Book Review

Time and again you will find books that turn widely accepted business principles upside down. Moment of Truth is such a book. It demonstrates what makes brands successful.

The key success factors are not characteristics of the product or customer needs but customers' values.

The authors, Roland Berger partners Andreas Bauer, Bjorn Bloching and Kai Howaldt and marketing expert Alan Mitchell, highlight brand management from a new standpoint and therefore challenge fundamental elements of long-established methods of brand management being applied in many corporations today.

The Chinese version of Moment of Truth was published this month by Volumes Publishing Company, China, and priced at 50 yuan.

Moment of Truth is based on research papers and examples from consultancies with accounts in the consumer and business-to-business market. This book reveals that a brand is not best defined by product characteristics being created by brand managers. Rather, this happens through people's values in buying the brand.

However, this book goes beyond a solely conceptual framework. The authors develop a data-based method that helps companies to monitor and manage every step of their brand management starting from a first insight into customer behavior to strategy development and implementation.

This proven technique is also suitable for finding niches in existing markets, designing a brand architecture and developing global market strategies.

Therefore employees' understanding and commitment can be encouraged and strategic alliances between companies and brands can be built up. Thus brand management becomes an important part of corporate strategy and CEO responsibility.

(China Daily 11/30/2007 page15)