Forthcoming in Journal of Product and Brand Management Reviewed by: Sharad Agarwal, Doctoral Student, IIM Ranchi Email:

Sharad.agarwal12fpm@iimranchi.ac.in Brand Romance: Using the Power of High Design to Build a Lifelong Relationship with Your Audience Yasushi Kusume , Neil Gridley

Palgrave Macmillan New York

December 2013 ISBN: 978-1-137-36900-0

US $47.00 (Hardcover) 246 pp.

Brand Romance is defined as a state of emotional attachment (evoked in response to the brand as a stimulus) that is characterized by strong positive affect toward the brand, high arousal caused by the brand, and a tendency of the brand to dominate the consumers cognition. (Patwardhan &
Balasubramanian,2011). This book is based on Stefano Marzanos philosophy of High Design, according to which High Design is completely human-focused and research-based, and it always

uses a deep understanding of people's needs as the starting point for the design process. Stefano Marzano has been Chief Design Officer and member of the Group Management in Electrolux since January 2012 and had served as Chief Design Officer and CEO of Philips Design in Philips between 1991-2011. The managerial significance of applying principles of High Design to build and nurture brands of products and services lies in the facts that every 100 that a design-conscious business spends on design increases turnover by 225 (p.84) and that the shares in design-led businesses outperform key stock market indices by 200 % (p. 84). The book contains 15 chapters divided into four parts. The authors describe these 15 chapters as the 15 commitments needed to build a loved brand. Part 1, Know Who You Are consists of only one commitment, which ask marketers to think of their brand as a person. It quotes Mahatma Gandhi: Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. These words of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Indian nation, assert the importance of integrating beliefs, thoughts, and values in whatever we do in our lives. The authors here quote these words to extend the same concept to the process of brand building for any organization. They then explain the process followed by them, during 2001 to 2002, when they were part of the team searching values for Philips, which is more than 100 years old. The core messages derived from the hunt then formed a foundation for Philips brand-building exercise of Philips. Company values and beliefs should be used as a confirmation of the companys promise, a promise that should not be compromised for financial gain or short term business goal (p.24) Part 2, Know Your Audience, consists of five Commitments. Commitment 2 focuses on understanding short- and long-term needs of the consumers in building a successful brand. Authors urge the marketer to understand the distinction between needs (a necessity) and wants (something

merely desired). If your company truly loves its audience then you will not only need to consider its short term satisfaction, but also anticipate its long term happiness (p. 31). Commitment 3 delves into the process of co-creating the design of product by involving the consumer from the initial stages of product development rather than just getting the feedback during the test marketing phases. As the consumers are found to be saying something different from what they actually feel, the authors suggest the applications of the methods of consumer neuroscience in the process of marketing research. The authors refers to Daniel Kahnemans theory of System 1 and System 2 (Kahneman, 2011) to explain the two styles of the consumer decision-making process: intuition and reasoning. Commitment 4 advices the marketer to take a people-focussed approach in product development for which it is needed to understand how people experience the events in their lives. The authors explain five separate stages of experience: imagination, impression, discovery, use, and memory. Memory forms an important component of experience as the research suggest that only 20% of an experience can be credited to the customers memory while the remaining 80 % results from an individuals own cognitive process of interpretation. Commitment 5 talks about right measurement and optimizations of the new launches of products by any corporation. It discusses the importance of determining the key functions and achievements that marketers want from a particular touchpoint. The authors introduce the readers to face value tests, which refers to comparing a new concept design with a competitors design by asking people which ones look they prefer; however, the authors also advise, If you are the first to market with a unique proposition such as the Senseo coffee make from Philips, there is no reason for you to compare the looks of the product design with other drip type coffee makers from competitors (p.76) Commitment 6 deals with evaluating the design performance. It introduces the concept of Net Promoter Score (NPS), which illuminates the link between business growth and designs contribution, and can be used to review, monitor and possibly improve the performance of both. Part 3, Know What You Will Bring Your Audience, consists of three commitments. Commitment 7 emphasizes building clear brand architecture through clustering the range of products into higherlevel propositions. The main purpose of a brand architecture is to offer brand product and service propositions to the market in a clear, consistent structure from an outside-in point of view (p. 97) . The authors propose three types of branding approach which are simple, yet fulfill all business needs: Monolithic Corporate or Umbrella brands; Endorsed endorsed brands and sub-brands; Standalone individual product brands. Commitment 8 elucidates the role of continuous innovation in long-term sustainability and success of the brand. The importance of having breakthrough ideas and concepts lies in bringing them to the market and making them successful for the brand and business. The authors explain the concept of co-innovation through the philanthropy by design initiative of Philips design, which led to the development of Chulha : a smokeless stove for users at the bottom of social pyramid. Throughout this Chulha project the team managed to build a strong network and working relationship with all stakeholders, including the end user of the product, which helped the team to form a basis for co-creating the infrastructure. Co-creating with end users reduces the gap between the concept creation phase and the market introduction phase (p. 122). Commitment 9 elaborates four design drivers to maximise brand value propositions. These four design drivers are: Meaningful, Distinctive, Attractive and Coherence. The authors also explain each of these four

