In brand circles a popular topic these days is “How to curate a brand.” To my mind, however, most of these discussions really have the issue backwards. As I see it, it’s the brand that should be curating the business. In other words,  the best way to “curate” a brand is to manage the business through the brand. This is the only sure way to preserve, protect and grow brand value. We let the brand do the curating—not the other way around. Trying to curate the brand as an (external) layer separate from the business core can be a daunting task, even in the best of times.

If our goal is a brand-driven business, let’s give the brand the wheel.

The brand curates the business

When the brand curates the business the brand rolls up its sleeves and pitches in to help lead decision-making on tactical and strategic levels. The brand and the business are one, fully integrated at the operations level to deliver a premium, sustainable experience. To use a colorful example, that’s how authentic housemade sodas in a Jewish deli (above) can be so delicious. All parts of the business are on the same brand page, crafting it together.

Brand principles drive operations

When the brand curates the business it’s brand principles that drive operations, enabling the company to fully develop the qualities and capabilities that make it special. In this regard, the brand is more method than media, guided by the brand mission and executed by the brand team. Brand values become business values—the optimal platform for long-term success.

Curating the business from S to XL

A brand can curate a business of any size, from small to extra large. In successful small businesses the brand and the business almost always function as one. There’s no reason for large companies to be any different. Apple and Zappos show how it’s done.

Photo credit: Saul’s Restaurant & Delicatessen

Sometimes the best way to help a company build its brand is to formulate the brand as a core operating principle of the business. We set aside the brand as a glossy “communication” and dial it down to a short and sweet operating brand principle. We then build it out from there.

To make this happen we first strip away the outer brand layers. We want to situate the brand in the guts of the business, not in some fabricated haze of “meaning.” So out goes the the “brand personality,” the campaign bells and whistles, the culture theory, the 10-pound identity manual, and all the programs and proclamations. The brand that’s left is keyed to the very flesh and bone of the business.

The brand as an operating principle of the business

What we’re looking for is a root form of brand commitment that will function as an operating principle of the business. As such, we want it to accomplish three goals:

1. Ground and guide employee attitudes and behavior
2. Ground and guide corporate behavior, internal and external
3. Define a mutual context that invites interactive exchange with customers, shareholders, the public, and other stakeholders

A brand principle of accountability, quality and trust

We can think of this operating brand principle as an ur principle that establishes three critical frameworks for the brand, and the business:

1. A framework for accountability
2. A framework for quality
3. A framework for trust

As you can see, our “back to basics” approach taps into the values that anchor great companies, and great brands. We are transforming the brand from a business communication to a business predicate. The latter will have far greater impact.

A principle, not a “promise”

Note that we’re discussing a brand principle, not a brand promise. If your brand principles are strong, you will deliver results that advance your customers. You won’t have to run around making promises. Promises are weak. Your principles convey value far more effectively than your promises. Principles deliver results; promises offer hope. Big difference.

A brand principle geared to create customers

As we never tire of repeating, the goal of every brand is to create the customers that will drive the business forward. We therefore want our operating brand principle to serve as a platform for customer creation. It should deliver results that build the business–from the inside out.

The operating brand principle

At a generic level, I like to work with the following brand principle:

The closer you look, the better we look.

Imagine this as the operating brand principle of your business, ingrained in employees. Can you see a highly-efficient Toyota in place of a fumbling, stumbling GM, Ford or Chrysler?

Of course, some companies can’t handle this principle. It’s a brand with teeth. It scares them. They may be more comfortable with a managed look than a closer look–even internally. Or perhaps they’ve divorced their brand from reality. Some may even prefer to hide behind fictions. As a rule, I’d say this: if a company has a major problem with this principle, that company has an emergent (or endemic) structural brand problem, one that will have to be addressed sooner or later. (Sooner is better.)

Advantages of this principle

I like this principle for the following reasons:

1. It’s short, sweet and memorable.
2. It serves the three goals for an operating brand principle, as noted above.
3. It’s action-oriented. Closer looks are encouraged. If something doesn’t look good on close inspection, it’s supposed to get fixed. Ignoring problems is not tolerated. Mediocrity is not tolerated.
4. It applies to everyone, from the mail clerk to the CEO. It’s a way of being–and doing.
5. It’s a framework for accountability, quality and trust.
6. It makes it easier to create customers.
7. It helps differentiate the company at the core. Brands forged by hype and make-believe can’t compete.

