Level Up! gives small business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders a proven roadmap to take their brand to the next level. And with Frank’s BrandStar framework they are able to build a memorable brand - one that customers will love.
The first part of the book will help define your brand's foundation and will let you find out where you stand now.
In the second part, you will build a bridge between the foundation and your brand assets. You will find ways to make your brand more consistent, and give clarity to your customers. Simply go through the exercises in the book, and you are just a few steps away from having a great brand.
In the last part, you will discover how you can improve the customer experience with your brand, and how to create a strong link between the brand's core, the assets, and customer interactions.
If you are the owner of a small business then Level Up! is a must-have. It will transform the way you think about what branding can do for your business and it will show you the way to make your brand stand out in a sea of sameness.
Level Up! gives small business owners, entrepreneurs, and founders a proven roadmap to take their brand to the next level. And with Frank’s BrandStar framework they are able to build a memorable brand - one that customers will love.
The first part of the book will help define your brand's foundation and will let you find out where you stand now.
In the second part, you will build a bridge between the foundation and your brand assets. You will find ways to make your brand more consistent, and give clarity to your customers. Simply go through the exercises in the book, and you are just a few steps away from having a great brand.
In the last part, you will discover how you can improve the customer experience with your brand, and how to create a strong link between the brand's core, the assets, and customer interactions.
If you are the owner of a small business then Level Up! is a must-have. It will transform the way you think about what branding can do for your business and it will show you the way to make your brand stand out in a sea of sameness.
Hi there, and welcome to Level Up!
I’m Frank, and I have written this book as a step-by-step guide to help you to take your brand to the next level.
In this practical book, you will find strategies, exercises, and tips that will give you clarity on what your brand is all about, and it will help you to build a memorable brand. A brand that sticks in the minds of your customers and one that they will talk about to their friends and family.
Go through each chapter in this book and discover your blueprint for creating an awesome brand. A brand that you are proud of.
Learn all about the building blocks that are the foundation of your brand. And learn how you can exceed your customer’s expectations so that they will pick you over a competitor any day of the week.
Go through the easy-to-follow exercises, which will help you discover how to make your brand stand out in a sea of sameness.
I hope that the insights in this book will help you think about what branding can do for you and push your brand to the next level.
I believe it takes only two requirements to make a success of your brand: Having an open mind and the willingness to take action.
Are you ready? Let’s go!
Brand Alignment
The problems I see with branding usually come from misalignment between a brand core, its brand assets, and interaction with the customers. If you want to take your brand to the next level, you will have to align these three parts. If you can get this right, your brand becomes memorable.
So, this book is set up in three parts:
• Brand core
• Brand assets
• Customer experience
The alignment between these three parts is crucial for your brand. You will need to go through each part in sequence—not skipping any steps—to get the most out of your brand. Follow and trust the process; you’re less likely to confuse customers (give them clarity!). Your brand will be much more consistent, which helps to make it more memorable.
Before we dive into taking your brand to the next level, I would like to give a bit of context. Not only to inspire you but also to set the mindset for building your brand. And to start with that, I will show you how big the ocean is and how many fish are in the sea.
To use its full title, Level Up! A game plan for entrepreneurs to take their brand to the next level and stand out in a sea of sameness (hereafter Level Up!), is a business management self-help guide by Dutch author Frank Suyker.
Level Up! is broken down into three parts: "Brand and Core", "Assets" and "Experience", with exercises introduced in each area to help stimulate creativity, such as brand comparison tasks and word association. Utilising his personal experiences in establishing a brand and of those gleaned through attending various conferences, Suker's book could be best targeted toward new starters in business, those looking to develop a new brand identity from scratch. At c. 100 pages (with plenty of spacing), it is a quick read.
Despite Suyker's attempts to make this guide easy and accessible, this is not something I would be in a position to readily recommend to others. The content feels very light on the ground, with factual assertions not backed up with any supporting evidence. For example, "estimates are that there are 30,000,000 businesses in the USA". In this case, is Suyker referring to a business housing one employee or 1000? Readers placing their trust in self-help guides need to have confidence in the data, including the where, when and what behind the assertion.
This links me to another general comment on this book, grammar and presentation. For a book that devotes time to the importance of colour and imagery, the colours contrast is at points incredibly jarring. Capital letter statements absorbing whole pages in oversized fonts, a list of 50 words which the reader is asked to circle, a task made impossible because said words are set against a black background, a bright orange page with the caption "what does the colour orange trigger for you?" There is a strong reading disconnect with some of the design choices, as a reader you stop reading the content and focus only on the presentation. Level Up! would have benefitted so much more for having had the input of a professional editor and designer.
Deep within the pages of Level Up! there contains some small nuggets of insight. Would it make good content for a website or a magazine column? Yes. Does it make for an engaging book entry into the business management genre? On this occasion, sadly no.
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