The world’s leading practitioner of branding predicts the future of companies’ identities in an ever -changing marketing landscape What is the future for brands and branding? Does globalization mean that variety and individuality will be crushed out of existence by massive multinationals? Will everywhere and everything become similar, like the world of airports today? Or will there still be room for brands that thrive on being different? What about the impact of digital technology and increasing customer feedback through the internet and social media? What, in fact, do customers want? Today's businesses, in addition to thinking about price and authenticity, have to deal with corporate social responsibility. How does this affect the products and services we consume? How does it influence the way we feel about organizations? Are corporations here to maximize profits and grow, or to help society, or both? With the rapid rise of new markets in India, China, Brazil, and elsewhere, will new global brands emerge based around local cultural strengths and heritage? If so, what will this mean for the traditional dominance of brands based on Western cultural norms? Wally Olins's fascinating book looks at every aspect of the world of branding. With his customary flair and no-nonsense prose, he analyzes the problems facing today's organizations, criticizes corporate missteps, praises those companies who seem to be building and sustaining brands efficiently in our brave new world, and predicts the future of branding. No one interested in marketing, business, or contemporary culture will want to be without this book.

Here,Wally Olins sets out the ground rules for branding success in the 21st century, explaining why understanding the links between business, brand and consumer has never been more vital for commercial success, and reflecting the recent enormous changes in the branding world. It will be an essential purchase for everyone in advertising, marketing and business who needs to understand why the most successful brands in the world triumph by making insiders believe in them and consumers buy into them.

"Wise, witty, readable, and very, very useful. A tour de force from the world's leading authority on branding." —Anthony Hopwood, Said Business School, Oxford Brands are a cultural phenomenon of our time. Yet, whether praised or derided, they have suffered from a critical debate characterized by routine thinking, glib assumptions, or mere prejudice. Wally Olins draws on a lifetime of marketing experience to explain why it is time to throw the old mission statements away, what happens when a brand goes global, when we shouldn't automatically assume that the customer comes first, and how it might be good news that branding is set to spread even further. Above all, Olins provides a positive rejoinder to the new orthodoxies of the "No Logo" critics of branding by showing how they confuse their views about brands with their views about capitalism. As he argues, brands are no longer just about corporations, products, and services. In fact, all the significant institutions in our lives—the towns, cities, regions, or countries in which we live, our sports teams and museums, our consumer groups and charities—are given strength, identity, a defining role, and a satisfying cohesion via branding, one of the most significant social—as well as business—developments of modern times. Always wise, questioning, and iconoclastic, Wally Olins takes us to the literal heart of the matter: our crucial neglect of the way in which consumer decisions about brands are as emotional as all the other important decisions in our lives. For everyone in marketing, advertising, design, and business, and for anyone who wants to understand how the world works in the early twenty-first century, this is one of those rare books that breaks the mold.

"This engaging and highly informative book presents twenty interviews with the world's leading designers, anthropologists and innovators in the field of branding. In a series of illuminating, spirited conversations with preeminent global brand designer Debbie Millman, these influential figures share their take on how and why humans have branded the world around us, and the ideas, inventions, and insight inherent in this process"--Provided by publisher.

It is, of course, commonplace for corporations to operate sophisticated identity programmes. But identity has now moved way beyond the commercial area. We live in a world in which cities, charities, universities, clubs - in fact any activity that involves more than two or three people - all seem to have identities too. However, very few of these organizations have released the full potential that effective management of identity can achieve. In this book, the world’s leading authority on corporate identity shows how managing identity can create and sustain behavioural change in an organization as well as achieving the more traditional outcome of influencing its external audiences. The New Guide to Identity provides a simple clear guide to identity, including what it is and how it can be used to full effect. If a change of identity is required, the whole process is described from start-up (including investigation and analysis of the current identity), through developing the new identity structure, to implementation and launch. For anyone responsible for the identity of an organization, or for designing it for someone else, or attempting to achieve change in their organization, or studying the subject, this straightforward guide is essential reading.

Monograph examining characteristics of design and image maintenance of industrial enterprises and industrial products, with particular reference to publicity techniques - explains the need to project identity through trade marks or symbols, and describes management techniques regarding the development of corporate identity, with particular consideration of the role of consultants in product development, commercialization, etc. Illustrations and references.