Other options

I’d be the first to admit that this particular operating brand principle may not be the only brand  principle that a company may need. Consider it as a starting point. There’s a cluster of brand principles available. The key factor is that as an operating principle, the brand now works from the heart of the business. That’s where it belongs.

Photo: Alain Bachellier — Flickr

We are on the face of the earth to make great products

Some of what Cook said was quite profound. He said this about Apple:

We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not changing.

Not many companies see themselves–and their challenge–in such an elemental context. What’s amazing is that this is an entirely credible statement coming from Apple. They have the game-changing products and services to back it up.

Could Michael Dell say the same thing about his company, with a straight face? How about Steve Ballmer? Would anyone believe them?

Are there people in Redmond placed on the face of the earth to create the Zune? That could be scary.

The brand as destiny

What Apple taps into here is the brand as destiny. It’s the brand as primordial power, a prime mover of creation, culture and context, and never, ever, an add-on.  It’s akin to Dylan Thomas’s, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”

Great companies know the feeling. The brand is an operating principle that pervades all aspects of the business. It’s a force, and poetry, and something like kaizen.

Tim Cook’s statement at the earnings call

Here’s more of what Tim Cook said when he first spoke during the earnings call. There’s perhaps a wee bit of (excusable) puffery, but the values and the focus seem dead on.

There is extraordinary breadth and depth and tenure among the Apple executive team, and they lead 35,000 employees that I would call wicked smart – and that’s in all areas of the company from engineering to marketing to operations and sales and all the rest. And the values of our company are extremely well entrenched. We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not changing.

We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.

And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we’re wrong and the courage to change. And I think regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well. And I would just reiterate a point Peter made in his opening comments that I strongly believe that Apple is doing the best work in its history.

Full transcript of the call.

The US Army seems to think so. It is establishing its own air arm, to be more responsive to tactical needs on the ground, where today’s battles are increasingly won or lost. The Army’s focus is on unmanned surveillance aircraft under control of local (Army) officers:

. . . [I]n Iraq, the Army has quietly decided to try going it alone for the important surveillance mission, organizing an all-Army surveillance unit that represents a new move by the service toward self-sufficiency, and away from joint operations.

. . .

The work of the new aviation battalion was initially kept secret, but Army officials involved in its planning say it has been exceptionally active, using remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to call in Apache helicopter strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than 3,000 adversaries in the last year and led to the capture of almost 150 insurgent leaders

Brands are about performance, not “essence”

The Army’s air power initiative illustrates the rule that to sustain a brand, you have to deliver the goods. Your iconic “essence” is immaterial. You perform, or a better brand takes your place. Sometimes, customers take matters into their own hands—as in the case of the US Army.

The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry.

Bottom line: Brands of “essence” never have a chance against brands of innovation.

Photo: Wikipedia

I ended a previous post, How to define the brand mission, by stating that I would compare the brand missions of Google and Microsoft as examples of my approach. This post fulfills that commitment. As a bonus it tosses in Yahoo, since Yahoo is now contemplating an unwelcome buyout bid from Microsoft itself.

What we see in this comparison is one company with a productive brand mission, one company that denies brand value altogether, and one company whose brand mission is so lacking in purpose that it never takes off.

Comparison framework

Please keep in mind that my focus is entirely on the brand mission. As I define it, a company’s brand mission is to create the customers that will drive the business forward. “Creating a customer” is a strategic act that entails a joint venture between company and customer. Each feeds off the initiative and innovation of the other.

Brand Mission Criteria

In comparing and assessing brand missions, these are some of the criteria I consider:

1. What new value does the brand intend to deliver?
2. What kind of customer does the brand aim to create?
3. How will that customer add value back to the brand?
4. How does the brand mission help create a platform for new customer opportunities?
5. Where is the brand leading its customers?
6. How does the brand mission add value over and above the business mission?

Applying the “brand of” test

One way to analyze a company’s brand mission is to ask: What is Company X a “brand of” in the first place? This helps reveal the effective, real world brand mission, not a brand mission that’s tossed up for PR purposes. In my analysis, here’s how these three brands stack up:

1. Google is a brand of Internet opportunity—especially for customers
2. Microsoft is a brand of market power, where the customer is tightly contained
3. Yahoo is a brand of place, where many great things happen—for no particular purpose

Microsoft: business mission trumps brand mission

Microsoft seems to be one of those companies where business mission trumps brand mission. If we define “brand” as a collaboration in value and culture between a company and its customers, it’s reasonable to argue that there is little brand mission at Microsoft. At Microsoft, the customer is targeted for capture and harvest; advancing the customer is not part of the plan. The result is a Microsoft brand that’s frequently viewed with suspicion and distrust.

