Brand Identity Breakthrough: How to Craft Your Company's Unique Story to Make Your Products Irresistible

Can you be trusted? Can you trust the person you are doing business with? Gregory V. Diehl, in his excellent Brand Identity Breakthrough, emphasizes the role of trust and integrity in allowing businesses to succeed.Commerce involves an exchange of things or services of value, and if either side is cheating, the other goes home hurt. Sometimes the exchanges are not simultaneous, and one trusts while waiting. We pay my wife’s nurses the week before they work. If something happened to me, I’d want them to be sure to get paid while things were sorted out. In most jobs, workers do the work, and trust their employers to pay them after.Sometimes the trust revolves around quality. When we buy something, we rely on the seller to have provided what was promised and not to have covered up hidden defects.Diehl’s highly informative book is divided into five sections, with twelve chapters, five case studies, and three appendices…a wealth of material. The section titles are below, with my comments following them and with Diehl’s words in quotation marks:I. Why Identity MattersIn a country of over 300 million people, we have lots of choices with whom to do business.We have to identify those who have something we want and can be trusted to deal with us fairly.We have to make ourselves stand out from the others who seem much like us, if we are to get the deal. We have quality, price, reputation, convenience, appearance, and many other elements to use to create our “brand,” the shorthand mental description of how our potential customers see us.Diehl urges the entrepreneur to ask repeatedly, “How do I create value today?” Not, “How can I get them to buy today?”Creating value should precede exchange.II. Creating Your Brand IdentityIn the Wild West, the cattleman’s brand on his cattle indicated they belonged to him. Today, a company’s brand goes beyond that: firms use it to indicate that they stand by their products’ quality. Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Cadillac, BMW, Audi…all represent sets of values attested to by the brand owners.For the small business entrepreneurs who are Diehl’s primary audience, the challenge is to find their Unique Selling Proposition, their USP, and then use it to find their “tribe,” their most likely customers, buyers who prize what the seller is offering. It is like fitting the key in the lock, or finding the right niche.“Know thyself,” Socrates advised, and so does Diehl. Easier said than done, but Diehl gives probing questions to help one find out what is of paramount importance, what is to be emphasized to oneself and others.Socrates did not follow up with “Know thy customer,” but Diehl would. To create something of value for another person requires finding out what that person actually values. Diehl gives examples of entrepreneurs who had at best only hazy ideas of what the customers wanted.Steve Jobs famously believed that sometimes the customers don’t know they want it until you create it. Focus groups are thought by many to be the solution to this, but they fail, for understandable reasons.So: figure out what you have of value to offer to others, then tell them who you are and what you are selling, and find out if they want it.III. Telling Your Story to the WorldWhether Aesop’s Fables or parables from the Bible, stories have long been used to carry messages: “slow but steady wins the race,” “don’t look back,” etc.Stories stay in our minds the way brief adages do not. To sell yourself or your products or services successfully, tell a story.Diehl, a world-traveling teacher for part of his life, would rescue a homeless cat, then cuddle with it in a busy location, telling mildly dramatic stories about the cat to those who asked him; inevitably, a listener would volunteer to give the cat a home.What you have to offer is almost certainly in greater demand than an bedraggled and emaciated cat, so if you learn how to tell an engaging story about yourself and your products or services, you are likely to make the sale.I joined with millions of others in purchasing the recordings made by Susan Boyle, after her dramatic up-from-obscurity victory in the British television talent show. Her beautiful singing voice was almost unheard before this. There’s a story!Diehl notes that a strong narrative will appeal to more than just those who recognize the basic elements of your offer; it will raise your own emotional involvement in your business and the involvement of your employees. Furthermore, your saga can help you outshine competitors having mere lackluster stories of their own. It shapes the direction and goals of your business and raises a banner to attract potential allies and partners.Critical to your success is to define: your core idea, your marketing target, and what your target needs; then ask yourself squarely, “Why should they buy it from me?”That last question is particularly difficult, Diehl notes, as the entrepreneur is likely not able to see his (or her!) own value, He cites examples of the dissonance between what his entrepreneur clients thought their customers wanted and what they told Diehl they wanted or how they saw these businesses.In sum, “Mastering the art of communication will make people want to work with you, and customers want to buy from you.” Sounds important, no?IV. Brand Identity Case StudiesDiehl gives five case studies of people he helped greatly increase their marketability with the benefit of his counseling. This is an example of “social proof,” evidence for his claims.V. Resources for Prospective EntrepreneursThe principal components of this section are: a set of definitions for the most important entrepreneurial terms and “50 Useful Starting Questions for New Entrepreneurs” and “Making Money Online.” The 50 questions are indeed most useful.*****I really like Diehl’s emphasis on the moral basis of commerce. He notes that we get money either through stealing it (through force or fraud), being given it, or earning it, the latter involving exchanging value for value, admirably. He has no patience for those who cheat, and he tells how he made his displeasure known effectively when someone failed to treat him fairly in the preparation of this book.As Diehl notes, books can give us solid grounding in the ideas needed for success, but often we require one-on-one training and counseling to translate those principles into successful action. This wonderful book will get its readers much of the way there. If you are like me, you will wrestle with whether to spend big money to be coached, but you will be glad you read the book.

