Bigger Than This: How to turn any venture into an admired brand
Fabian Geyrhalter
Brandtro Publishing (January 2018)

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

I was reminded again of Maya Angelou’s observation as I began to read Fabian Geyrhalter’s book and came upon this passage: “A new wave of commodity brands is winning hearts and is teaching us how to turn any product into an admired brand.” Almost everything sold is a commodity. To create or increase demand, marketers must be prepared to answer three questions. Here are the first two: “Who are you?” and “What do you offer?” Responses to the third question determine the winners and the losers: “Why should I care?”

A popular post on HBR‘s site, by Dan Pallotta, was headlined “A logo is not a brand.” That is a familiar enough declaration, and not far from the phrasing I use myself on the subject of brands. I clicked on the link expecting to find a familiar argument. But what I found was very different.

Pallotta’s smart observation is that “Brand is everything, and everything is brand.” By that he means that all the things a business does — not just its logo and visuals, but also its strategy, call to action, customer service, communications with customers, and people — combine to determine what it stands for. Thus he concludes, “Ultimately, brand is about caring about your business at every level and in every detail, from the big things like mission and vision, to your people, your customers and every interaction anyone is ever going to have with you, no matter how small.” To Pallotta, a brand is essentially a performance promise incarnate.

Most (if not all) brands make promises and thereby create expectations. If a brand keeps all its promises and meets all expectations, it succeeds. Otherwise it fails. Geyrhalter adds another critically important ingredient to successful marketing’s secret sauce: The brands that consumers have gone nuts for “strive for what I call the AND?DNA…the search for something that was not inherent in the DNA of their offering but in the DNA of their carefully crafted and authentic brand story.” Think of this “something” in terms of the unexpected value it adds.

Brands send messages and it is much more difficult today than ever before for them to reach their destinations amidst the tsunami of other messages that also compete for attention. All of the carefully crafted and authentic brand stories to which Geyrhalter refers anchor their messages in a human context with which most people can identify. If you have seen the commercial for Shriner’s Hospital during which a boy in a wheelchair offers an “adorable blanket” to everyone who pledges monthly support to help “kids like me,” you know exactly what I mean.

Here’s another of Geyrhalter’s key points: “People will always be drawn to brands. We find comfort in associating ourselves with a brand image that evokes an emotional reaction in us, and we like to share it so it attracts like-minded people to us.”

With regard to this book’s title, it refers to WHEN the narrative components — the background story, values, cause, sense of location, small delight, trust, solidarity, and customization — are all bigger than the given product.

As I reflect on these and other other issues, I am hard-pressed to think of any product or service in the global marketplace that is not a commodity. Perhaps works of art. This book will be of substantial value to those in any organization — whatever its size and nature may be — who are primarily responsible for creating or increasing demand for the commodity their organization offers. After they read and then re-read Bigger Than This, they can apply Fabian Geyrhalter’s suggestions and recommendations that are most appropriate to the given circumstances.