‘Brandfather: John Murphy, The Man Who Invented Branding’

John Murphy’s Brandfather: The Man Who Invented Branding (The Book Guild Ltd., 2017) is an autobiography with a dual purpose — to recount his own career in the then-emerging world of branding as the founding CEO and chairman of Interbrand [brandchannel’s parent company] and reflect on the lessons learned that he’s applying today in running his own brands.

Challenged by a friend and former colleague to write his memoir, Murphy does so with wit, charm and a warts-and-all approach that doesn’t pretend he had it all figured out in the beginning. Recognizing a market need to value and grow brands, beginning with a merger that he was involved with at another company, he set out to build a firm that started with naming and trademarks and expanded into design and strategy. While it didn’t always go smoothly, it’s all told with a sense of humor and tenacity.

After expanding the company to more than a dozen countries, publishing books and fighting along the way to have branding itself valued and taken seriously, he oversaw the company’s sale to Omnicom in 1994 and stayed on for a spell as chairman—but his story doesn’t end there, as he decides to practice what he has preached all those years.

The final section of Murphy’s book covers how he built three businesses—Plymouth Gin, St. Peter’s Brewery and Ruffians male grooming products—and honed his years as a consultant into “15 Rules for Success” that he applied to his own brands. While the business of branding has evolved since those early days when he set out to make a case for treating brands as valued assets, the basic tenets remain true to this day. As his last line cautions, “Neglect your brand or brands at your peril.”

Brandfather: John Murphy, The Man Who Invented Branding, by John Murphy, 184 pages,The Book Guild Ltd., 2017, ISBN:978 1911320 357, is available here.

The post ‘Brandfather: John Murphy, The Man Who Invented Branding’ appeared first on brandchannel:.