Mr. Diehl’s Table of Contacts is quite intriguing. The topics made me hearken back to studying marketing & public relations a couple years back, plus two authors’ and their books on marketing, Peter Guber: Tell to Win and Joe Vitale: Hypnotic Writing.Public Relations and Marketing dwells on the development of your brand identity and unique selling proposition to be heard above the noise in the marketplace, but unlike school that grazes over the challenges and the implementation, Mr. Diehl’s book gives you step-by-step analysis to put into practice.Mr. Diehl reminds us that we, as entrepreneurs must be adaptable to survive. He further reminds us by using a saying I like that unless you are growing you are dying (or as I say going backwards-which is definitely another form of dying). Many of the larger companies that thought they were too big to have to be adaptable are no longer in existence or are dying. Think Blockbuster in recent past, especially when Netflix came along and now slowly Kodak, because of the digital explosion.What does this have to do with Mr. Diehl’s book and brand identity for you, you ask. Think of brand identity as one of the biggest and most useful of tools in your entrepreneurial tool chest (Maybe pliers.) and you will use it more often, rather that creating it, putting on a shelf and massaging it from time to time. First of all Mr. Diehl gives you three questions to ask yourself, (the CEO/Founder) of the company and then the subsequent staff or partners to get down to the nuts and bolts of not just why the business was created and why will the targeted audience desire to use the product or service. Mr. Diehl emphasizes that our businesses must be viewed from it specific niche audiences’ point-of-view. Often entrepreneurs fall in love with the idea of their businesses and its usefulness without any real thought or testing behind it other than the fact that they are in love with it, so why wouldn’t everyone else (in their niche) be in love with it too.Mr. Diehl offers three questions that will get to the heart of the matter and encourages you, the entrepreneur to delve even deeper into the main marketing ideas. Marketing is closer to public relations than it is to sales, even though marketing and sales are more often than not thrown together. And yes, marketing does feed sales, but as Mr. Diehl points out it is after the relationship has been built between product or service provider and their customer, that the sales come. And this is even if you’ve never spoken to your potential client or customer. Your website and what you say on it starts your stepping stone to a relationship. In hopes of it being a repeat relationship through sales.Rightfully so, marketing is the communication bridge between you the entrepreneur and your best and recurring client (sales). Mr. Diehl goes on to suggest entrepreneurs get as personable as possible on the website, print materials or even person-to-person, so that the client/customer can feel a connection with them. The connection is beyond the product or service and more to the ideas, values and plain understanding of who their client is, why they’d desire your product or service once and then repeatedly.As we get more and more disconnected in our everyday lives through electronics and social media it becomes imperative that the values behind the products and services are clear and understood by your client. Not in a superficial way just to sell something, but in a meaningful way, that shows who you and your staff or company is when it comes to your value principles. These value principles hold each client/customers up as someone special to the company, on the client/customer’s terms, not the company’s. And isn’t that what most people are desirous of experiencing? They’d rather be treated well and special rather than just another number to be gotten through.Coaches or mentors are always telling the entrepreneur, “Get clear about who you are within your business.” Or “Don’t say you are “a _____, that doesn’t make you special enough from anyone else doing the same or similar thing.” Or “How are your services different and why would someone buy from you?” Maybe in the past you knew the answers to all of these, but were unable to express them at the drop of a hat to your immediate audience or even to friends to make them wish to get more details. Mr. Diehl’s book assists you in getting to the heart of the why and who you, your staff, your company’s values and your targeted audiences’ chief desires.It’s an easy and understandable read complete with complementary case studies so that we get a feel of what someone like us has gone through to feel from the inside-out what their company is all about and how it can make their target audience happy answering most if not all of their desires. Being able to do that helps them and helps the entrepreneur feel confident and secure. You and your target niche benefit from your self-evaluation and offering them value-based services geared to making them happy. Their happiness can with solid footing, as long as it can and you continue re-emphasizing and growing through your core values.

