Brand New Brand Book
Menomonie marketing guru wants to grab your attention in 8 seconds or less
"You don’t have time to blow it."
The first sentence in international branding expert David Brier’s newly published hardcopy and e-book, Brand Intervention: 33 Steps to Transform the Brand You Have into the Brand You Need, is prophetic.
He goes on.
“Clients are almost always taking shortsighted steps, and are nearly always ‘drunk’ from drinking their own Kool-Aid of ‘how much blood, sweat, and tears they poured into their product.’ Passion is great, but it does not convey to those of us unfamiliar with your product or service why we should stop and notice your new baby you’ve introduced to the world.” – David Brier, author and branding expert
According to a recent study by Microsoft, he writes, “Goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds before flicking onto the next item (we humans now have the attention span of 8 seconds, compared to the 12-second attention span we allegedly used to possess).”
“That’s right. One second less than a freaking goldfish,” he writes.
While writing, Brier searched amazon.com for books about branding, which yielded more than 8,000 results. “Will your brand’s message engage your audience in 8 seconds?” Brier asks, “or leave them drowning in a sea of marketing debris?”
Brier is owner, president, and creative director of DBD International (motto: “Where Brands Defy Gravity and Rise Above the Noise”) in Menomonie. He has clients throughout the United States and around the world. He has worked on thousands of global brands including Estée Lauder, Revlon, Jim Henson Associates, and Rolling Stone magazine, and local brands that we all know, including Legacy Chocolates, The Coffee Grounds, Big Dot of Happiness, Downtown Eau Claire Inc. (with its “Nothing Artificial” branding), and the City of Menomonie (“Right in the Middle of Everywhere”).
Brier wrote this book for everyone from startups to businesses of any size. He has branded local companies and even cities. In the text, he outlines the 33 proven “make-it-happen” steps to successfully create a brand in today’s world.
The full-color book is visually stunning and a fast, fun, and memorable read with his 33 steps clearly communicated and based on his 35 years as a practitioner in the branding biz. He boils branding down to four words: “the art of differentiation.” According to Brier, ROI is not “return on investment” as commonly taught in most branding textbooks, but rather “return on ingenuity.”
Brier is a native New Yorker: Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, he kickstarted his design and branding career in Manhattan at age 20. (He was a fine artist, painter, and illustrator since his early teens.) He credits his wife, Sherry, who helps with the administrative side of the business, as his rock, in the acknowledgements of the book. They just celebrated their 23rd anniversary. “If she’s my ROCK, then I’m her ROLL,” he quipped.
Brier has won more than 325 international awards, including the Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship medallion. Shark Tank star and entrepreneur Daymond John arranged for Brier to receive that medallion.
“There are two types of people in this world,” John wrote for Brier’s book’s foreword. “Sharks and wannabe Sharks. Which is why this book on Brand Intervention connected with me so much. It’s the intervening between merely having things happen versus making things happen.”
The final section, “The Playbook,” shows before-and-after photos of brand transformations, concludes the no-fluff journey, giving the reader the mindset to “rise above the noise.” It includes a dynamic cross-section of brands of varying sizes, locations, and industries, showing that the principles in Brier’s book apply to any brand, industry, and company size.
Brier, who wrote and designed the entire book, chose the title Brand Intervention because he did not want his book to be confused with any of the other 8,000-plus branding books. “I needed the book to be an example of intervention itself, being written and designed like no other business book I’ve seen. That’s why the type is so large (36 point in much of the book) so people with little time to spare can get everything they need and none of the filler they don’t need.
“Intervention is very much what I do,” he continued. “Clients are almost always taking shortsighted steps, and are nearly always ‘drunk’ from drinking their own Kool-Aid of ‘how much blood, sweat, and tears they poured into their product.’ Passion is great, but it does not convey to those of us unfamiliar with your product or service why we should stop and notice your new baby you’ve introduced to the world.”
Brand Intervention: 33 Steps to Transform the Brand You Have into the Brand You Need will hit the market in December. The book will be available in hardcover, paperback, and ePub for mobile devices. The book will be available on amazon.com as well as directly from BrandInterventionBook.com. David can be reached at david@RisingAboveTheNoise.com. His website is RisingAboveTheNoise.com.