Microsoft: a brand of market power

To the extent that Microsoft is a “brand of” something, it is a brand of market power. The Microsoft brand mission seems to reduce the marketplace to a Microsoft company town, anchored by a Microsoft company store, where customers are limited to Microsoft’s integrated offerings on Microsoft’s terms and conditions. Is this “bad?” Yes, if you want to stay fresh and grow. This model will eventually grow stale and collapse upon itself.

Microsoft’s goal: make brands irrelevant

Microsoft seems to feel extremely uncomfortable with the concept of brand itself, perhaps because brand responsibilities might interfere with Microsoft’s market power objectives . If Microsoft can force customers into a Microsoft company town where other brands can’t compete, then Microsoft wins “the brand game” by making brands irrelevant. In the absence of effective competition, their “non-brand” wins, no matter what they say or do.

Create customer dependencies, not customers

It appears that Microsoft’s strategy is to create customer dependencies instead of creating customers. Those dependencies translate into market power. The downside is that this strategy typically locks out innovation, and over time alienates customers. In the long run, this strategy is counterproductive. One “payoff” of this strategy is the notable lack of enthusiasm for Microsoft’s most heralded product in years, Microsoft Vista.

Google: a brand mission to unlock Internet value

We’re all familiar with Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra, but that’s not Google’s brand mission. No, Google’s brand mission is far more disruptive, and revolutionary. It is to unlock the value of the Internet using customers as the key, and as the beneficiaries. That’s pretty Schumpeterian right there. If I were to condense the Google brand mission into one line, it would be this:

Google’s brand mission is to translate Internet capability into customer productivity.

Google as a value-based brand

Google is a good example of what I call a value-based brand. It delivers value customers can use. For Google, the Internet is not a medium to be monetized. It’s a set of infinite capabilities to create value-producing opportunities. Google is pushing Internet value into the hands of customers at an amazing clip, faster than any competitor, and with more customer-side options for customization via brand API’s.

New customer opportunities mean new markets

For example, one could see how Google might become the universal digital platform for education. Instead of purchasing Microsoft Windows, students could do research, take notes, collaborate, write papers and make presentations using Google apps within an on-campus Google network. Some students are there now.

The advantage of the Google program, he said, was that it allowed him to keep his information on Google’s servers so that it was accessible at any computer, whether he was working at his fraternity, a coffee shop, a campus computer bank or the library. The experience, he said, has persuaded him not to pay money for software.

“I don’t ever see myself buying a copy of Office,” he said.

Google: an enabling brand

Thus, Google is an enabling brand that gains strength by advancing its customers beyond archaic business models geared to hoarding properties (or gateways) and imposing fees and rents. In this respect, Google’s brand mission places the greatest powers of the Internet in the hands of customers. Customers reap new value and return new value to Google, completing the cycle. (Every new Google app is one more building block for its advertising network, or a complement to other networks Google has abuilding.)

Yahoo: a brand mission stuck on sticky

I have to admit that I’ve always liked the free-spirited Yahoo culture, plus Yahoo’s ability to deliver some first-rate, innovative Web apps. That said, there was always something missing in the Yahoo brand, as if it lacked direction and defining purpose.

Long on features, short on mission

Yahoo seems to be long on features but short on mission. It’s hard to figure out where Yahoo is going, where it’s leading its users, and what kind of customer Yahoo is trying to create. It’s as if the self-absorbed Yahoo parts have more presence than the global Yahoo brand. This makes identifying the Yahoo brand mission—and identifying with it—far more difficult.

A “media company” brand mission

The Yahoo brand mission has been conditioned and constrained by Yahoo’s “media company” orientation. As a media company, Yahoo doesn’t create customers as much as it creates an inviting place for content “consumers” to spend as much time as possible, so they can be exposed to advertising. In accordance with this media model, Yahoo has lots of media “assets” whose intent is to collect segments of valuable “eyeballs” that advertisers might covet.

