On Purpose: Delivering a Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan

There are some great quotes in this book, and I'd like to start with a few.

Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable

A cynic is a romantic with higher standards

Luxury isn't a long car…it's free wifi and movies on demand

This is a book about business things – branding, specifically. How to communicate your purpose to customers through an identifiable marketing strategy. How to ensure your company portrays the image you want and how to get your staff, and customers, to buy into it.

Promising real memorable stories not management jargon and leaders talking from the heart, not speaking from the corporate script this is far less formal than many of the business books on my bookshelf. This has both plusses and minuses. It's an easy read, which is great, but you almost get the feeling that it's not quite as meticulously put together as a text book might be, and you might not feel too comfortable referencing it in your MBA.

A lot of the content is interviews. If you like corporate biographies or even those full page spreads in the Sunday papers where they get down to the nitty gritty with business leaders, this book will have instant appeal. I found these really interesting and so diverse – from telecoms to key cutters. I learned several things I didn't know about some of the companies featured, so in a way they certainly managed to sneak in some subtle brand promotion there.

I didn't quite understand the point of the many links to web resources – perhaps because I read a paperback version and was usually far away from the computer at the time, so never really followed up on them. This would work better in an e-book of course, but for a paperback it was a little lacking in purpose and the links were too raw – just http references without details of what you would find there.

It may sound a little ironic to say I struggled a little with the purpose of this book. It was entertaining, and I especially liked the case studies and interviews, but it almost felt like these overtook the book itself, rather than working to complement it, and some of the original content got a little lost. I felt like I was reading a series of unconnected case studies which, while interesting, needed tighter knitting together for a smoother read. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it, and I got several quotes from it I have been spouting at work since, but I feel like there may be better books on branding out there if you do have a specific interest in this topic.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending us a copy to review.

For more on the subject, have a look at Branding Only Works On Cattle by Jonathan Salem Baskin.

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You can read more book reviews or buy On Purpose: Delivering a Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy On Purpose: Delivering a Branded Customer Experience People Love by Shaun Smith and Andy Milligan at Amazon.com.

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