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  • How Brands Grow

  • What Marketers Don't Know
  • By: Byron Sharp
  • Narrated by: Daniel May
  • Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (73 ratings)

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How Brands Grow cover art

How Brands Grow

By: Byron Sharp
Narrated by: Daniel May
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Publisher's Summary

This audiobook provides evidence-based answers to the key questions asked by marketers every day. Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do and how loyalty programs really affect loyalty, How Brands Grow presents decades of research in a style that is written for marketing professionals to grow their brands.

It is the first audiobook to present these laws in context and to explore their meaning and application. The most distinctive element to this audiobook is that the laws presented are tried and tested; they have been found to hold over varied conditions, time and countries. This is contrary to most marketing texts and indeed, much information provides evidence that much modern marketing theory is far from soundly based.

©2010 Byron Sharp (P)2014 Audible Inc.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great proposition, but perhaps not the best medium

This literature is probably best consumed as written word as the direct audio translation does not make for an easily digestible listen in many places.

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1 person found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great content, poor narration

Some interesting and surprising insights presented, and supported well.

Narration was poor and tough to listen to. The content would be better absorbed and understood had the narration been closer to natural speech.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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  • bux
  • 20-03-2022

Marketing sense

Great book. It would have been useful when I had my small business. When you have limited marketing resources knowing how people navigate choice and direct attention is a useful concept for deciding how to deploy those resources.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

A robot reading a 6hr textbook is not fun!

The narrator is like a robot with lots of unusual breaks and a tone that is just numbing.
A robot reading a marketing text like this for 6hrs is stupefying! I would not recommend this on audible. Buy the book or try on kindle instead.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A classic must-read for the industry

One of the few must-read books for marketers, planners and creatives, it’s better than most courses.

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Terrible recording. Sounds like a robot from 1975.

good info but couldn't stand listening.. get the real book, don't bother with this audiobook version.

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Eye opening

With everything we get thrown at in the marketing world Byron Sharpe’s book and meticulous research is like having a torch in the dark, allowing us to judge marketing ideas and campaigns in what truly matters and understanding why.

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Overly complex for an audio book

Information that's pre mobile and social media. Constant referrals to a printable PDF make this almost impossible to grasp as a stand-alone audiobook.

For me, I listen to books while commuting, so it wasn't for me. An updated, simplified version would be welcome

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Delivers on its promise

Would you consider the audio edition of How Brands Grow to be better than the print version?

Cant comment, havent seen the print version

What did you like best about this story?

While the ideas proposed are considered controversial the story is good and gives you the ability to choose for yourself what you want to take in.

Any additional comments?

Download the pdf's before you start listening

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not a good book for commuting

I think this is a great book full of useful information but if you are not listening to it while having access to the downloadable pdf (eg driving) a lot of the content is not helpful.

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  • M
  • 10-03-2018

WARNING: "Empirical" Slight of Hand

Wow. This book is absolutely riddled with data slight of hand techniques. Take extreme caution before buying into any of these theories. I have spent almost 15 years working in a professional capacity with many of the brands cited within and have run well over a hundred research studies - and the author is incredibly manipulative with the way his conclusions are "empirically" drawn.

The pattern is as such:
1) Use data to force an extreme classification (e.g. classifying someone as "not loyal" to a brand if they deviate from it even once, instead of looking at, for instance, people that consume a brand consistently 90% of the time)

2) Make a sweeping suggestive claim about why (e.g. "this MIGHT be due to the fact that consumers see no difference between brands' positioning")

3) Translate #1 and #2 into a "Law" (e.g. "Thus, the Law of Inevitable Buyer Promiscuity")

...this pattern is repeated over and over.

Not only that, but he keeps oscillating between how the data is viewed and interpreted in order to force fit it into his theory, such as:

- Switching between percentages and means and comparing the two
- Comparing one statistic from a category to another analogous statistic from a completely different category (versus an 'apples to apples' comparison within a category)
- Subtly switching between an isolated data point (correlation) and a conclusion (causation), without there actually being an "empirical" link
- Reaching back to ancient datasets (if you look at the reference material, it toggles back and forth between the 1980's and mid-2000's) scraping for some numbers that can "empirically" fit his theories

It was infuriating to listen to as a professional who has seen the data AND the implications of proper research, insights, and brand strategy.

Again, definitely exercise a lot of caution in taking the suggestions within to heart. Not only does it marginalize and inaccurately portray the impact of branding and research, but the methodologies and strategies he discredits are only getting wildly more applicable with the micro-targeting abilities afforded to marketers through emerging online techniques.

Good luck.

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15 people found this helpful

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  • Samer Forzley
  • 30-12-2014

Painful

Quite painful to get through, very negative gloom and doom without actionable solution, big brand focused, no need to print charts mentioned

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4 people found this helpful

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 19-08-2018

Revolutionary

It will turn inside out your mind regarding sales and marketing. It’s all about truths of science.

