for is fulfilling a purpose that is a little more edifying and inspiring than just maximising shareholder revenue.
Living the Brand is a useful guide to help you achieve this objective, to create a business 'brand' which people will feel more proud of, more committed to and therefore want to be associated with.
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'The idea of engaging employees may seem a simple one but it's hard to achieve in practice'
- Nicholas Ind
It is almost impossible to avoid a reference to Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs (1943) in any business book and sure enough it make a ritual appearance here but the fact remains that as more people reach the top of the pyramid they are more likely to be looking for some deeper meaning in their working life.
This can only be achieved if the core purpose of the organisation can be defined in an inspirational manner and transmitted to all employees in ways they can connect with and aspire to. It can only happen if it is a core core purpose that "transcends purely economic considerations". The book concentrates on the two key tasks in building a strong brand culture; defining the essence of the organisation's brand values and communicating them internally on a regular basis.
Ind goes into detail in the former task, emphasising the importance of bringing everyone along as enthusiastic participants and making sure that the resulting values actually reflect the reality of the organisation and are not the collection of anodyne adjectives that are result of some waste of time and space 'away-day'.
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I came across a good example of this particular genre recently; 'accessible aspiration'. This type of blindingly obvious marketing-speak only serves to give branding a bad name. Ind admits as much when he accepts that many people in the organisation will start out with misgivings about anything connected with this area.
Ind writes... "a brand can only truly come to life if it enters the collective psyche of the organisation and thus becomes intuitive to people - the brand idea has to touch the core of why people work for the organisation - it is not something that can be crafted, rather it has to be discovered".
When it comes to communicating the brand values internally, the prescription is equally rigorous. Ind discusses a wide range of communication methods from brand books to videos and from workshops to more formal internal communication.
All the time the emphasis is on involving everyone in a meaningful way rather on the mechanics of the methods. He also emphasies that this is a continous process; Johnson and Johnson's famous credo is kept alive and relevant by continuously researching its meaning with each new generation of employees and asking them to challenge and refine it every few years.
It has become all the range nowadays for management gurus to 'dizzle' well chosen philosophical wisdom over their texts and Ind does not disappoint. On one page alone, (99), Umberto Eco, Wittgenstein, Noam Chomsky and Socrates are called in to action.
We are certainly not dealing with muck here.
Living the Brand (Third Edition, 2007) is written by Nicholas Ind and published by Kogan Page
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