Bold Brand 2.0 by Josh Miles is a refreshing read on rebranding/repositioning a company, so your firm can stand out amongst the sea of competition. The Bold Brand’s niche is the A/E/C marketplace; however, the bulk of the book is applicable to nearly any industry. Bold Brand 2.0 encourages a company to periodically distill its brand down to its core, then evaluate your brand on how it is reflected across the company’s ecosystem, to ensure the branding is consistent and coherent throughout. Moreover, it advocates evaluating a customer’s journey to identify opportunities, which can be a tedious exercise, but totally revealing.
Bold Brand 2.0 is comprehensive, covering topics from the mechanics of an effective tagline to minute (albeit important) details on which marketing assets you should consider trademarking. Other branding concepts explored include: marketing follies that service brands continue to make, five fears of social media, origins of brand strategy, importance of keeping your brand fresh, HR practices, and corporate identity.
Above are just a few of the marketing concepts that inhabit this worthy read. Unlike marketing textbooks, the layout is easy to digest and even offers “homework and pointers” on how to execute initiatives. In fact, I would venture to say that this is much more than a branding book. It delves into company culture, how to identify a customer’s pain points, how to evaluate a customer’s user experience, The Art of War, and how to frame your value proposition. Given that I recently gave Bold Brand 2.0 a first read, there could be some recency bias for all the praise that I have shared with the reader. Shortcomings? It was written in 2017, so it could use a refresh on the social media section and a chapter on how to leverage AI in the digital marketing space. For now, it will occupy a prominent place on my shelf, so I can continue to reinvigorate my company’s brand