“Congratulations!” Elvis Costello famously wrote in the liner notes to the re-re-issue of Goodbye Cruel World. “You’ve just purchased our worst album.” Chapter Two of Waiting for Your Cat to Bark is a quick riff on branding then and now, and brought that quote to mind because I think it’s the weakest in the book, but as with Costello I’d say the weakest is still better than a lot of people’s best.

In this case, it’s just a bridge, establishing some foundation and a flow of ideas that later chapters are built on. It can be summed up in three quotes which offer possible or partial definitions of branding:

• The need to establish and sustain name recognition and associative benefits.
• More about what you do than what you say.
• The experience has become the brand.

I've been of the opinion that brand is a synonym for reputation, and nothing here really changes my mind - although the discussion of how brands choose to play against Maslow's pyramid does begin to convince me that perhaps it's really a combination of image and reputation.

In any case ‘branding’ is changing, and for people who don’t read or think about this every day I’m sure the ideas are illuminating. Brands no longer have control because anyone with a keyboard and good writing and/or SEO skills can influence brand perceptions, and the sheer quantity and velocity of inputs is beyond just about anyone’s control. Those are radical changes from 10 let alone 20 or 30 years ago.

I think my beef with the chapter is that the case for the importance of branding to persuasion, or the significance of the impact of persuasion on branding, never seems to get made. So while the chapter helps paint the picture of the environment that we’re in, it’s one of the few threads the book creates that doesn’t seem to ever get tied off appropriately. (Someone please jump in and explain what I’m missing here.)

As a reader, however, these seven pages fly by, are filled with ideas and issues that set you into the frame of mind necessary for the rest of the book. And the book takes off fast from here, so buckle your seatbelts. This was the calm before the storm.

:: This is part of a chapter-by-chapter review and commentary on Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa Davis. Read the original review, and the Chapter 1 review. Reader comments are highly desired.