Publications

"Today’s margins are tomorrow’s pot of gold – if you know where and how to look."

A counterintuitive take on the enigma of growth

Legacy brands are struggling. The hand-to-hand combat for advantage has become a zero-sum game – producing small share gains and losses but nothing to bring about sensational new growth.

This book shows why businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs need to break free from their ‘mainstream inhibition’ and turn their attention to the margins – to confront, evaluate and embrace the strangeness of behaviours, ideas and ways of life at the fringes.

Why? Because marginal behaviours can break through and take off. They can go mainstream. They can unleash ‘consumer-driven disruption’,  promoting new innovation, new routes to market, new winners and losers – and new growth.

Published February 2023

Eat your greens book cover
"In the context of the marketplace, ‘love’ is an overstatement. Let’s put the word to rest. But that still leaves a space where a quieter force holds sway."

Is there any such thing as brand love?

This was the title of Helen Edwards’ chapter in the Account Planning Group’s 2018 compendium of evidence-based marketing theory. It’s a big question. The answer is a tour de force embracing a remarkable consumer psychology study, a masterclass on the three-decade body of symbolic consumption theory, and a new concept to bring clarity to the heated brand loyalty debate: ‘loyalty at parity’.

There are other great chapters in there from some of the sharpest thinkers in the discipline. One you have to have.

"What is a brand for? It is for changing the world. It is for improving the lot of human existence. It is for making a small difference based on big convictions."

A trenchant chapter on brand belief

The Sage Definitive Book of Branding pulls together contributions from marketing experts all around the world – exploring topics such as challenger brands, storytelling, co-creation, brand valuation, cause marketing, internal brand engagement, global branding and more.

Passionbrand’s chapter, co-authored by Helen Edwards and Derek Day, examines the extraordinary power of brand belief – and the wisdom of the economist George Gilder’s famous dictum: ‘Capitalism begins by giving’.

Read the chapter here

"A lucid examination of brand DNA." Sir Tim Clark, President, Emirates Airline

What is a Passion Brand?

Some brands inspire passionate advocacy in consumers and employees. These ‘Passion Brands’ have 5 things in common:

  1. They have something important to say about contemporary life
  2. They act out of beliefs, not just the latest focus group findings
  3. They are good at something that’s good for people – and stick to it
  4. They have integrity: the brand is intuitively understood and manifested throughout the business
  5. They are never sanctimonious, boastful or dull

The partners’ first book was published in 2005. The cases are a bit dated now, but the thinking is as relevant as ever.