Branding Only Works on Cattle
The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy)
By: Jonathan Salem Baskin
Published: Sept 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780446178013
Format: Hardcover, 272pp
Publisher: Business Plus
Branding doesn't work anymore." With that provocative statement, marketing expert Jonathan Salem Baskin, turns conventional wisdom about brands and branding upside down in his landmark book Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy). The author challenges marketers to consider the unthinkable concept that branding is useless, and wouldn't be missed if it disappeared entirely.
Jonathan Salem Baskin asks new, and often uncomfortable questions, about the emphasis on branding that takes place in most companies. With the loss of media and message channel control, marketers are discovering that people are returning to personal interaction and referrals to purchase products and services. Jonathan Baskin points out that in the real world people buy things, even if the company believes mistakenly that the brand image was the actual purchase. The actual behavior of the buyer is seen by branders as less important than some vague emotional impact.
Jonathan Salem Baskin (photo left) recognizes that consumers are not asking for more branding. People don't trust advertising and tend to avoid it or tune it out. In the rise of what the author considers an anti-brand backlash, the real proof of a brand is in consumer behavior, and that is often frightening for marketers. Control of the message is lost to the highly empowered consumers who no longer needs brands to express themselves. The internet and social media have replaced brands as identity, making most of what takes place online within internet communities irrelevant to any brands.
For me, the power of this must read book is the powerful challenge made to conventional wisdom and mythology surrounding brands. Over time, the myth of brand importance has overtaken research into real world consumer behavior. Customers judge a business by its products and customer service, not by what is often perceived as a false brand image. The author's recognition of the the empowered consumer, with an unlimited number of choices in their own hands, is important to understanding the decline of branding. The modern informational age has created a post-brand economy, where customer behavior is more important than a vague product image.
I highly recommend Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy) by Jonathan Salem Baskin, to any business people serious about marketing in a post-branding world. By challenging what marketers thought they knew about the value of brands on consumer behavior, the book is an eye opener into how consumers really make those all important buying decisions.
Read Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy) by Jonathan Salem Baskin, and you will never believe the old and outdated ideas about branding again. Instead, you will escape the trap of conventional branding thought, and enter the new anti-brand world with confidence and success; and the sales to prove it.
