We at Hershey's know something about brands that ignite genuine passion. In Passion Brands, Kate unlocks the secrets, showing how passion grows as special brands conscript a loyal following to spend precious social and financial currency. It's a fast, hot read, full of tips and tactics you can apply today and feel tomorrow on the bottom line.-Dave West, President and CEO, The Hershey CompanyKate is dissecting passion as a branding exercise. Timely, thoughtful and as ever erudite. I love reading her stuff.-Paco Underhill, author of Why We BuyKate Newlin is one of the sharpest brains in consumer marketing.... Her success in creating, building and reinventing brands should make this work invaluable.-Daryl Brewster, chairman and CEO, Krispy KremeKate is quite simply one of the smartest individuals I've met in business.... Her raw creativity, coupled with a profound understanding of our culture, market space and consumers make for remarkably actionable thinking.-Jim Becktold, director, Proctor & GambleWhat makes some brands stand out from the pack year after year? In a vast marketplace glutted with countless pretty good brands, how are some products able to command unquestionable customer loyalty and lasting enthusiasm?Veteran business strategist Kate Newlin defines the key ingredients that go into passion brands-brands that we recommend to friends wholeheartedly, with a joyous, even evangelical zeal. Passion brands inspire an emotional attachment. Unlike consumer fads, we become personally invested in them, sometimes even more so than we do with our friends and loved ones.Newlin identifies the social factors that have made passion brands the driving force in consumer marketing today. Based on proprietary research, which makes use of in-depth interviews with company executives as well as state-of-the-art analytics, she answers the following key questions:?Are there common characteristics that enable passion brands to become carriers of personal meaning?What is the financial impact on a company that produces a passion brand?Do passion brands create a halo over the stock prices?She notes that in a world of almost unlimited consumer choices, the old rules of marketing just don't work anymore (product, package, position, price, and promotion). Now marketers must react to consumers in real time, encouraging brand democracy in which users can help decide a product's characteristics, from size and color to how it should be marketed.Passion Brands is must reading for entrepreneurs and denizens of corporate cubicles and boardrooms alike.Kate Newlin (New York, NY), the principal and founder of Kate Newlin Consulting, is the author of Shopportunity! How to Be a Retail Revolutionary, which was on the Oprah Selects list of O magazine in 2006 and was also a recommended selection of the 2006 Harvard Business Review. With over 25 years of experience in business strategy and marketing, Newlin has worked with a broad cross-section of Fortune 500 businesses, including McDonald's, Pennzoil/Quaker State, Kraft, Hasbro, Cigna, GE Capital, Waldenbooks, LensCrafters, and others.