This book offers good information for entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to craft a unique and compelling brand identity. The author breaks down the process of storytelling and brand development into clear, actionable steps, making it accessible for readers at any stage of their business journey. The case studies included are particularly helpful, providing real-world examples of how the principles discussed can be applied. However, as a visual learner, I found the lack of graphics and visual aids a bit of a drawback. The concepts, while solid, would have been easier to digest with the support of diagrams or illustrations to bring the ideas to life.Additionally, the book could benefit from improved formatting. The flow of information is sometimes disrupted by the text layout, which can make it challenging to stay engaged. Despite these issues, the content itself is strong, and the book is still a valuable resource for those looking to enhance their brand identity. If you're willing to overlook the formatting quirks and can supplement your reading with some external visuals, you'll find plenty of actionable insights to help your business stand out.

Brand identity is a must-read for any new entrepreneur. I have taken a course with another platform, for which I paid a lot of money, and this books summarizes the most important aspects of brand identity. Gregory takes us on a journey of identify our unique story to tell, so we can sell more products (and services).

El libro es bueno aunque un poco repetitivo y la información encontrada no es totalmente nueva, vamos es información que puedes encontrar en internet

Si vous parlez anglais et que vous en avez assez des livres "branding" ou "marketing" qui sont surtout saveur mais n'ont aucun fond, alors ce livre vous plaira. A 150 pages environ plus les annexes, il est relativement court mais pas une page n'est sacrifiée sur l'autel du "blablatons". C'est plus que rafraîchissant. Les exemples sont bien ciblés et toujours intéressants - quand ils ne sont pas drôles. Bref, un livre à ne pas manquer si vous cherchez à créer une marque - ou VOUS, marque - et que vous maîtrisez l'anglais.

I learned a lot of very useful things about how to look at my brand differently. I will definitely think differently about how to talk about what I do now.

of Gregory's life adventures, intertwined expertly with his message as he demonstrates "How to craft your...unique story" to make anything irresistible. Whether you are an entrepreneur, executive or experience seeker, applying the principles detailed here will expand your life.From focusing on features of yourself to clearly communicating the benefits you offer others, Gregory takes us through the journey that many never even start. Culminating in the interrogation that everyone needs, this book will sharpen your image and help you let the world "...know what (you) were born to do..."Cliff notes/TLDR;-Buy it-Enjoy the story-Try and answer all 50 questions!-Not really cliffs, I must admit. (I read a lot.) But the world needs people with purpose.-Find yours. Step-by-step.