Q&A with Jenni Romaniuk of The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
With her latest book, Building Distinctive Brand Assets, now available, Jack Miles from Research World Connect recently spoke with Professor Jenni Romaniuk about the book’s background and contents.
RWC: What was the motivation for this book?
JR: Since developing the metrics and the Distinctive Asset Grid, we have been measuring the strength of Distinctive Assets for companies in a wide range of contexts, categories and countries. Each of those projects came with it’s own set of challenges. Sometimes it was the question that simulated the project, such as a call to change an asset, or concern about the branding performance in advertising. Other issues included concerns about a brand’s architecture, or when looking to buy a brand. Plus, there were questions that lead to us conducting specific R&D such as what are the ingredients of a good tagline Distinctive Asset.
As I reflected on the scope of the research we had done, for companies, and with our own R&D, I realised that it was like having one big conversation, but fragmented over many different people. Therefore any one person I spoke to was only exposed to a small part of the full story. A book seemed a good way to allow anyone who was interested in the topic to be part of the full conversation.
RWC: Of all the topics covered in How Brands Grow 1&2, why did you choose to focus the next book on distinct brand assets?
JR: Once I started talking to people about the book, the enthusiastic response also signalled there would be an audience that would value a book on this topic. On one level it was the easiest book to write, as it is a nice, relatively self-contained topic. As Distinctive Assets are, by their nature, visible to people external to a company, I saw many high profile well-intended mistakes being made, mistakes that could be easily corrected or avoided with improved knowledge.
I also find writing books a great way to organise my own knowledge and highlight the gaps where I need to learn more, and this informs our on-going R&D. These chapters will be in the next edition!
Read the full interview on RW Connect.