Brand Harmony
written by Steve Yastrow

Review by Tim Fulton

"Imagine yourself attending a symphony orchestra concert. The players are ready on the stage. The conductor lowers his baton to start the piece. But almost as soon as the concert begins, you notice that you are distracted by noises coming from different places in the auditorium. You look to your left and see a workman climbing a ladder, who then starts to use loud power tools to repair a hole in the auditorium wall. You look on to the stage, expecting to see the conductor jump into a fit of rage because his concert has been interrupted, but the conductor is still conducting and the players are still playing. You realize that he and the musicians haven't heard the workman's disruptions.

Suddenly you are distracted by a noise coming from the other side of the auditorium. The concert hall’s ticket seller has set up his box office window in the aisle, and he is loudly conducting business without regard for the music onstage. The performers on stage don’t seem to notice him either.

Next, you hear an argument coming from the back of the auditorium. An audience member is yelling at an usher, saying that he wants his money back, and the usher is officiously telling him that the house policy is to give no refunds. The musicians, the workman, the ticket seller and the usher are all oblivious of each other.

What would your impression of this concert be? Would you be able to enjoy the music, despite the distractions? What’s really going on in this story?"

This is the opening to a great book, "Brand Harmony", that focuses on one of the most misunderstood topics in marketing: Branding. In this story, the orchestra intended for the audience to have one kind of experience and instead the audience actually had a completely different type of experience than was planned. How often has this happened to you? How often has this happened to your customers?

Author, marketing guru, and TEC speaker Steve Yastrow wrote "Brand Harmony" to help marketing professionals and business owners better understand the critically important concept of Branding and debunk many of the myths that have mystified this topic for many years. As an example, many marketers profess that the company brands itself just as a cowboy brands a steer. Yastrow disagrees. He says, "A brand is the message the customer perceives about the product, which may be something altogether different than the message the marketer intended to send…Your brand is a thought in your customer’s mind, which she creates at her own discretion as she interacts with your company and your product."

Why aren't more companies successful with their branding efforts? Yastrow explains that most big companies are accustomed to using "Brute Force Branding" which attempts to muscle the company’s message into the customer's mind. The idea is to interrupt the customer so many times with advertising messages in a short period of time that the customer can't help but get branded. This type of marketing in today’s world is mostly ineffective primarily because consumers today have too many choices, too much information, and their trust level for business as a whole is very low.

Yastrow describes the concept of Brand Harmony as "the way various experiences with a product blend in a customer’s mind." Hence, if the different experiences a customer has with a product blend well together, there will be strong harmony and the customer will be likely to form a solid overall brand impression of the product and the company. Likewise, if the customer’s experiences with a product seem disjointed, unrelated, or conflicting, there will be a disconnect and the customer will have an impression similar to that of the audience at the orchestra.

According to Yastrow, your employees also play a very important role in Branding. Almost all of the most critical customer touch-points for your product are managed and hence greatly influenced by your people. Yastrow states that employees need to "Be the Brand". This means that they need to understand their personal role in creating Brand Harmony and act in such a way that supports that role. How many times have you been driven to call a business as a result of their advertising message of "great service" only to be disappointed by the less than great interaction you have with the first contact you have with that same company.

I believe that small business owners will truly like this book because it will force them to listen to their own Brand Harmony and determine if it’s the sweet sound of a world-class symphony or the painfully deafening sound of a newly formed 3rd grade band ensemble.

I strongly recommend this book.

Tim Fulton
TEC Chair
“Dedicated to Increasing the Effectiveness & Enhancing the Lives of CEOs.”
www.teconline.com
Managing Partner
TCF Business Development
770 350-9088