Brand Warfare: 10 Rules for Building the Killer Brand

By David F. D'Alessandro

Book Overview

NOW IN PAPERBACK

The BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times business bestseller

"With its engaging voice and pullno-punches tone, this book stands out from the marketing crowd."­­Harvard Business Review

"D'Alessandro's book is witty, irreverent, and intensely practical. It is more than a book about brands, and contains many sound lessons for strategy and the role of leaders."­­Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business School

"Practical, psychologically astute, and clearly written, this book has much to offer business folk of all stripes."­­Publishers Weekly

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071398503
• ISBN13: 9780071398503
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Can't drop it!

This book is excellent! I can't ever think of any other way to explain how to build the killer brand. D' Alessandro explains everything in his 10 rules and stressed greatly on how to be successful in any type of business.

Must Read

David D'Alessandro has transformed John Hancock from a clubby, play-it-safe mutual company, to a leading, publically-traded financial services group where accountability, integrity and growth are embraced. Marketing has played a critical role in the company's transformation. Unlike other life insurance companies, Hancock is led by a CEO who understands branding and embraces big ideas. D'Alessandro's list of pioneering moves and accomplishments within the world of sports marketing and sponsorship is long and legendary. The first sponsor - and saviour - of the Boston Marathon, the first to completely rename a college football bowl game for the sponsor, the first in the insurance category to become a worldwide Olympic partner, and the first sponsor to stand up to the IOC in the midst of its bribery scandal over bribes and say: "This will not stand. Change your ways or suffer the consequences."Anyone who wants to know brand building, communications, public relations, advertising and sports marketing from the inside out, should read Brand Warfare. Written by an acclaimed CEO and branding maverick, the book introduces D'Alessandro's "brand first" philosophy and explains why brand must always take top priority over every other business consideration.And, unlike books written by academicians and consultants, Brand Warfare's ideas are real world and street tested. D'Alessandro engineered Hancock's double-digit growth rate at a time when many of its competitors went under. Whether you're an experienced CEO or just starting your career, anyone in any industry will benefit from D'Alessandro's 10 principles and his "brand first" approach. Brand Warfare should become required reading for business professionals.

smart and well-written

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I am a business student, majoring in marketing, and find most of the books written on this subject to be full of jargon and code words that make the book sound more important than it is. That is not the case with Brand Warfare. It's is extremely engagingly written, very lucid, and full of funny stories. The book also works because Mr. D'Allesandro is a major-league character and has a remarkably dynamic outlook on the world for a guy who runs a life insurance company. I'm probably not the target audience for this book, but I found it to fun and insightful and well worth the time.

Reputation Counts: Good Branding Principles Detailed

Mr. D'Alessandro is the CEO of John Hancock, and rose to that position after starting with the company as head of communications. The many successes that John Hancock has enjoyed certainly relate back to good brand thinking and implementation. Although the book contains many details about John Hancock's experiences, it mostly recounts examples from other companies to provide a full perspective on the difficulties of establishing and maintaining a positive brand image and awareness. My only complaints about the book are that it would have benefited from more context about how branding fits with other critical activities for corporate success and more constructive metaphors than those of warfare and competition.Most students of marketing will scratch their heads at his list of 10 principles. Yet, I see these principles violated every day by dozens of leading companies. So, even if the rules seem obvious, it easy to go astray. For example, "It's the brand, stupid." Despite this, few CEOs spend time measuring and understanding what is happening to image and awareness of company brands . . . must less thinking about what needs to be done. Most spend more time in 100 other areas that are mostly unrelated to brands.Another good example is "If you want great advertising, be prepared to fight for it." I agree with his observation that many marketing executives and advertising agency people will tend to try to produce copy that will be easily accepted by company decision makers, rather than copy that will increase sales and profits. Many CEOs don't even realize how they have been maneuvered. Some don't care, like the CEO whose girl friend was in all of the company's ads. I meet CEOs who like to date the women who appear in the company's ads, so the problem hasn't disappeared. To my mind, Mr. D'Alessandro is probably best at thinking through event-based marketing. Most companies are horrible in this area. The book is well worth its price just for the sections that explain how to select events to sponsor, how to work with the event's organizers, and how to connect to the event for maximum advantage. The section on how you use advertising on how to create brand differentiation for relatively undifferentiated products was well done, but is probably too subtle for most to really understand. This section could probably have used some more details and examples. John Hancock has done a great job of expanding its distribution for life insurance. I would have liked to have had more details about how the company handled the career agents to make this change acceptable to them.If you just want to take one key idea away from this book, you should focus on the concept that everyone in the company should be constantly asking themselves before acting, "Will it help or hurt the brand?" Although the CEO has to pay attention, it's even more important that everyone else do so too. Here are some more of the principles:"Codependency can be beautiful." Thi