Stuck on sticky

Yahoo’s brand mission would seem to be this: create a digital village of outstanding properties where visitors can be entertained and made totally comfortable, so that they stick around for advertisers. This mission doesn’t do that much in terms of advancing customers. It certainly falls short in creating customers who can personify the Yahoo brand. Brand-wise, Yahoo is upstaged by tiny Moleskine.

In Yahoo’s brand mission, Yahoo is a cul de sac instead of a journey. That robs the brand of a defining passion to galvanize and lead customers toward overarching goals, outside the village gates.

Declining orbits

Where Google innovates to enable new value for customers, Yahoo innovates in hopes of keeping users’ eyeballs in orbit. This approach limits the sense of discovery and adventure that customers can experience. No surprise, then, if users eventually wander off. Indeed, this closed-in experience may have led to Yahoo’s sluggish performance, which invited facilitated the Microsoft takeover. Had there been a living, breathing Yahoo brand mission in place, the company (and its customers) might have had a fighting chance.

Photo: sissi de kroon — Flickr

One of the first steps in building a brand is often one of the hardest: defining the brand mission. This is a strategic brand step that, frankly, can make or break a brand. It involves much more than deciding “who we are” and “what we stand for,” and it certainly demands much more than lofty phrases about brand identity, brand promise and keeping customers happy.

A brand mission is also a far cry from a papered-up “mission statement.” Gaze for a moment at those stalwart fellows in the picture above. Are they reading a mission statement? No, they are on a mission. That’s where your brand belongs.

Most brand missions don’t go far enough

Most brands have a defined “mission.” The problem is that most brand missions don’t go far enough. In broad brush strokes, we can identify three main areas where brand missions often fall short:

1. They don’t provide strategic direction to the business
2. They’re not primary tools to create customers, and customer value
3. They’re framed as corporate communications rather than action steps to drive the company (and its customers) forward

We’ll discuss these elements in the following sections, after we first define the purpose of the brand mission itself.

The purpose of the brand mission: create the customers that will drive the business forward

In general terms, a company’s brand mission is to create the customers that will drive the business forward. Yes, the brand mission is all about creating customers. Defining the brand mission in this context means that the brand team has to set up shop at the core of business. Creating the brand mission involves pulling together a company’s vision, strategic direction, intended product development, and marketing and operations priorities. From these, we then map out the platform strategies for creating brand value and creating customers.

How to approach the brand mission

Defining the brand mission is never an exercise in wordsmithing, although that’s often as far as it gets for many brands. In our approach, here are three new ways to think about the brand mission.

1. In the brand mission process, you dial into yourself so that you and your customers can dial out to a bigger and better universe—and then go there.
2. Brands are company potential X customer potential. That X right there in the middle is the brand mission. (And that’s why brand builders are essential.)
3. The brand mission is a Harley, not a hymnal.

The brand mission pushes the limits of the company

A brand mission should push the limits of the company, because the goal of the brand mission is to take the company (and its customers) into new market spaces where competitors can’t follow. That calls for a strong sense of market direction, opportunity development, value innovation, and customer collaboration.

Effectively, the brand mission combines: company mission + customer mission + business mission. It does so using all the weapons in a company’s strategic, creative, expressive and innovative arsenal.

The brand mission sets the company’s future in motion

Defining the brand mission sets the company’s future in motion. It is casting the die: alea iacta est. In many ways, it’s the defining act of corporate vision, and courage.

Brands need a mission, not a “mission statement”

Companies may be tempted to bypass the brand mission and instead settle for a nice-sounding “mission statement” that’s formally approved then stuck in a drawer. Such brand mission statements can be dangerous, for two reasons. First, they can lull a company into believing that it’s brand mission is solid, when actually it’s vulnerable. Second, making the brand mission a “statement” can reduce the brand to a “paper brand” of words, rather than an active brand of deeds. A paper brand can regress to superficial styling, symbols, slogans and puffed up “personality” attributes. These can give a brand the strategic clout of window dressing, and place it at a competitive disadvantage.

Short and sweet, vital and visceral

The brand mission should be short and sweet, vital and visceral. It’s a way to focus energy, action and innovation within a company, and between a company and its customers.

1. A brand mission doesn’t describe; it activates.
2. It is direct, never delegated.
3. It leads by example.
4. It works as a force from within, not doctrine from above.

Employees and customers should see evidence of the brand mission everywhere. And they should feel it. It’s the shared pulse that carries everyone forward.

