This important Handbook explores new and emerging directions in both brand management research and practice. It encompasses a diverse set of approaches including the latest academic research offering new frameworks for understanding brand management, the researcher's perspective on current tools in practice by brand managers, new research and conceptual frameworks for understanding and managing customer experiences and recent empirical research and scale development in both brand and experience management. The book focuses on practical, managerial, and organizational best practices.The contributors comprise top marketing scholars and practitioners. They examine key topics such as brand attachment, brand permission, and brand meaning; new contextual factors such as digital convergence, target group multiplicity, and the rise of experience economies; and new research domains such as empirical tests of consumer experiences, incidental brand exposure, and brand naming. Researchers in the areas of marketing, business, management, sociology and psychology will find this an engaging read. For brand practitioners and libraries this volume will be a critical addition to their collections.

Engaging, enlightening, provocative, and sensational are the words people use to describe compelling experiences and these words also describe this extraordinary book by Bernd Schmitt.
Moving beyond traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing, Schmitt presents a revolutionary approach to marketing for the branding and information age. Schmitt shows how managers can create holistic experiences for their customers through brands that provide sensory, affective, and creative associations as well as lifestyle marketing and social identity campaigns.
In this masterful handbook of tools and techniques, Schmitt presents a battery of business cases to show how cutting-edge companies use "experience providers" such as visual identity, communication, product presence, Web sites, and service to create different types of customer experiences. To illustrate the essential concepts and frameworks of experiential marketing, Schmitt provides:
SENSE cases on Nokia mobile phones, Hennessy cognac, and Procter & Gamble's Tide Mountain Fresh detergent;
FEEL cases on Hallmark, Campbell's Soup, and Haagen Dazs Cafes in Asia, Europe, and the United States;
THINK cases on Apple Computer's revival, Genesis ElderCare, and Siemens;
ACT cases on Gillette's Mach3, the Milk Mustache campaign, and Martha Stewart Living;
RELATE cases on Harley-Davidson, Tommy Hilfiger, and Wonderbra.
Using the New Beetle and Sony as examples, Schmitt discusses the strategic and implementation intricacies of creating holistic experiences for customers. In an intriguing final chapter, he presents turn-around techniques such as "Objective: To Dream," "Send in the Iconoclasts," and "Quit the Bull," to show how traditional marketing firms can transform themselves into experience-oriented organizations.
This book will forever change your perception of customers, marketing, and brands -- from Amtrak and Singapore Airlines to Herbal Essences products and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There is no way to mistake the ubiquitous trademarked Coca-Cola bottle, or the stylish ads for Absolut Vodka with any of their competitors. How have these companies created this irresistible appeal for their brands? How have they sustained a competitive edge through aesthetics? Bernd Schmitt and Alex Simonson, two leading experts in the emerging field of identity management, offer clear guidelines for harnessing a company's total aesthetic output -- its "look and feel" -- to provide a vital competitive advantage. Going beyond standard traditional approaches on branding, this fascinating book is the first to combine branding, identity, and image and to show how aesthetics can be managed through logos, brochures, packages, and advertisements, as well as sounds, scents, and lighting, to sell "the memorable experience." The authors explore what makes a corporate or brand identity irresistible, what styles and themes are crucial for different contexts, and what meanings certain visual symbols convey. Any person in any organization in any industry can benefit from employing the tools of "marketing aesthetics." Schmitt and Simonson describe how a firm can use these tools strategically to create a variety of sensory experiences that will (1) ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty; (2) sustain lasting customer impressions about a brand's or organization's special personality; (3) permit premium pricing; (4) provide legal "trade dress" protection from competitive attacks; (5) lower costs and raise productivity; and (6) most importantly, create irresistible appeal. The authors show how to manage identity globally and how to develop aesthetically pleasing retail spaces and environments. They also address the newly emergent topic of how to manage corporate and brand identity on the Internet. Supporting their thesis with numerous real-world success stories such as Absolut Vodka, Nike, the Gap, Cathay Pacific Airlines, Starbucks, the New Beetle Website, and Lego, the authors explain how actual companies have developed, refined, and maintained distinct corporate identities that set them apart from competitors.