The Brand Gap
Marty Neumeier · 2003
The Brand Gap (2003) is a book by Marty Neumeier on Branding & Design Strategy. Marty Neumeier's whiteboard-style manifesto on the chasm between business strategy and creative execution, and the five disciplines, differentiate, collaborate, innovate, validate, cultivate, that close it.
The shortest, sharpest argument ever made that a brand is not your logo, it's the gut feeling in someone else's head, and design is how you shape it.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of The Brand Gap pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- A brand is not a logo, an identity system, or a product, it is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or organization. Because it lives in other people's heads, you don't own your brand; you can only influence it.
- The brand gap is the chasm between strategy and creativity, between the left-brain people who build spreadsheets and the right-brain people who build experiences. Most branding fails not from bad logic or bad design, but because nothing carries meaning across the gap.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Gap Nobody Owns
- A Brand Is a Gut Feeling
- Discipline One: Differentiate
- Discipline Two: Collaborate
- Discipline Three: Innovate: When Everybody Zigs, Zag
- Discipline Four: Validate
- Discipline Five: Cultivate
- Pulling the Disciplines Together
- Closing the Gap
Finish The Brand Gap tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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