A framework for action

What the brand mission delivers to customers is more important than what it says in gold-lettered parchment on the wall. Your brand is what you deliver, not what you promise. The brand mission is a framework for action; it is not meant to be framed.

Generally, the less said, the better.

Test your brand mission

Your brand mission is a live mission, of many steps. To run a quick, conceptual test of a candidate brand mission, ask yourself these questions:

Can our employees and customers run with this?

Followed by:

Will it take them where our competitors can’t follow?

If your brand mission is spread out over six paragraphs of your virtues and sixteen subsections of your good intentions, it’s probably not strategic, and it’s certainly too diffuse.

The context of the brand mission

As noted above, the brand mission is to create the customers that will drive the business forward. Products may satisfy customer needs, but brands have the power to create new classes of customers who can add value back to the business. Within this brand context, here are some questions that can help focus the brand mission:

1. What is currently holding our customers back?
2. How can our customers be “unpackaged” from current constraints?
3. What are their missed opportunities?
4. How (and where) can we lead our customers toward more proactive lives?
5. How can our brand become a platform for continuous customer growth?

A context for the brand team

In my view, the brand team should be the most creative and the most strategic group within a company, since their job is to grow the business by growing the customers. Through the brand team, customers become a competitive weapon, making the brand a potent force multiplier. Thus, the brand team must be graced with brand vision: the ability to see the future through customer eyes—which is no small task.

The brand team’s general marching orders, at least as I see them, are as follows:

Open eyes, open minds, open markets. Create freedoms. Create customers.

A brand team that operates within this context should have little difficulty developing a suitable brand mission for the business. This also means that the brand team operates at the company edge, where company innovation, customers, culture and value interact to make new markets.

What these brand team marching orders mean

Open eyes: The best brands are a continuous surprise, by their art, their sheer presence, or their force of character. They reinvent life, and cannot be ignored.

Open minds: Brands are company potential X customer potential. They enable customers to think in new contexts—of value, being, and action. A brand that doesn’t change its customers isn’t doing its job.

Open markets: Brands create opportunities for customers to grow, and then nurture customers as they grow. The brand mission ensures that all this growth and nurturing will take the form of strategic new markets.

Create freedoms: Brands create more business when they liberate customers.

Create customers: The core goal.

Elements of the brand mission

While the purpose of the brand mission is to connect the company, customers and markets, the brand mission itself should not try to connect all the dots that exist in its brand universe. That’s too complicated, and ultimately leads to stasis. The brand mission should lasso those elements and transform them into the crack of a whip.

That said, here are some basic questions to help in your rope throwing:

1. Where can we lead our customers (so that our competitors can’t follow)?
2. How can our brand help customers help themselves?
3. What new forms of value can we deliver?
4. How can our brand become a platform for creating customer opportunities?
5. How can our brand become a richer context of living?
6. How can our brand pave the way for our planned product innovations?
7. How can our brand mission place employees, customers and other stakeholders on a shared path toward mutual goals?

Brand Mission: Google vs. Microsoft

In a future post I’ll analyze the brand missions of Google and Microsoft using the criteria set forward here. These are two highly technical companies who are visibly uncomfortable with brand realities. What makes the comparison interesting is that Microsoft, by design, doesn’t have a brand mission for customers. This has created a huge opening for Google.

Hat tip: Jacques-Louis David

In its usual level-headed style The Economist analyzes the basic issues involved in managing risk and brand reputation, especially for global corporations. They address the subject as part of a special report on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

This special report will look in detail at how companies are implementing CSR. It will conclude that, done badly, it is often just a figleaf and can be positively harmful. Done well, though, it is not some separate activity that companies do on the side, a corner of corporate life reserved for virtue: it is just good business.

Three layers of CSR

The Economist identifies three layers of CSR as it’s currently practiced in large corporations:

1. Philanthropy — beginning with “checks for charities”
2. Risk management — to ensure that screwups (or disasters) don’t occur
3. Strategic opportunities — to use CSR for competitive advantage

Where do brands come in? In level three, of course. Brands and CSR are a perfect strategic fit.

Beyond an antiquated notion of brands

I totally agree with the Economist’s integrated approach to CSR, where it shrugs off superficial feelgood communications and focuses on CSR operations embedded in the business. However, The Economist seems to have an antiquated notion of brands, as if we’re still living in the 1950′s, when brands were static “assets” to be kept polished and squeaky clean lest any “bad press” diminish their value. This defensive and reactive concept of brands prevents the special report from addressing proactive brand strategies that may dramatically raise the bar for both social responsibility and profits.

