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Book Review: Branding Only Works On Cattle

Written by: Jay Hamilton-Roth

Article Overview: In Jonathan Salem Baskin’s book, Branding Only Works On Cattle, he takes firm aim at the practice of the marketing practice of branding. He defines branding as building consumer awareness with the goal of influencing their future behavior. Simply put, he believes that branding is useless.

Book Review: Branding Only Works On Cattle

In Jonathan Salem Baskin’s book, Branding Only Works On Cattle, he takes firm aim at the practice of the marketing practice of branding. He defines branding as building consumer awareness with the goal of influencing their future behavior. Simply put, he believes that branding is useless.

Traditional marketing is focused on behavior: identifying prospective customers, their needs, and communicating how your business solves their problems. Behavior is measurable. Either someone takes action or they don’t. Split testing on messages can give statistically valuable information to improve your marketing campaign. You can optimize your marketing based on the response you do (or don’t) get.

Traditional branding is intangible. How can you measure the influence of someone’s future behavior? When it comes time to make a purchase decision, people don’t decide in a vacuum. They ask their community for input, do research, and then purchase. Impulse purchases aren’t made based on brand either; impulse happens on the spur-of-the-moment, and is based on the offering targeting the immediate need at the right price.

In the past, branding was possible because customers had few choices (besides their immediate community) - television (with just a few channels) and magazines. Larger corporations could spend money to control the messages of these limited media. The Internet has allowed people to easily search for information. Search, the author contends, is the enemy of brand. Search allows people to find information anywhere (not just in company-controlled locations). The end result is that companies are simply trying to scream louder to get their message heard about the din.

The author also believes that social online “communities” are a poor way to brand/market your company. Most of these communities aren’t really communities - people can be anonymous, there’s no shared responsibility, no trust, and no informal conversations.

Instead he suggests paying attention to the basic strategies of guerrilla marketing, which are focused on changing near-term behavior:

1. Support existing behaviors, don’t create them [piggyback on habit]
2. Show, don’t tell [by example]
3. Prompt behaviors, not ideas [cause action]
4. Talk to many, every time you talk [involvement by dialog]

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Article Tags: aim, brand search, cattle, choices, community television, consumer awareness, corporations, end result, impulse purchases, informal conversations, jonathan, marketing campaign, online communities, paying attention, prospective customers, purchase decision, shared responsibility, spur of the moment, traditional marketing, vacuum



Related Forum Posts
Re: Top 50 Lists - Hi Evan, How about "Top 50": -Inventor Blogs To Watch -Franchising Blogs To Watch -Business Book Review Blogs -Women Entrepreneur Blogs -Young Entrepreneur Blogs
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
Re: Significance of Review Sites - Exactly! Review sites are very helpful for providing better understanding to a product or service.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.


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