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'[Re]inventing the brand Can top brands survive the new market realities?'
By Jean-Noel Kapferer
Kogan Page, London; 2001; ISBN 0 7494 3593 3; 234 pp; paperback, 18.99
A combination of elements make it difficult to suppress a good degree of excitement when approaching the publication of Jean-Noel Kapferer's latest offering: Professor Kapferer's standing as something of a European branding guru, not least because of the success of the bestselling `Strategic Brand Management', allied to the ambitious title of this latest book, and the dauntingly good reviews on the sleeve.
The preface of '[Re]inventing the Brand' opens in daring fashion, asking `is current brand thinking obsolete?' This question is posed in the light of new market realities driven by the spiralling rise in both distribution and consumer power, along with a spectrum of other drivers from (inevitably) the Web through globalisation to demographic change and media and societal fragmentation. Brand thinking, Kapferer argues, is out of date, because it has failed to move on. Existing brand-management techniques were invented in the 1960s, when market conditions were quite different. Such comments are timely, since they convey a criticism which is being levelled with increasing frequency and volume at many marketing disciplines, including advertising and corporate identity. It is time for a change, the argument goes.
The book then goes on to tackle the aforementioned new realities and how brands are responding, or not. There are three sections:
the first argues for 'a new contract for the brands of the future'
the second focuses on the more nitty gritty issue of `brand practices'
while the third, entitled `the actuality of brands , comprises a selection of articles written by the author over the last few years.
Kapferer covers a range of issues in the first section, and each reader will derive interest and value according to their own perspective and background. He opens by discussing the convergence of the classic western brand model of differentiation, positioning and segmentation with that of Japan, where the endorsement or `source effect' is crucial. Japan is increasingly looking to niche brands just as the west tries to maximise its brand reach by extension and corporate brand endorsement. This leads on to a discussion of the increasing profile of the corporate brand, driven...