Accidental Branding

Title: Accidental Branding

Author: David Vinjamuri

Publisher: Wiley

Pages: 212

ISBN: 978-0-470-16506-5

Brands are extremely important. We are all agreed on this. Brands give companies higher margins and help to avoid a possibly ruinous price war. Nor are the benefits of brands restricted to companies alone. For consumers, brands are a promise of quality. They don't have to worry about getting ripped off. Brands are also a status symbol and part of personal identity. But the question remains, how are brands formed?

There have been many attempts to answer this question. Business books are full of recommendations on how to create brands. Accidental branding takes a somewhat different tack. It takes a look at brands that have become so fortuitously and tries to identifies the factors that made these brands successful. In a vicious marketplace in which most brands fail, what caused these brands to succeed specially when you consider that they did not follow the usually prescribed methods of branding. A noble objective which unfortunately falls flat on its face. Its as if you think you are going to have a rich dessert but are instead presented with a thin souffle.

Mr. Vinjamuri distills the lessons of these brands early in the book specifically the second chapter. Afterwards case histories of the selected accidental brands are presented. Sadly these histories prove to be insipid and uninspiring. After reading them you realize that you know a little bit about the person involved but you know nothing about what helped him or her develop the brand like they did. Its a eulogy to a personality. Basically a biography. My advice: read the second chapter and ignore the rest. You will get to know the lessons of the book and not waste any time.