Branding Only Works on Cattle

by Jonathan Salem Baskin

Book Overview

In this essential guide to understanding how branding is evolving, learn how companies affect behavior via marketing communications, distribution strategies, and customer service.

Most people don't know it yet, but branding is dead.

Sure, we need to know about the stuff we want to buy, but the billions of dollars spent on logos, sponsorships, and jingles have little, if anything, to do with actual consumer behavior. For example:...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446178012
• ISBN13: 9780446178013
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Business Plus
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A book for independent thinkers

As a young person who recently entered the world of branding, I already feel a bit jaded. Often when browsing through books on the subject, I wonder if they were not written by a computer algorithm. They simply rehash the same ideas, in the same language. Brand marketers have developed their own cult-like industry, insulated from reality. They are swimming in their own mush. Jonathan's book is a breath of fresh air. Instead of irrationally rationalizing some nonsense theory that his career is dependent on, he takes his own life experiences in branding to task. He questions what he believed. He is not afraid to critically consider the foundations of branding gospel. While you might not like what he has to say (and I certainly don't agree with all of it), he will get you thinking about your long-held assumptions. Aside from the witty writing style and many astute perceptions, I think the thoughtful discussion he prompts is its crowning achievement. I highly recommend this book to forward-thinking individuals who want to move the marketing industry into the 21st century. It is certainly not going to ride on its own legacy. After reading it, I am more motivated than ever to make a difference and actively work to "refresh" our field. But not with a new logo and messaging. With new ideas.

A Common Sense Approach for A Common Sense Time

Finally...the deconstruction of the branding 800 pound gorilla is here. It is fabulously refreshing to read Baskin's scathing critique and insightful analysis on one of our least favorite pastimes, i.e. watching corporate america woo us via magazines or tv with expensive and usually incredibly vague appeals to feel...or think...or...something. In the era of our modern-day leviathan - that something better be to buy! Who knew?

Smart Brand Thinking

Every so often an observer with a kind of second sight comes along to cut through the clutter and tell us where the problems lie and how to solve them. Since marketing is characterized by the rapidity of change, clear direction is especially urgent as the digital world revolutionizes customer connectivity and the potential for instant messaging to millions of consumers is at hand. Branding Only Works on Cattle notes that most branding efforts are wasted because the emphasis is on changing customers thinking rather than their behavior. Author Jonathan Baskin mentions the ubiquitous TV ads that don't tell you the purpose of the product or show the company name until late in the commercial after you've already left for the refrigerator. Baskin points out that branding is expensive and usually goes unmeasured and that every branding claim must be evaluated against the sales it will bring in. Or put another way, most branding is made up of nouns instead of action verbs that are directed at customers who aren't listening much anymore and are impatient with intangibles. Branding should promote action and earn loyalty and only does so for high-quality products and services. Guerilla, or word-of-mouth marketing, only works when it delivers something customers will talk about. Poor quality of service like trying to find a live person to talk to destroys brand benefits. Baskin also writes that branding for image rather than actionable customer behavior (getting customers to do something) is the business equivalent of buying a lottery ticket. Buy this useful book, study it, and evaluate all future branding against measurable return on investment.

Measure branding--improve ROI

I've been following Jonathan Baskin's Advertising Age columns where he packs more insightful marketing information into a few paragraphs than you see elsewhere in a month. Baskin is always ahead of the curve, and he's way ahead in his fine new book "Branding Only Works On Cattle." In the age of disintermediation, or eliminating the middleman, and going direct to digital customers, people have no time for vague promises and linty images. Or as Baskin writes, useful marketing is the play-by-play of changing customer behavior and most branding is the color commentary with the sound turned down. Your product or service, Baskin astutely observes, is not a cause for you to promote, it must have a purpose, and that purpose is to get customers to do something. And branding should be results-oriented, absent guesswork and hope. When changes in customer behavior is the branding focus, action becomes a potent tool and has a whole lot better chance of landing a sale than some fuzzy concept ad. Most of all, Baskin argues, you must measure any marketing activity, including branding. Millions of dollars are wasted without statistical proof. Baskin cites the impact of statistical quality control in manufacturing as taught by American quality legend W. Edwards Deming and how that management instrument can be used in marketing to measure results and evaluate ROI. As Hewlett-Packard Founder Bill Hewett once said, "You cannot manage what you cannot measure. What gets measured gets done." Branding Only Works on Cattle is loaded with useful gems that are fit for use. I'm buying copies for business friends and clients. Richard J. Noyes, business consultant, formerly Associate Director of the MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study

It's Time We Put Fluffy to Sleep

Let's face it, anyone planning on earning an income in the field of marketing today knows it's all about results. Fluffy, unquantifiable, "feel-good" messaging is dead, and Mr. Baskin clearly (and quite entertainingly) explains that branding is behavior. Without results, we're wasting time and money. I'm a twenty-plus year marketing professional with Fortune 500 experience and stacks of advertising and marketing books on my shelves. Some books were never read beyond the first few chapters. Branding Only Works on Cattle is different. It's incredibly relevant to marketing plan development, and I highly recommend it for marketing and C-level executives. Portions of the book made me wince at misguided efforts from years gone by, but illumination requires painful self-examination. This is how we learn. Baskin's "Chronology of Purchase Intent" describes consumers' movement from problem recognition to purchase. This continuum provides a perfect basis from which to create specific, measurable marketing activity. Examples and stories provide edification along the way. If you're willing to accept reality, and formulate marketing that drives action, this book is for you. Or, keep stroking Fluffy. She'll come back around.