New York: Penguin Books, 2003

If you want to learn about Brand and don’t have time or interest to read any other book on the subject, then please read this one. Notice we didn’t say “Marketing” but “Brand”. There are other books that encompass more of marketing, but there is no other book we know of that provides such a solid overview of the subject of Brand.
Again, if you must pick one Basic Manual to read on Brand, this is it.

And Bedbury writes in a style people not trained in marketing can understand. He writes from the gut and from his experience at both Nike and Starbucks. We can see some of you shaking your head from side to side already. Big companies mean big ad money and a huge advertising staff. But not in this case. Read his story, and see if you can’t relate to his experience at both Nike and Starbucks when each was a much smaller company.

Bedbury enumerates eight brand principles. For the small business owner or manager, pay particular attention to the following chapters:

# 2: “Cracking Your Brand’s Genetic Code”

# 4: “Show Some Emotion”

# 5: “Brand Environmentalism”

# 6: “Brand Leadership”

Make sure you grab your highlighter (use three if you want; one for each side of the Transit) and some sticky notes when you read through this book. We found ourselves writing in the margins and jotting notes down about our own experiences as we raced through this read.

If you think you don’t have time to read the entire book, then please get to the bookstore and at least devour and digest pages 27 through 29 to whet your appetite. Our hope is that you’ll find these pages right on and decide to tunnel out some time to read the rest of this excellent brand manual.

And then make some of Scott Bedbury’s lessons your own.