Marketing: Brands and Branding are notoriously slippery subjects but in the hands of John Fanning, they become clear, concrete and compelling. He has tapped into his wealth of branding experience in Ireland and the latest schools of global thinking to provide an erudite and stimulating work for practitioner, academic and novice alike.
His split identity as chairman of Ireland's largest and only independent advertising agency and as adjunct professor of marketing in Trinity College Dublin allows him to bridge the gap between the "ivory towers" of marketing theory and the real world challenges faced by the marketeer.
Many wannabe branding bibles are based on a seductive (but ultimately empty) "theory of everything", a catchy title and a provocative picture. This book is not one of these. Fanning clearly summarises the significant debates at play within branding - the oft-quoted rise of retailer power and predicted demise of the manufacturer brand, the difficulty of managing a service brand and giving it a sustainable difference, and two critical Irish topics - whether there is any future for indigenous Irish brands (or will the likes of Tayto, Club Orange and Fiacla inevitably be overthrown and overwhelmed by big global players?), and whether and how Ireland the country has branded itself in the past and can brand itself in the future.
As context, he retraces the origins of brands and outlines the simple but powerful purposes they serve in today's world, from product quality reassurance to shaping personal identity. He acknowledges the full spectrum of brands across Three Ages of Branding - functional brands which define themselves by what they do (wash whiter, taste better etc), emotional brands which define themselves by how you feel (a better mother, in control, sexier etc) when you use them and "third-age" brands which define themselves with broader mantras for life: Apple computers ask us to "Think Different" while Nike sportswear urges us to "Just Do It".
The book then challenges us to turn these theories into practice. The Brand Planning Cycle, the cycle of key questions you need to ask on any brand, asks deceptively simple questions, eg Where are we now? How did we get here?
Fanning puts forward three stimulating and entertaining case-studies to illustrate it - the IDA's 1990s campaign to attract investment via the "Young Europeans" campaign, the successful marketing of Surf detergent in Ireland and the journey towards reconnection with the previously neglected drinkers of Smithwick's ale.
Are brands a good thing? Fanning then tackles this multi-billion dollar question. He squares up to brand detractors such as Vance Packard (who wrote the influential book The Hidden Persuaders) and recent writers such as Naomi Klein (No Logo), who assume people are passive victims of brands rather than willing collaborators. He counter-argues, along with anthropologist Mary Douglas, that people have always used "stuff" to signal things about themselves to others. He sees consumption as part of the human condition, not necessarily a bad/good thing that needs to be controlled or directed by regulatory forces. He cites the emergence of the ethical consumer who can influence brands to behave in a more socially responsible way - for example consumer lobbying provoked Nike to improve and disclose their factory workers' conditions worldwide.
Here is the one place where I partly disagree with the author. Though it is tempting to see brands as a new and more efficient mechanism for democracy, I feel such a "democracy" will always favour the haves over the have-nots, the short-term over the long-term and fashion over fairness. However such a discussion is bigger than brands and invariably value-laden, as the book itself concedes.
Where next for branding? The book outlines six possible approaches. Cultural branding, which appropriates bigger ideas for a given brand (Power's whiskey's mantra "Never settle for less"); fusion branding, which develops services that radically change people's "value for time" equations (Amazon or Superquinn); Quaker branding, which aims to change the world via selling "fair" products (Café Direct or The Big Issues); positional branding, which promises "elitism" via special editions and exclusive access (Puma limited range); puritan branding, which is overtly "anti-logo" but is just a cleverer way to play the game (Muji); and finally trickster branding, which seeks to entertain rather than "sell" (the Budweiser Frogs remain an excellent example of this). The approaches are not exclusive nor is the list exhaustive but they make for a useful tasting menu for brand owners hungry to make an impact.
Finally, the book looks at what Ireland has become, and at six apparent contradictions that underlie our contemporary culture and choices - World Citizens or Boys in Green? Mé Féin or Tribal Loyalty? Fitting In or Standing Out? Control vs Chaos? Security vs Freedom? Having made a lucid argument for each side of the coin, he concludes that each of these factors may be relevant to "some of the people some of the time" and the skill required of the brand manager will be to position their brand to help resolve these paradoxes.
Close to the end, Fanning mentions the contemporary obsession with creating, fuelled by the growth of desktop publishing and the growing belief that everyone has a book in them. However, just because everyone can write a book doesn't mean everyone should. The Importance of Being Branded is a book that should have been written and should be read, discussed and debated within Irish branding communities and beyond.
Karen Hand is an independent brand consultant who works in Ireland and internationally. Her last publication was on lateral thinking techniques in Brand New Brand Thinking published by the Account Planning Group in the UK
The Importance of Being Branded - An Irish Perspective By John Fanning Liffey Press, 345p. € 26.95