The Brand Gap summary

Introduction

The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier A brand is a gut feeling, not a logo. Do you ever wonder why some companies capture our imagination while others fade away? It often comes down to a disconnect between strategy and design. This book explores how to bridge that gap.

understand and close the brand gap

Understand and Close the Brand Gap. A brand is not a logo. It is not a corporate identity system. Nor is it a product.

A brand is a gut feeling. You cannot completely control that feeling. But you can shape how customers understand and experience your company. When customers develop a gut feeling about your business, that feeling becomes your brand.

This makes branding increasingly important to a company's value. To build a strong brand, you must close the gap between strategy and creativity. In many companies, analytical strategy people work separately from intuitive, visually minded designers. When these groups fail to connect, a brand gap develops.

A sophisticated strategy may then become an execution that does not connect with customers. Without a unified brand, a company struggles to communicate who it is. Customers do not know what to expect. That makes strong relationships and consistent purchasing harder to achieve.

Charismatic brands have much less distance between the company and its customers. Companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Nike have achieved this. Their brands communicate qualities such as joy, beauty, and style. These qualities create identities that customers want to associate with themselves.

The goal is to develop that identity and communicate it consistently. Doing this requires mastering five branding disciplines. They are differentiation, collaboration, innovation, validation, and cultivation.