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Brand Portfolio Strategy: Creating Relevance, Differentiation, Energy, Leverage, and Clarity
By
David A. Aaker
Corporations may legally be considered persons, but to promote their individuality to consumers, they need a brand—and a strategy. This intriguing marketing treatise teaches companies how to understand and exploit the finely graded social system that brands inhabit in the marketplace. Projecting both "personality elements" and "emotional and self-expressive" qualities onto brands, customers are skeptical of parvenu brands that try to move up into super premium markets, contemptuous of brands that move down into "value" markets, and uneasy about brands that associate with less reputable labels. To help businesspeople sort through and capitalize on such perceptual niceties, Aaker, a consultant, professor and author of Building Strong Brands, plots out a complicated taxonomy of master brands, subbrands, endorser brands, brand alliances, branded energizers, silver bullet brands, cash cow brands and "fighter" brands (the latter protect more important brands from being sullied by competition with lesser brands). Aaker encourages companies to think of their brands as members of a football team, each with a well-defined role to play, and offers a wealth of case studies and exercises to help managers decide how to handle their portfolios. Aaker’s readable prose imparts real substance to these concepts, and provides insight into such issues as how to clarify a confusing assortment of brands, differentiate a company’s brands from its competitors’, introduce a new brand or kill off an old one. While the book is aimed at marketing executives, who will glean much practical advice from it, interested lay readers will find it a revealing insider’s look at how the business world conceives of and manipulates consumer psychology.
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