Product Description

What is the most important issue facing business today? Globalization, the technological revolution, supply chain management, core competencies, staff retention, price competition?
Important though all of these are, something else is emerging as an equally critical challenge facing companies in the technological, globalized, knowledge economy ahead. It is the concept of Citizen Brands. Its importance arises because it embodies not just one, but three crucial strategic issues for the business world:
∗ Values (what the company stands for);
∗ Corporate citizenship (playing an active role in society);
∗ Branding (the tangible and intangible attributes that are encompassed in a name or trademark).
This book is about how these three elements come together in an integrated way; about how they define a company′s relationship with all the relevant people and institutions it has to deal with – customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, government or whoever. Put another way, it is about achieving corporate success through putting society at the heart of the company.
Companies through their direct actions (for example employment) and through their intermediaries – brands – are an integral part of the social and economic world in which they operate, needing to reflect the values and aspirations that exist; the differences and similarities. This is why corporate managers need to bring society into the company; why they need to turn their brands into citizen brands.
In the emerging networked, post–industrial world, managing that relationship is one of the most important challenges that companies face. And companies that understand and embrace this are likely to be the ultimate winners in the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1244790 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Review
"...Willmott argues his corner well..."
(Irish Times, 3rd August 2001)

"...Citizen Brands should be read by everyone involved in long–term business strategy and marketing...."
(Marketing 20 September 2001)

"...helpful summaries at the end of each chapter.....a sound and thoughtful book which will make interesting reading..."
(Corporate Citizen, 1 September 2001)

"…clearly argued…Wilmott presents a convincing model…" (Marketer, January 2005)

Review
"Willmott argues his corner well"
(Irish Times, 3rd August 2001)

"Citizen Brands should be read by everyone involved in long–term business strategy and marketing."
(Marketing 20 September 2001)

"helpful summaries at the end of each chapter.....a sound and thoughtful book which will make interesting reading"
(Corporate Citizen, 1 September 2001)

"…clearly argued…Wilmott presents a convincing model…" (Marketer, January 2005)

Marketing 20 September 2001
"Citizen Brands should be read by everyone involved in long-term business strategy and marketing."

Customer Reviews

Cool-headed commentary on brands and social change
A lot of books about the role of social responsibility within business planning can leave you cold. The subject was, after all, pretty well done to death in the 1990's. Most companies are surely by now acutely aware of the need for sensitivity towards the wider world of consumer interests and motivations that lies beyond the mere pursuit of low price and high quality. But still, too much marketing-focused literature in this field is little more than a boring re-tread of the idea that companies should be nice people and that consumers have the power these days to punish brands that - morally, culturally or politically - have upset them. Very much been there, very much got the t-shirt.

Against this background, Michael Willmott's "Citizen Brands - putting society at the heart of your business" is a refreshingly detached analysis of how brand managers can place themselves inside the pulse of social trends, work out - without the slightest cynicism - what really matters to consumers and find competitive advantage in building a deeper, less mercenary dialogue with them. Tellingly, this is a book that could be read, with equal profit, by the marketing and the academic community alike. For it tells many good stories about the psychology of higher income and expanded choice in contemporary Britain while directing those whose business it is to sell things towards strategies that promise long-term gain, indeed long-term survival.

Along the way, the best thing about Willmott's writing is the lack of self-righteousness and hippy humbug, the quiet presentation of facts'n'figures - especially proprietary consumer survey data - and the general appeal to the intelligence of the reader. His "culture of fear" theory - exploring just how and why irrational behaviour can all too often characterise the market presence of consumers - is particularly well achieved. There are good sections too on the meaning of modern environmentalism and on how apparent contradictions within expressed consumer opinion and measurable consumer behaviour can be understood and managed.

Willmott's is a nice-and-easy, no-nonsense, no-bulls*** style. But if his style wears a cardigan, his arguments are as sharp as an Ungaro cut. This is a good piece of work about markets and marketing. But perhaps even a better piece of work about modern Britain. And the society, the moral and intellectual order, we have become.

Citizen Brands brings branding right up-to-date.
Citizen Brands is a wonderfully researched book that substantiates why and how businesses would benefit by engaging with social responsibility. It also offers a great deal of hope, for the rest of us, that we will enjoy a more socially equitable future.

I strongly recommend this book for all business, marketing, branding and design professionals. Michael Willmott is able to debate the issues that are of most relevance to business today and present them in context of the Citizen Brand. Issues such as; technology, globalisation, the environment, philanthropy, employee retention, consumer cynicism, values and ethics. He ends with the chapter 'Becoming a Citizen Brand', summarising much of his research and offering a way forward.

This is a very readable book.

Best business book I've ever read
I was dead impressed. The style is cool, even if the "Future Foundation" plugs are a bit over the top. Anyone who uses correspondence & cluster analysis in a book aimed at managers gets my attention.