Fusion Branding
By Nick Wreden
389pp. Atlanta, GA: Accountability Press. $29.95.
What is a brand? Some of the best and brightest marketing minds, as well as a few of the dimmer bulbs, have been attempting to answer that question for decades. As maddeningly elusive as the definition has been, Nick Wreden may have shed some light on the mystery by pointing out that we've been looking at branding the wrong way for too long.
"Fusion Branding" begins by observing that our view of branding has not changed in some 40 years - a scary enough notion in itself. The mass marketing tactics of yesteryear were all well and good for the brand builders of that time, but business conditions have evolved. Unfortunately, business thinking has remained stagnant.
As Wreden tells us, the golden age of branding lasted about 40 years. During that time, the power of mass media allowed companies to control the flow of information and "position" products in the minds of consumers. The success of those brands was undeniable and many of our favorite products were born during that era.
Next came what Wreden dubs the Customer Economy. During these turbulent years, the power shifted from companies with big advertising budgets to consumers with better access to information. While still retaining some affinity for their beloved brands, customers also expected better prices and more selection. And with the advent of the Internet, they got it!
That power shift from sellers to buyers has been discussed for some time now, but scant attention has been paid to the impact that has on brands. Of course consumers want value for their money, as has always been their wont, but that begs the larger question of what constitutes value. Concepts like brand loyalty and brand equity sound awfully good in textbooks, but when the rubber meets the road things can get a bit more complicated.
Peering into the future, Wreden portends that the next phase for brands will be what he is calling the Demand Economy. In this model, three elements will drive brands: reach, immediacy and personalization. "Immediacy requires that companies quickly satisfy customer demands for offering and services," Wreden writes. "Personalization requirements will be much higher than the limited capabilities available today. Companies and customers will be able to reach and interact with each other, more easily and more frequently." All in all, not a bad thing.
How then will this affect brands? "Branding in the demand economy requires new supply chain, real-time management, and new organizational approaches to deal with emerging imperatives." In other words, these activities must be fused; hence Wreden's new term FusionBranding. "A FusionBrand is a long-term bond between an offering and a consumer. This relationship is based on trust and loyalty, backed by everyday operational excellence and measured by customer equity." Put more simply, companies have to get their act together and start connecting with the consumer, not merely pumping out marketing efforts that hope to build brands.
Kudos to Wreden for saying something that should have been said a long time ago. In case anyone hasn't noticed, we are well past the days when new brands can simply run a bunch of :30 spots in primetime and hope to survive. Admittedly, older brands still channel their glorious history in the mainstream media, but not every company can rely on a 50-year heritage. Nor, for that matter, can those companies realistically expect to rest on their laurels.
While it has become fashionable in some circles to make extravagant claims and recklessly predict the future, Wreden is far too savvy a marketer to play such games. He has clearly done his homework and the erudition that permeates FusionBranding is obvious. Indeed, it is difficult to do justice to such a learned work within the confines of a review, but suffice it to say that FusionBranding should be at or near the top of every marketer's reading list.
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