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Jim Stengel is the former head of marketing for Proctor & Gamble. The ideas he expresses in this book are consistent to those being expressed by Daniel Pink in “A Whole New Mind” and Jim Collins in his latest book, “Great By Choice”.

Stengel preaches that it’s essential for business leaders to combine ideals and artistry, very right-brained functions, with rigorous left-brained analysis in order to create a brand leading product or service . He collaborated with WPP’s Millward Brown Optimor’s neuroscience unit to use MRI’s to measure how quickly people associate ideals with brands.

The Stengel 50 list was created from this research. These companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 400% over the first decade of this century. Most importantly, they discovered that associations with a brand’s perceived ideas have a strong relationship with consumer preference, consideration and choice.

According to Stengel, a Brand Ideal is the essence of the business which is embraced by everyone in the company , from the CEO to the receptionist, and is amplified by everything that the company does. In these cynical times, that’s a tough order. So, like Jim Collins’ concept of “the right person in the right seat on the bus”, Stengel has found that the leaders in his Stengel 50 companies devote a lot of time and attention to recruiting with the idea that one bad hire can be highly toxic.

Daniel Pink talks about the need to think “symphonically”. Apparently, Stengel agrees. He believes that CEO’s need to be “whole-brained” which , I believe, means that they need to take a holistic approach and to think in terms of decades rather than months, quarters, or years. He introduces the concept of the Brand Artist, someone who is accountable for the soul of the brand and its ideal. Stengel says that a company needs to measure its progress on the ideal not only with customers but with employees as well.

According to Stengel , a brand’s success relies on its ability to satisfy one of the following fundamental values: elicit joy, enable connection, inspire exploration, evoke pride, or positively impact society. Bottom-line: your brand has to walk the walk as well as talk the talk in a world that demands transparency and authenticity.

One company on the Stengel 50 list is Chipotle. I’ve never been to one of their restaurants and I thought of Chipotle as another Taco Bell-type franchise. Then, I saw their TV spot during the SuperBowl
and my attitude towards the Chipotle brand changed.

As usual, I “read” the audiobook version. At times, I found the writing to be a bit stilted. Nevertheless, I think you’ll find the stories about the various brands and the concepts in this book to be both useful and enlightening.