It’s not about the ads, it’s about your brand.

Take this quick quiz: tell me which brand is associated with these famous ad taglines. (Answers are at the end.)

• The Ultimate Driving Machine.
• When It Absolutely, Positively Has To Be There Overnight.
• What Can Brown Do For You?
• Fly The Friendly Skies.
• Think Different.

OK. How’d you do? Now that you identified who they are…tell me what they stand for?

A little tougher in some cases. It surprises me, and maybe it shouldn’t, how many people really don’t understand what a brand is and how it’s built.

The most common misperception is that a brand is built by advertising. Not true—and that’s coming from a guy who has spent the better part of 34 years developing some very effective, award-winning ads.

Advertising builds awareness. People build brands.

Yes, advertising has the opportunity to help you define your brand through copy points, visuals, emotion, etc. But a brand is built by arriving at and understanding its essence.

It starts at the top, down to the ground floor, through a carefully crafted brand development plan and a commitment by the top management and CEO to not only do the heavy lifting and provide the guidance needed—but to continue to nurture their brand daily, weekly, monthly, annually. Or they risk having it diminish.

As MOST, it all starts with a Brand Development session called Brand Discovery. It’s there that our proprietary process helps identify “who you want to be when you grow up” and puts in place the key steps to get you there—your entire organization there.

It starts with understanding what is unique about you, your organization and your brand and the development of a clear, complete, concise brand essence: that which defines who you are.

Can you tell me what your brand essence is…completely, concisely, clearly? More importantly, can everyone in your company?

That’s just one step. Stay tuned and we’ll be sharing others in future issues.

(Answers: BMW, Fed Ex, UPS, United Airlines, Apple Macintosh)