What Great Brands Do

Brand Building Is More than Branding

Companies that embrace the “brand-as-business” strategy use their brands as management tools that can motivate and guide employees; excite and win customers; and align their operations, activities and messages with their core values. Put to work this way, brands have uplifting, energizing power.

Use this definition to visualize and activate the utility hidden in your brand: “A brand is a bundle of values and attributes that define the value you deliver to people through the entire customer experience, and the unique way of doing business that forms the basis of your company’s relationships with all of its stakeholders.” Companies with great brands build employee and customer awareness and engagement by deploying their brands as “complete strategic platforms.”

Despite brands’ importance, almost two out of three chief marketing officers at large corporations say that their brands do not have an impact on their business decision making. Often, their companies use their brands exactly the wrong way. They create an elaborate “brand facade” and hide behind it. Such branding is hollow image building, and consumers see through it...