The Revenge of Brand X: How to Build a Big Time Brand on the Web or Anywhere Else.

• Author: HOLTZMAN, HENRY
• Position: Brief Article

Bob Frankel

Frankel & Anderson Inc.

Los Angeles, Calif.

2000, 272 pages, $36.95

Author Bob Frankel may well be the only marketing guru who makes sense of branding products and services on the Internet. His copy grabs you by the lapels as he virtually gets in your face shouting, "This isn't your father's mass media!" He might have added that it isn't your father's notion of branding, either. Strangely enough, it may well have been within your great grandfather's line of thinking.

Frankel comes across as an author and marketer who is brash to the point of being obnoxiously egotistical. He's brash because he has taken a very old concept that had fallen out of favor--total customer orientation--brought it up to date, and showed how it applied to the World Wide Web. He's obnoxiously egotistical because he has repackaged this concept as his own.

There's just one thing: He may have earned a fair claim to those bragging rights. The application of his ideas about branding to the Internet are innovative, persuasive, ingenious and probably correct.

All the recently minted MBAs will have to go back to school for a refresher course in branding. More likely, they'll have to start by re-reading a chapter or two of David Ogilvy, an advertising guru from the 1950s, who defined marketing by mass media. Or perhaps they'll peruse Ted Levitt, the Yale professor who resurrected customer-oriented marketing for the second half of the 20th Century. Right after that, they may be ready to tackle Rob Frankel.

Even though Frankel may see himself as somewhat of an iconoclast, he's actually one more in a line of marketers who were able to see clearly events that shape customer buying habits. Other marketers look at the Internet and say, "There go my people .... I must find out where they are going so that I can lead them." On the other hand Frankel supports the view that, "Mass media is no longer controlled by four networks and five publishers."

In other words, thanks to the Web, most customers will no longer be couch potatoes with brains fried courtesy of the 24-hour wrestling network. Marketers who treat them that...