BOOK REVIEWS
market niche. MTV is also shown to
be a good example of how to deal with
the problem faced by any youth brand,
namely that eventually your audience
outgrows you. MTV has dealt with this
problem by setting up VH1, ‘a music
channel aimed at a slightly older and
calmer viewership’.
Another youth brand analysed by
Haig is the jeans brand Diesel, whose
pioneering self-referential advertising
lampoons the over-inflated claims of
rival brands that promise to improve or
add meaning to our lives simply by
selling us a pair of jeans. The author
describes how Diesel deliberately ad-
vertises a kitsch, uncool, 1950s-style
ethos, which paradoxically makes it
even cooler.
Creating Passion Brands
by Helen Edwards and Derek Day
Kogan Page, London; 2005; ISBN 0 7494 43707; 238pp; paperback; £25
The blandness of consumer-led brands
is the central theme underpinning this
intellectually invigorating book. Ed-
wards and Day contend that the obses-
sive consumer-centric focus of most of
today’s brands results not so much in
customer satisfaction or delight, but
rather in a drab homogeneity wherein
brands strive to pander to fickle con-
sumer whims rather than boldly assert-
ing their own brand personality. The
authors take the view that ‘current
brand management practice, with its
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 13, NO. 2, 167–174 NOVEMBER 2005
When it comes to concluding what
sets apart the durably successful brands
featured in ‘Brand Royalty’ from less
successful brands, Haig suggests that
the examples in this book are successful
not because they conform to a neat
little set of laws that apply to all brands
but because they follow their own
individual path with confidence; suc-
cessful brands are similar in that they all
have a clear vision, but that vision is
never the same. The reader should find
plenty of inspiration and ideas regard-
ing clarity of vision and distinct brand
identity throughout this well-written,
very well-informed book.
Keith Dinnie
Book Review Editor
slavish devotion to consumer whims
and directives, is leading brands on
a road to nowhere’. Their proposed
solution lies in creating the passion
brands of the book’s title, brands which
remain true to themselves, maintaining
a keen awareness of consumer attitudes
but leading these attitudes rather than
following them.
CEOs, marketing professionals and
MBA students are the stated target
market for this book. Perhaps for this
reason, some flattery is thrown in the
169
BOOK REVIEWS
direction of academics in what is
otherwise a very hands-on practitioner
text: ‘Practitioners can learn from
academics — despite the latter’s lack
of practical experience, and arcane
terminology. We decode the gob-
bledygook and show how the latest
thinking from academia can trans-
form your brand.’ While there is no
doubt that gobbledygook flourishes in
academia, the two authors here are not
averse to ladling out some of their
own. When describing their ‘Brand
Trampoline’ model, whose four corners
comprise ideology, capability, consumer
and environment, readers are informed
that ‘each of the four corners has
become one of the trampoline’s legs;
the Passionpoint is now a small area in
the centre of the trampoline, a kind of
sweet spot, from which propulsion is at
once most forceful, effortless and
accurate’. Although talk of trampolines
and sweet spots may seem a bizarre
terminology to employ in the context
of managing brands, the metaphor is a
useful and actionable one, with its clear
identification of the need to achieve
strategic fit between brand and en-
vironment.
While at pains to point out that they
are not anti-consumer research, Ed-
wards and Day emphasise the risk of
sterile conservatism if brand strategy
is predicated purely upon what is
generally termed consumer insight.
The authors believe that ‘innovation is
blunted by the need to stay within the
consumer’s comfort zone’, and that ‘by
communing so earnestly with con-
sumers about what they want from
the brand or the sector they tether
creativity to the limits of the average
person’s imagination’. A brand must
therefore have the courage to filter
consumer opinion through its own
170 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 13, NO. 2, 167–174 NOVEMBER 2005
culture in order to provide truly
innovative differentiation. The familiar
example of the Sony Walkman is
trotted out to justify this standpoint, a
product which was launched based on
faith in its appeal that was not at all
justified by consumer research con-
ducted prior to the product launch.
One of the most insightful obser-
vations made in this excellent
book concerns the excessive use of
focus groups in contemporary brand
management. The authors point out
that 85 per cent of marketing’s total
qualitative research budget goes on
focus groups. This is despite the
existence of many alternative forms of
qualitative research that brands could
draw upon, if they displayed the
imagination and vision to do so. Some
of the less used qualitative op-
tions include ethnography, friendship
pairs, cooperative enquiry, accom-
panied shopping trips, video diaries and
discourse analysis. But it is the relative
ease and low cost of focus groups that
drives their ascendancy in the realm of
qualitative enquiry, according to the
authors, who also rightly stress the
artificial nature of the focus group
conversation and the exaggerated and
contrived level of detail with which
brands are discussed in a focus group
context. A more holistic view is
suggested by Edwards and Day, who
suggest that a more useful way of
employing qualitative research tech-
niques would be to aim for a more
rounded understanding of the way
people lead their lives and go about
their day — ‘consumers on consumers’
rather than ‘consumers on the brand’.
Some good examples of passion
brands are cited in order to illustrate
the book’s main themes. Innocent,
Camper shoes and Google are deemed

to be exemplary in their clearly stated
foundational beliefs, while there is a
very illuminating case study entitled ‘A
tale of two Co-ops’ in which the
contrasting fortunes of the Co-opera-
tive Food Retail Stores and the
Co-operative Bank are described. The
Co-op food stores are judged to have
foundered as a brand because they
allowed their beliefs to remain passive
and inert, whereas the Co-operative
Bank has prospered through redis-
covering and reinterpreting its long-
suppressed beliefs. As the authors point
out, the irony is that both brands are
closely related, in terms of their social
history and core beliefs, but one brand
has made its way in today’s world while
the other appears to have lost its way.
Three defining characteristics are
described as being possessed by passion
brands. First, they are brands with
active beliefs; secondly, they have
confidence rooted in capability; and
thirdly, they stay vibrant in an ever-
changing world. Unilever is presented
as an example of a company with
brands which fulfil the above criteria,
particularly in the case of its stain-
removal laundry brands which have the
confidence to proclaim ‘Dirt is good’.
As the authors indicate, in a category
where others are screaming ‘whiter
than white’, this is brilliantly dis-
arming. Other brands identified by
Edwards and Day as displaying con-
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 13, NO. 2, 167–174 NOVEMBER 2005
BOOK REVIEWS
fidence, momentum and ideological
clarity include Mercedes, Burberry,
Virgin, Sony, Nike, Samsung and
Hugo Boss.
Having described in some detail in
the first half of the book what
they mean by passion brands, the
authors devote the second half of the
book to how such brands may be
created. A number of key points are
made, such as someone senior should
own the project; team involvement
for key stages; cross-discipline teams
are better; a neutral moderator can
overcome hierarchy; outsiders will
broaden perspective; identify creatives
and mavens; be clear on roles and
responsibilities; build internal support
through involvement; and finally, be
tough on timing. Anyone who is
familiar with the new product develop-
ment process will have seen all of that
before; however, it is less usual to see
such a process advocated for brand
rather than new product development.
This exemplifies the authors’ holistic
view of best practice in brand manage-
ment. Edwards and Day offer a
refreshingly rounded view on brand
management, and their belief in the
need for brands to remain true to their
essence in a rapidly changing world is
an inspiring one.
Keith Dinnie
Book Review Editor
171