Brands and social responsibility

“Brands and social responsibility” is an important subject that deserves its own in-depth report. CSR requires new attention to the supply chain, and to the brand chain. It also requires new brand models, and new brand approaches. That’s more than I can manage in this post, so I’ll end with some general comments.

1. A brand is company potential X customer potential. When brands are understood in this context, the arena of “social responsibility” becomes a strategic brand opportunity, rather than a nagging and/or awkward problem.
2. Brands managed as “assets” are dead ends. The purpose of brands is to create customers. This is in itself a socially responsible act.
3. When brands are reduced to perceptions (“how the company is perceived”) they become little more than PR exercises, with a dash of design. This completely ignores a brand’s game-changing potential to create customer value.
4. The brand mission is to grow the customers that will grow the business. In general, the more socially responsible the brand, the more opportunities it creates for customer growth.
5. A brand platform is a social platform. The more socially responsible the brand, the more power it can generate through (and from) its customers.
6. “Asset brands” sit on the shelf, or hide in the vault. They’re eventually bypassed by proactive, socially responsible brands that can run (and grow) with customers.
7. The best way to be “socially responsible” is to embrace those strategies that advance customers, rather than merely aim to empty their wallets.
8. In general, a brand cannot do any more for its customers than it does for its employees. Social responsibility begins at home.
9. Brands stripped of social responsibility are low-performing brands. At the very least, they will be leaving money on the table.
10. The best way for a brand to manage its reputation is to lead customers to higher levels of value. Brands that don’t lead get stuck in the muck.

Photo: Jamison — Flickr

You’ll notice some major differences between this approach and those of traditional brand practice.

What brands do

Brands create customers. They lead them to new levels of awareness, new shapes of self, new realms of achievement, new forms of being and doing. This is important because your customers are your greatest competitive weapon. How your brands create and grow customers determines the long-term success of your business.

Brands are company potential X customer potential

Brands multiply the potential of your company by the potential of your customers. They are company potential X customer potential: the brand exponential. Brands can raise your customer relationship from a simple two-way street to vibrant avenues of innovation. These can open new markets and leave competitors far behind.

Brands are value-based

Brands are value-based: they deliver value customers can use, in an infinite variety of forms. Brands are much more than traditional signs, symbols, spectacle, messages, gestures and concocted “brand personalities.” Often, these only alienate a business from its customer potential.

Brands are enablers

Your brand is more enabler than meme. It enables customers to go where they want to go, and to do more, and be more, through you. This is a creative nexus that can plumb all human dimensions. A good balance is 80% means, 20% meme. We are now in the third phase of brand evolution: from mark, to media, to means.

Brands free customers to grow

Your brand frees customers to grow, and to take you with them, using the programs and platforms you provide. Your brand strategy is your growth strategy.

Brands break down barriers for customers. They cut across boundaries, leap walls, undercut silos, disrupt hierarchies. The best brands liberate customers to flourish on more creative and more productive levels. Customers can feel the difference—in a heartbeat.

Brand building is a form of innovation

Brands are avenues of value innovation in a creative engagement between companies and their customers. Brand building itself is a form of innovation. Brand builders are customer-side innovators, working closely with innovators on the product side, and with customers themselves. Brand builders innovate in the context of customers, and deep, deep, deep in the context of culture.

Brands aimed at “consumers” head downhill

Brands predicated on passive “consumers” have nowhere to go but down—to the lowest common denominator. They impose a strategic cap on themselves because they position consumers as commodities. They’re a commodity proposition, not a brand proposition. They are no match for brands predicated on customers: proactive partners and co-creators of brand value.

Brands are action-focused

Brands induce action. They are not a glossy coat, a dreamy myth, or a doctrine of belief that locks customers in place. Brands are a system for getting things done.

Brands have a sense of urgency. They flourish in the here and now. They perform, and they’re measured by what they do.

The brand mission

The brand mission can be refined to a simple, three-part directive: Grow the customer, grow the brand, grow the business. That’s what brand builders do. Their job is to grow your customers beyond the reach of competitors.

Why brand builders matter

Brand builders can see a company’s future through its customers’ eyes. There is no greater gift, or source of advantage.

Coda

The best way to make your products fly off the shelf is to give wings to your customers. Your brand is their ticket to fly.

Photo: hawaii — Flickr