Six Rules of Brand Revitalization

Description

The Start-to-Finish Blueprint for Reinvigorating Any Brand!

Are you responsible for reinvigorating your brand to achieve enduring profitable growth? Or for keeping a strong brand from fading in relevance and value? World-class brand marketers Larry Light and Joan Kiddon specialize in revitalizing great brands to reignite and sustain growth. Now, they’ve updated their best-selling Six Rules of Brand Revitalization to deliver all the practical insights and techniques you need to do it, too.

Light and Kiddon show how to apply their foundational rules today, serving today’s informed and skeptical customers. Step by step, you’ll refocus your organization, restore brand relevance, reinvent brand experience, reinforce a “results culture,” rebuild brand trust, and realize global alignment. The authors reveal core “truths” for avoiding brand deterioration, identify warning signs of trouble, and offer specific techniques for overcoming them.

Building on their experience leading McDonald’s last marketing turnaround, Light and Kiddon also present a new online case study: how this world-class brand slipped back into the abyss… and how it can win again. Whether you steward a great brand today, or you’re building tomorrow’s next great brand, these lessons are indispensable.

• Plan and execute all 6 components of a winning brand revitalization
• Master the 12 truths for avoiding brand disaster
• Recognize the 12 tendencies that lead great brands into trouble
• Anticipate and solve emerging brand problems while they’re still manageable
• Fully updated for today’s global, social, and volatile markets
• Strengthen your brand’s promise, relevance, and value
• Escape the bad habits that lead great brands to fail
• Detailed online case study: how McDonald’s got into trouble, and how it can WIN AGAIN

This guide presents a complete, practical blueprint for resurrecting or revitalizing any brand, and leading it to unprecedented success. Larry Light and Joan Kiddon share up-to-date case studies and examples from their unsurpassed brand experience, with detailed “do’s” and “don’ts” for everything from segmentation to R&D to executive leadership.

You’ll discover how to refocus your entire organization around common goals and brand promises… restore brand relevance based on an ever-more-profound knowledge of your customers… and reinvent your total brand experience, leveraging innovation, renovation, marketing, and value.

Using McDonald’s and other prominent examples, Light and Kiddon reveal the common mistakes big brands keep making, and help you overcome or avoid bad habits that destroy brand value. Along the way, they show how to define and measure progress, rebuild brand trust both internally and externally, create a “plan to win,” and execute on it!

Larry Light is the Chairman and CEO of Arcature. Larry was Global CMO of McDonald’s from 2002 to 2005. More recently, as the interim Global Chief Brands Officer of IHG from 2011 to 2013, Larry led global organizational and marketing process change to increase the effectiveness of IHG’s global and local marketing. Light was formerly the Executive Vice President at BBDO and was Chairman and CEO of the international division of Bates Worldwide and was also a member of the Bates’ Board of Directors. In 2004, BrandWeek selected Larry as one of the top ten marketers of the year and McDonald’s won “Marketer of the Year” from Advertising Age. In its report on Best Marketers of the Decade, AdWeek reported that “Larry Light, who turned around McDonald’s as CMO from 2002 to 2005 finished second to Steve Jobs.” Summarizing the top ten ideas of the decade, Ad Age selected Larry Light’s “Brand Journalism” as “arguably the most realistic description of marketing today—perhaps ever.” In 2013, in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers, the Internationalist recognized Larry among 100 marketing leaders from around the world who are consistently moving business forward.

Joan Kiddon is President and COO of Arcature. Joan began her career in 1976 as a market researcher at BBDO Worldwide in New York. In 1978, she moved into Account Management. She was the head of marketing and market research for BBDO West, Los Angeles, from 1980 until 1986. In 1990, she joined Arcature. Joan consulted to McDonald’s during its brand turnaround from 2002 until 2005. Kiddon with Light consulted to IHG from 2010 to 2014. Joan Kiddon is the co-author of Six Rules for Brand Revitalization: Learn How Companies Like McDonald’s Can Re-Energize Their Brands and New Brand Leadership: Managing at the Intersection of Globalization, Localization, and Personalization.

Reinvigorate any brand: A practical, start-to-finish blueprint, now fully updated for the realities of today’s global, social, volatile marketplace!

