The Meaningful Brand How strong brands make money http://www.millwardbrown.com/Insights/PublishedBooks/The_Meaningful_Brand.aspx Why do consumers pay a premium price for a brand? Is it better quality, the look and feel, or the brand’s social standing? Author and brand expert, Nigel Hollis believes the answer to all these questions is "yes." In his new book The Meaningful Brand: How Strong Brands Make More Money, Hollis shares the importance for marketers to identify a brand’s meaningful difference and focus on amplifying that meaningfully different brand experience for the consumer.

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An excerpt from
“The Meaningful Brand”
By Nigel Hollis
A Crisis of
Confidence
in Marketing
Buy the Book
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Available October 22, 2013
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The world of marketing is infinitely more complex than it was when I
started my career over three decades ago; that much is indisputable. But
the essential process by which marketing builds a brand and adds value
to a business has not changed. Why? Because human nature has not
changed.
And that means the potential to build strong, valuable brands is as great
now as it was then—perhaps even more so.
In spite of this continuity, the value of marketing as a practice is under
greater scrutiny today than ever before. Marketers are constantly
asked to prove their return on investment and to do more with less. My
own observations suggest that instead of rising to the challenge, the
marketing profession is shooting itself in the foot. At a time when brands
are more valuable than ever, bought and sold for many times their annual
revenues, we are losing sight of what makes brands enduring, valuable
From The Meaningful Brand by Nigel Hollis. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted
by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

3. “THE ULTIMATE ROLE OF A STRONG BRAND
IS TO COMMAND A PRICE PREMIUM OVER
COMPARABLE PRODUCTS”
assets. We ignore what makes people want to buy brands and be willing
to pay a premium for them. Why? Because so many day-to-day tasks
demand our attention. We are so busy executing that we have forgotten
why we are doing what we are doing, and we rely on metrics to guide our
actions without judging their relevance or utility.
Consumer motivations have not changed, and neither have the ways
that brands make money. There are five basic ways to create more value
from a brand:
1. Encourage more people to buy the brand
2. Encourage people to buy the brand at a price higher than that
commanded by the alternatives.
3. Encourage people to keep buying the brand.
4. Encourage people to buy the same brand but for new occasions
or in new categories.
5. Do all four, but more efficiently.
Unfortunately, many marketers and CEOs appear to be fixated on the
first and last of these strategies to the exclusion of the middle three, and
they particularly overlook the strategy of justifying a price premium.
The ultimate role of a strong brand is to command a price premium over
comparable products. All too often I observe brands chasing additional
volume at the expense of their price premium and future profit stream.
It is debatable whether such tactics pay off in the short term, and all the
evidence suggests that they undermine long-term value. Again, what
is brand building about if not creating sustainable financial value, a
reoccurring profit stream over years, not just months?
From The Meaningful Brand by Nigel Hollis. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted
by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

4. A Roadmap to
Building Financial
Brand Value
That is where this book comes in—to provide a clearly documented
roadmap to make sure that your brand is adding sustainable financial
value to your business.
The roadmap is based on a conceptual framework called ValueDrivers,
jointly developed by Gordon Pincott, chairman of global solutions at
Millward Brown, and myself. Our framework for building brand value is
not informed by experience alone. We have been fortunate to be able to
draw on all the resources at Millward Brown’s disposal, including access
to some of the best marketers in the world today; insight from colleagues
with specialist knowledge in neuroscience, brand equity research,
and brand valuation; and analysis of the world’s largest brand equity
database, BrandZ™. Since 1998, Millward Brown has interviewed people
around the world about their attitudes toward brands, and the database
now includes data on over ten thousand brands from over two hundred
product categories and over 40 different countries.
In addition to these company resources, I have drawn on a number of
other sources of information. Most important among these are our
From The Meaningful Brand by Nigel Hollis. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted
by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

5. clients. Gordon and I have discussed the framework detailed in this book
with some of the most experienced marketers in the world. We have used
the ValueDrivers workshop to explore specific brand issues in-depth for
a wide variety of international clients, and in preparation for writing this
book, I interviewed senior marketers in China, Brazil, Mexico, the United
Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States.
Last, but not least, in order to illustrate specific ways in which brands
have created demonstrable value, I have drawn on case studies from the
Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) and winners of the Effie
Awards sourced from the invaluable Warc knowledge bank. Euromonitor
has also proved a useful source of information on trends and market
share data.
By drawing on all of these resources, I aim not only to illustrate what
makes a strong brand but also to document its impact on the bottom
line. In the first third of this book, I will lay out our general knowledge
about brands, specifically why and how they create value for consumer
and brand owner alike. In the remainder of the book, I will condense that
learning into a set of guidelines for generating financial value growth
from any brand.
Amazon.com
Kindle
iBooks
Barnes & Noble
800-CEO-Read
From The Meaningful Brand by Nigel Hollis. Copyright © 2013 by the author and reprinted
by permission of Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.