Branding Only Works on Cattle

In this essential guide to understanding how branding is evolving, learn how companies affect behavior via marketing communications, distribution strategies, and customer service. Most people don't know it yet, but branding is dead. Sure, we need to know about the stuff we want to buy, but the billions of dollars spent on logos, sponsorships, and jingles have little, if anything, to do with actual consumer behavior. For example:

• Dinosaur-headed execs in Microsoft ads didn't help sell software.
• Citibank's artsy "live richly" billboards didn't prompt a single new account.
• United Airlines' animated TV commercials didn't fill more seats on airplanes.

As branding guru Jonathan Baskin reveals, modern consumers are harder to find, more difficult to convince, and near-impossible to retain. They make decisions based on experience--so what matters isn't how creative, cool, or memorable the advertising is, but how companies can directly target consumer behavior. Pretty pictures and funny taglines should be an afterthought: brands must target what consumers actually do.