drivers through the mapping tools along with the examples of brand such as Apple, Dyson, Singapore Airlines etc., which enables the readers to appreciate the practical applications of the tools explained for each of the brand drivers. Part 4, Know How You Will Bring It to Your Audience, consists of the final six commitments needed to create a successful brand. Commitment 10 embarks upon the role of creating a clearly recognizable brand. A brand gains its recognition by the ways it uses touch point to differentiate itself from other brands (p.139). The authors give the example of Audi, which maintains a very strong identity in all its products and all its ranges in each product and also offers its audiences the emotional association of quality and trust (its slogan, Vorsprung durch Technik, translates as advantage through technology) and dignity and pride to its employees (p. 139). The benefit of creating a unique identity for the brand forms association with quality of the product offered by the brand, which in turn leads consumers to trust the brand. Commitment 11 discusses the three stages required to fulfil the principle of High Design which are understanding and exploration, proposition and direction setting, and 360 experience creation. One of the pieces of advice given by the author is to remain as consistent as possible throughout all the touch points, which is many times not followed by some brands, such as an Indian telecom service brand, AIrtel (having around 300 million subscribers across the globe), often provides different information to consumers for the same query depending upon the mode of touch-point used, for example email, telephonic customer care or in-store customer care, which can leads to consumer frustration and eventually loss of brand trust. Commitment 12 suggests the marketer create one vocabulary for the whole organization. The authors give the example of Dyson to describe how people can apply the proposition framework, proposed by the authors. Dyson used the unique iconic design to articulate the significance of its product and hence it differentiates its product from other manufacturers. Design can be use its tools and skills to translate topics into tangible forms based on deep understanding of cultural meanings during the stages of the business creation process, and plays an integrators role by creating one vocabulary (p.168). Commitment 13 recognizes the role of two different kinds of people in creating a successful brand, the authors call the first the maestro and the second the virtuoso. The maestro is expected to have a thorough knowledge of, and insights into, his/her domain of work. The maestro should be recognised as a key strategic partner and expert who is instrumental in generating business value with the companys internal business stakeholder (p.173). The virtuoso, on the other hand, possesses a unique expertise in, and a keen focus on, his/her specific area. Virtuoso, should lead the development of the competency to anticipate and support the long term needs of the business (p.175). Commitment 14 revolves around the issues of talent management among the design community. The authors talks about the problems faced by the companies in finding the right talent in both the maestro and virtuoso areas. The authors therefore propose a program, needed to nurture the talent in the area of design development. The program would be based on four steps explained by the authors, where each step would inculcate particular set of competencies in the participants. Commitment 15 centers around creating one culture for both brand and company based on the brands values and beliefs. To bring the brand to life, marketer should be able to create a shared

culture without the need of any rule book as these rule books see the brand as grid and template and lacks emotional touch to the brands. The authors suggest that the design team should create cultural community and society, which evolves Just as the language evolves and develops, without control of any rule book, but by society and the culture that owns and uses it. The uniqueness of this book is in integrating the concepts of design development for creating successful brands. The authors bring with themselves huge experiences in design thinking and implementation from global organizations such as Philips and Electrolux. This book is based on practical insights derived from the experience brought by both of the authors. The authors touch upon many aspects of high design that have not been previously discussed in other texts. Each chapter opens up with an analogy from either the previous experiences of the authors or some general situation from the society which helps the reader to better relate the concept to brand building for modern organization. Most of the Chapters contain brief case studies of top companies to practically explain the authors theories. This book is a suggestible read for anyone interested to understand the role of product design development in brand creation. References:
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Macmillan. Patwardhan, H., & Balasubramanian, S. K. (2011). Brand romance: a complementary approach to explain emotional attachment toward brands.Journal of Product & Brand Management, 20(4), 297308.