#1 Globe and Mail Bestseller 2016 Small Business Book Awards — Nominated, Marketing category Sticky Brands exist in almost every industry. Companies like Apple, Nike, and Starbucks have made themselves as recognizable as they are successful. But large companies are not the only ones who can stand out. Any business willing to challenge industry norms and find innovative ways to serve its customers can grow into a Sticky Brand. Based on a decade of research into what makes companies successful, Sticky Branding is your branding playbook. It provides ideas, stories, and exercises that will make your company stand out, attract customers, and grow into an incredible brand. Sticky Branding’s 12.5 guiding principles are drawn from hundreds of interviews with CEOs and business owners who have excelled within their industries.

Stand out, attract customers and grow your company into a sticky brand. Sticky Branding provides practical, tactical ideas of how mid-market companies — companies with a marketing budget, but not a vast one — are challenging the status quo and growing sticky brands.

We live in a world were people have become empowered. Consumers can contact companies directly and they can talk to each other with a powerful voice they never had before. Sticky Marketing takes into account these fundamental changes and provides a new set of rules for effective communications in a world transformed by new technology. It introduces a new model of customer engagement and asks 'not what your marketing can do for you, but what your marketing can do for your customer'. Companies have to move away from the old marketing system of shouting messages at people to attracting them by providing value around their product or service - in other words by becoming 'sticky' or attractive. Grant Leboff argues that it is not 'return on investment' that matters but 'return on engagement', not your unique sales point (or USP), but your customer engagement point (your CEP), that will make the difference in today's cluttered marketplace. Sticky Marketing proves that marketing should now be about value creation if you want to truly engage with your customers. It is only by providing value that you can win the battle for customer attention - stop shouting and start a conversation.

Miller delivers a proven, step-by-step brand naming process to create an unforgettable name. The book explains to readers what to do every step of the way--right down to exercises to generate lots of naming ideas to techniques on how to test which names resonate the most.most.

Every year, 6 million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone—even noncreative types—can create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names. No degree in linguistics required. The heart of the book is Watkins's proven SMILE and SCRATCH Test—two acronyms for what makes or breaks a name. She also provides up-to-date advice, like how to make sure that Siri spells your name correctly and how to nab an available domain name. And you'll see dozens of examples—the good, the bad, and the “so bad she gave them an award.” Alexandra Watkins is not afraid to name names.

For every banker who wants off of the commodity hamster wheel, this first-of-its-kind book helps bankers create super-sticky, value-based relationships and a future-proof financial brand.

Coca-Cola. Harley-Davidson. Nike. Budweiser. Valued by customers more for what they symbolize than for what they do, products like these are more than brands--they are cultural icons. How do managers create brands that resonate so powerfully with consumers? Based on extensive historical analyses of some of America's most successful iconic brands, including ESPN, Mountain Dew, Volkswagen, Budweiser, and Harley-Davidson, this book presents the first systematic model to explain how brands become icons. Douglas B. Holt shows how iconic brands create "identity myths" that, through powerful symbolism, soothe collective anxieties resulting from acute social change. Holt warns that icons can't be built through conventional branding strategies, which focus on benefits, brand personalities, and emotional relationships. Instead, he calls for a deeper cultural perspective on traditional marketing themes like targeting, positioning, brand equity, and brand loyalty--and outlines a distinctive set of "cultural branding" principles that will radically alter how companies approach everything from marketing strategy to market research to hiring and training managers. Until now, Holt shows, even the most successful iconic brands have emerged more by intuition and serendipity than by design. With How Brands Become Icons, managers can leverage the principles behind some of the most successful brands of the last half-century to build their own iconic brands. Douglas B. Holt is associate professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School.