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2 people found this helpful

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  • Roman G
  • 10-03-2018

Not your usual book on branding and positioning

A very contrarian approach to many commonly held views. Not ideal as an audio book, because it refers to a lot of charts and graphs, but the content is great.

Roman
Splento.com

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  • Henri Lellouche
  • 18-01-2016

Great content - robotic speaker

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I found the content to be really interesting and thought provoking. Really made me rethink my approach to my business.

What did you like best about this story?

Confirmation that advertisers need to talk to all customers: loyals, switchers, competitive loyals and even non-category users!

Would you be willing to try another one of Daniel May’s performances?

No - his reading was awful. Actually sounded like a machine-voiced performance. The author should have done this - I saw his Ted talk and his voice was just fine.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

N/A

Any additional comments?

Better packaging of the downloadable PDF when buying the book would have been smart. I had to hunt for it after I had already begun listening to the book.

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  • jamie t reilly
  • 07-08-2017

Poorly conceived, badly written, and boringly delivered

A snake oil sales pitch delivered by the driest narration you can imagine. Filled with sweeping generalizations about "science" supported by "data" but never challenging, questioning its own assertions or looking at the multiple marketplace examples that contradict the assertions made. A great book to convince accountants they can be great marketers written by someone lacking any instinct or basic logic.

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1 person found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Nami87
  • 03-05-2016

Performance was Robotic

the performance kind of ruined this book for me. There Re a lot of interesting insights but I couldn't grasp them because I was being put to sleep by the reader.

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  • Margus
  • 07-09-2023

Something you read for work not for fun

The book’s target audience is indeed rather marketing managers or academics rather than the general public. In that sense the book is not fun but very focused on discussing research papers. [dropped out of the book after an hour or so].

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  • Anonymous User
  • 10-07-2023

WARNING! A must read book

Simply one of the most important books in this field. A must read for every commercial professional!

And commenting on all the critics in the review section here on Audible, you are the same people who believe in the myths of marketing, which this book busts. :)

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  • Povilas Kriksciunas
  • 26-09-2022

Marketing truths that are often ignored by modern “growth hackers”

A must-read for anyone working in marketing. We live in a time of growth hacking and success stories of chasing quick results by jumping on new trends. Unfortunately, many of these trends are based on someone’s lock due to random chance (survivorship bias - those who is marketing campaigns failed, don’t talk about it), or simply modern myths of wishful thinking by people wishing how marketing should work (copying ads that won the “Cannes awards”, expecting that people in the real world watch their ads like cinema movies).
While “traditional marketing” is rooted in performance of big well-known brands and product categories of traditional goods (e.g. supermarkets and beverages) many of the theories will apply to start-ups and tech companies as well.

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  • stryder
  • 25-07-2016

More for established corporates, terrible reading

Maybe it's the robotic reader but man this book is hard work. Not suitable for audiobook with so many references to diagrams etc. I don't even think the content is useful in 2016.

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4 people found this helpful

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  • Tim
  • 23-12-2015

Good book very poor narration

Unfortunately the very "automaton" narration detracts considerably from this audio book. I think the underlying book is quite good but overall I cannot recommend this audio book.

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  • Charlene
  • 27-01-2021

Very Hard to get into

This book is more for the number crunchers.. not really creative types hoping to grow their business,.. more for understanding the bigger companies. Also, the voice was very impersonal.. monotonous sounding, very easy to mentally switch off.

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  • Patrick Johnson
  • 20-10-2020

Robotic voice spoils it makes it hard to follow

The content is good but the robotic voice spoils it and makes it hard to follow. I would recommend getting the book.

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  • Carlos
  • 25-11-2023

A classic marketing book!

If you work in marketing or are trying to grow your own business, this is essential reading! A great book with lots of references to the PDF, but you should get the point just from the audio. 5 stars!!!

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  • Andreas
  • 05-06-2023

Essential read for marketers

The findings presented in this book is critical for any marketer to be aware of in order to make better predictions about outcomes of marketing initiatives.

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  • Tom Whiteley
  • 20-12-2021

Great scientific approach to Marketing

As someone who is cynical of the effectiveness of marketing, this book is brilliant for explaining/proving what does/does not work

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  • Thomas Brown
  • 05-10-2020

So unmemorable...

If you asked me to recount any of the information from this book, don't bother. Massively boring and nothing original.

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  • marek.pisarczyk
  • 07-07-2020

Excellent!

Excellent book and one of the best ones I've read/listened to in this matter. You'll consume it more than once!

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  • R
  • 19-05-2020

Thought provoking. Audible may not be best medium

Brilliant content and thought provoking but requires a lot of referring to the downloadable PDF. Worth the read but may be better as a physical book to truly learn from.

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