• Offers powerful rules for strengthening your brand’s promise, relevance, and value – and updated insights and techniques for executing on them
• Shows how to avoid the crucial mistakes big brands are making right now – and how to avoid returning to bad habits once you’ve resurrected your brand
• Presents specific do’s and don’ts for recreating brand experiences around the true needs of today’s customers
• Guides you through creating a “plan to win” that aligns your entire organization to get the right results the right way
• Provides updated recommendations on process change, cultural change, organizational structure, metrics, and much more

This edition is updated throughout with new case studies and a deeper, improved synthesis of the authors’ extensive experience revitalizing brands in roles ranging from advertising agency executive to CMO and independent marketing consultant. Its updated case studies include an important new look at McDonald’s, which exemplifies an organization that successfully rebuilt its brand but then ran into deep trouble again.

Throughout, this edition contains specific, actionable recommendations regarding process change, cultural change, organizational responsibilities and structure, metrics, and many other issues – all updated to reflect today’s market and customer realities.

Are you responsible for reinvigorating your brand to achieve enduring profitable growth in a volatile world? Or for keeping a still-strong brand from fading in relevance and value? The Six Rules of Brand Revitalization, Second Edition presents an intensely practical blueprint for resurrecting or revitalizing any brand, and driving it to unprecedented levels of success.

Larry Light and Joan Kiddon illuminate their blueprint with up-to-date case studies and specific examples from their unsurpassed brand experience, offering detailed “dos” and “don’ts” for everything from segmentation to RandD to executive leadership. You’ll discover how to eliminate siloes, and refocus your entire organization around common goals and brand promises… restore brand relevance based on an ever-more-profound knowledge of your customers… reinvent your total brand experience, leveraging innovation, renovation, marketing, and value.

Using McDonald’s and other prominent examples, Light and Kiddon show how big brands get into trouble by committing several common mistakes… how to reenergize them… why hard-to-change bad habits can lead brands back into trouble again… and how to keep that from happening to your brands. Along the way, they demonstrate how to define and measure progress, rebuild brand trust within and outside the organization, create a “plan to win,” and execute on it!

Preface     ix
Introduction     1

Part I: The Twelve Tendencies for Trouble     7
Chapter 1    Tendency 1: The Arrogance of (Great) Success     11
Chapter 2    Tendency 2: The Comfort of Complacency     17
Chapter 3    Tendency 3: The Building of Organizational Barriers and Bureaucratic Processes     23
Chapter 4    Tendency 4: The Focus on Analyst Satisfaction Rather Than on Customer Satisfaction     27
Chapter 5    Tendency 5: The Belief That What Worked Yesterday Will Work Today     37
Chapter 6    Tendency 6: The Failure to Innovate     41
Chapter 7    Tendency 7: The Lack of Focus on the Core Customer     47
Chapter 8    Tendency 8: The Backtracking to Basics     51
Chapter 9    Tendency 9: The Loss of Relevance     55
Chapter 10   Tendency 10: The Lack of a Coherent Plan to Win     63
Chapter 11   Tendency 11: The Lack of a Balanced Brand-Business Scorecard     67
Chapter 12   Tendency 12: The Disregard for the Changing World     71
Chapter 13   Break the LOCK on Brand Troubles     75

Part II: The Six Rules for Brand Revitalization…Revisited     81
Chapter 14   Rule 1: Refocus the Organization     83
Chapter 15   Rule 2: Restore Brand Relevance     91
Chapter 16   Rule 3: Reinvent the Brand Experience     107
Chapter 17   Rule 4: Reinforce a Results Culture     137
Chapter 18   Rule 5: Rebuild Brand Trust     155
Chapter 19   Rule 6: Realize Global Alignment     173

Part III: The Twelve Truths for Staying Out of Trouble     185
Chapter 20   Truth 1: Recognize That Culture Matters: Overcome Cultural Resistance     187
Chapter 21   Truth 2: Institutionalize Change     191
Chapter 22   Truth 3: Define a Clear Strategy for Enduring Profitable Growth     195
Chapter 23   Truth 4: Break Down Silos     197
Chapter 24   Truth 5: Reinforce Authenticity     199
Chapter 25   Truth 6: Make Demographics Matter     203
Chapter 26   Truth 7: Act Like a Leader     207
Chapter 27   Truth 8: Stay Relevant     211
Chapter 28   Truth 9: Move from Living off Current Positive Momentum to Creating Ongoing Positive Momentum     215
Chapter 29   Truth 10: Institute Clear Accountability     217
Chapter 30   Truth 11: Change the Reward System     219
Chapter 31   Truth 12: Measure Results     223
Conclusion     227
Index     229

McDonald’s Case History is available online at www.ftpress.com/sixrules

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