---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43174 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

The Economist
"There are lots of books trying to distil the essence of this particular magic. 'Brand Sense' stands out from the crowd.."

Review

“breezily written and easy to read, with useful chapter summaries and action lists.”

management today

“once again, lindstrom has delivered an outstanding book that provokes, intrigues and enriches our understanding of how consumers really perceive brands.”

the marketer

“an outstanding book that provokes, intrigues and enriches our understanding of how consumers really perceive brands.”

the marketer

“effortlessly explains why certain brand images work and others fall flat. advertisers take note.”

easy jet

“lindstrom’s at his best pulling us in with so many fascinating historical titbits that it’s worth the read alone for the cocktail-party icebreakers…lindstrom’s ideas…like any good brand, are sexy, smartly packaged, and sure to spark debate.”

fast company

“a stand-out original among the avalanche of me-too branding publications on the market.”

director

“included are innovative tools for evaluating a brand’s place on the sensory scale, analyzing its future sensory potential, and enhancing its appeal to reach the broadest base of consumers.”

documentation on books, cases, teaching material in management

“martin lindstrom’s observations are always acute and his writing is both fascinating and readable.”

city to cities

“broken into easily digestible chapters with handy ‘highlights’ at the end of each one.”

media week

“there are lots of books trying to distil the essence of this particular magic. ‘brand sense’ stands out from the crowd for two reasons: it has a foreword by philip kotler, a professor at the kellogg school of management who is an acknowledged world master of marketing, in which he says the book ‘contains a treasury of ideas for bringing new life’ to brands. and it has a flash of insight.”

the economist

"brandsense is a wonderful book, an original to be sure. more important, it is a necessary book! the table has been run on traditional branding practices - and the race is on to re-imagine marketing and branding. martin lindstrom provides us with the nikes we need to begin the re-imaging sprint."

-tom peters

“i think all brand managers should read this book if they want to get additional edge by tapping into the natural physiology of their customers.”

journal of product & brand management, emerald

“lays out the path on how to integrate the five senses for successful branding.”

journal of marketing research

“lindstrom discusses the strategies to turn brands into multi-sensor

Tom Peters
"Martin Lindstrom provides us with the Nikes we need to begin the re-imaging sprint."

---

Customer Reviews

The Smell of a Broken Brand Promise
A basic principle of branding is to keep your promise. Brand Sense failed to do this for me.

Lindstrom's latest offering argues that when building brands marketeers need to plan how they will influence all the human senses. True, but to position this book as a breakthrough in branding is simply a gross overstatement and sets the reader for a big disappointment. It simply does not deliver on its promise.

The book assembles a plethora of prestigious brand thinkers, practitioners and research authorities to illustrate and provide testimonials to support his arguments. Books by Noel Kapferer, Aaker, Chris Macrae, Gavin Morgan, Klaus Schmidt, Alan Mitchell offer far more breakthrough thinking than this book.

Lindstrom's examples on "sense branding" do contain some interesting anecdotes about brands using touch, smell and taste and how they could benefit from thinking a bit more about adding "sensual" aspects to their brands and communication channels. In that it is a useful reminder and maybe a creative stimulant for the brand manager.

I found much repetition of his ideas to the point that at times it creates a feeling of deja vue, and makes the book much longer than it needs to be.

The chapter on Brand as Religion I hard to link its relevance back to the senses theme. It felt a bit like padding.

The research background conributed by Millward Brown feels a bit bolted on, and could have been more integrated into Lindstrom's arguments. This section does, however, give a glimpse into the way deep quantitative research studies are designed and analysed.

What I felt missing was any consideration that people may have preferences for different senses, an argument at the heart of areas like NLP. Also senses vary in their impact for different people in different contexts. After all, we all experience and construe the world differently, even with the same senses.

There are the obligatory new models, processes to structure a brand sense audit, but these are not articulated enough to do really feel like you could do something with them on Monday Morning. They struck me as being a set of new words around existing concepts. Maybe you need pay to go on Lindstrom's seminars and workshops to experience their value?

The hype (masterfully being created) around the book and its Dual-Book website will certainly enhance the surface of "Lindstrom brand", but when the informed brand reader examines the substance, I think they will FEEL very disappointed. Not a memorable experience for me.

P.S It was a shame the book itself had not be perfumed to make Lindstrom's point directly :)

Sound, words & pictures: 2+2=5
***** Accessible
***** Inspiring
**** Practical
**** Relevant (to audio branding)
**** Well-grounded

BRAND sense isn't a book (although, without qualification, it's one I recommend that anyone with an interest in business strategy, branding, marketing or communications should read!) It's a fountainhead of inspiration, ideas, and practical approaches via a whole community of innovators in anticipating a future certainty: consumer behaviour, attitudes and expectations of brands are radically changing. In his forward, Philip Kotler puts his finger on the resulting imperative: "Distinctive brands (must) deliver a full sensory and emotional experience ... It pays to attach sound, such as music or powerful words, or symbols. The combination of visual and audio stimuli delivers a 2 + 2 = 5 impact."

The BRAND sense offerings have an evangelical tone of voice you will recognise from the world of internet marketing and social media (be warned, if this is not your thing!). They include a web community at www.dualbook.com (which you can access free of charge using a unique ID code in the book) plus the weekly video blog BRANDFlash, bring to life the always inciteful words of Benjamin Franklin: "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I'll understand."

As an audio branding specialist, I'm intrigued to what extent Martin's prediction - estimating that 40 per cent of the world's Fortune 500 brands will include a sensory branding strategy in their marketing plan by the end of 2006 - has come true. "Quite simply, their survival will depend on it. If brands want to build and maintain future loyalty, they will have to establish a strategy that appeals to all our senses. This is a fact that no serious brand can ignore." While I agree (well, I would, wouldn't I!), its interesting to map the impact on these views of the continuing fragmentation of the media, and the diversity of way people are engaging with low cost technologies, be they the web, mobile phones, palm held devices, interactive television, touch sensitive displays, and so the list continues.

BRAND sense is a first step down a long road to try to interpret future customer needs, and to create the emotionally-charged brands that meet them.

Filling up my senses
The late american singer-songwriter John Denver once sang: "You fill up my senses, come fill me again". Martin Lindstrom has caught this sentence and made a quite astonishing book on the whole subject of how we are influated by our senses on a daily consumer basis.

After each chapter there is a list of action points, to which every company with the slightest interest in the subject, can identify and estimate where their product(s) are situated on the sensory-scale - and are given opportunities to do something about it.

The book can be read with advantage for ordinary people with interest in marketing and branding as well as small or big companies that wants to be given thorough information on how to improve their marketpositions by using one or more of the sensory-channels to flash their brand.