The Brand Gap: Book Review

If you are a visual person like me, you will really enjoy reading The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier. It is a short book with lots of illustrations, bright ideas, and useful tips. It is a guide on how to bring together business strategy and design to bridge the brand gap. Based on his career experience, Neumeier explains in simple words important steps in building a brand and distinguishing it from others. I think many existing companies, as well as young professionals, will benefit from it.

Neumeier starts his book with explaining what a brand is, and I think it is very important to know the definition. Saying it in his words, “Brand is not what you say it is, it is what they say it is.” Strictly speaking, consumers define the brand, not otherwise. We buy things we value the most. The question is why do we buy what we buy?

There is one example in the book that made me think a lot. It says that there are 1,349 cameras on the market, and how do we decide which one to buy? As a photographer, this example touched my heart. First of all, I did not even know that there are so many cameras on the market. When I think about cameras, the first two brands that automatically come to my mind are Canon and Nikon. They are both great, but for some reason I only buy Canon. You ask me why? I trust this brand, and like it more than Nikon. I also think it gives me better results, and the pictures have more natural colors. I can continue to list its benefits, but the main word that can say why I choose Canon is trust.

Neumeier also provides five disciplines of brand building that can help any company on any level to bridge that gap. The five disciplines are differentiate, collaborate, innovate, validate, and cultivate. The author describes in depth each discipline and also gives an insight on why the gap between strategy and creativity exists.

There are usually two types of people—right-brained and left-brained. The right brain is in charge of creativity, while the left brain focuses more on strategy. Because people fall into only one of these two categories, it is hard to bring those parts together. I personally consider myself more on the creative side rather than analytical.

One of my favorite parts of the book is the section where Neumeier shows how to know if your idea is innovative or not. We are all creative at some point and have various thoughts in our minds. What makes one person’s idea unique and different from the rest? The author states that the idea is innovative, “when it scares the hell out of everybody.”

Ideas should surprise customers. If they are not surprised, then there is nothing new for them. Nothing new means no value. I tried to implement this logic to my personal buying decision process. If there would be a new camera on the market with the same features that have mine, I would never spend my money on the same camera with a brand I do not know. However, if there would be a camera than can make panoramas right away in a high quality, without me combining pictures in the Photoshop, I would probably at least look at this camera. I would think about buying it, even if I am not familiar with the brand.

I would definitely recommend The Brand Gap book to everyone who cares about company’s brand or even their own. The 200 pages of the book are very easy to read. In my opinion, the book will also be interesting for young designers because the author talks about creating great logos. This book will surprise you from the first pages.

If you do not have time to read the whole book, you can view PDF slides here.

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