"The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation: Creating, Protecting, and Repairing Your Most Valuable Asset" By Ronald J. Alsop; Wall Street Journal Books; 306 pp; $26.00
Alsop, a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter on branding and reputation management, provides eighteen crucial laws for companies grappling with the 800-pound gorilla in the
boardroom (Corporate Governance). These range from law No. 2 (Know Thyself- Measure Your Reputation) to law No. 7 (Create an Emotional Appeal) to law No. 13 (Beware the Dangers of
Reputation Rub-Off) to law No. 15 (Fix it Right the First Time). The book is divided into three sections; the first two on how to establish and maintain a good reputation and the
third on repairing a damaged reputation. Alsop assesses some of the wrecked companies in the last few years, from Enron to WorldCom, and how companies can learn from their lethal
mistakes. But as Alsop puts it in the preface, "Poisoned reputations aren't restricted to corporate America these days. Just consider the recent damage to the reputations of the
Roman Catholic Church, Major League Baseball, and even the Boy Scouts of America."
"Brand Portfolio Strategy Creating Relevance Differentiation, Leverage and Clarity" By David Aaker; Free Press; 343 pp; $28.00
A refresher course on how companies can maximize their brands, a practice that Aaker says is sorely lacking in corporate America. Through detailed case studies of such mega
brands as IBM, Intel, Sony and CitiGroup, Aaker shows how successful brand management works. For a long time, Dove was just a bar of soap, but the company was able to leverage its
connection to moisturizing to create other toiletries -- including body wash and deodorant -- that helped the firm develop the market momentum needed for a major brand
franchise.
But before you can establish a brand strategy, you need to properly identify your brand. Is it a "master brand," a primary indicator of the product being offered; a "subbrand'
that augments or modifies the association of a master brand or an "umbrella brand," which defines a grouping of products offered (Microsoft Word) under a common brand (Microsoft
Office). Aaker, Vice-Chairman of Prophet, a management consulting business specializing in brand marketing, and a former professor at the Haas School of Business at the University
of California-Berkeley, offers step-by-step advice on what to do when your brand is tired or bland or (yikes) has become irrelevant.
"Word Craft: The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business" By Alex Frankel; Crown Books; 241 pp; $24.00
If cooler heads hadn't prevailed the high rollers might be walking around punching instant messages into their "Hulas" instead of BlackBerrys. Frankel (Fast Company, New York
Times Magazine, Wired) takes the reader through a previously undiscovered world of "professional namers," the people who invent words (at considerable cost to corporations) that
(PR execs can only hope and pray) become part of the country's everyday vernacular. He uses in-depth studies of five words - BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra (a completely fabricated
word), the Porsche Cayenne and IBM's e-business - to show how words shape and move the marketplace.
Yet the stories go beyond business and product launches, with a provocative look at the fallout caused by the sale of naming rights to Denver's Mile High Stadium (as well as
all the goodwill that is forfeited with fans when stadiums are named after corporations, a trend that seems to have run its course. "Enron Field," anyone?) Frankel also takes a
fascinating look at Lexicon, the world's largest professional naming firm that since 1984 has created more than 1,500 names for products and services, many of which (Apple,
Pentium) are now household names.