Joe Strategy

In last Friday’s post, we talked about the importance of viewing branding as integral to your overall strategic planning.

We defined branding as how your customers and the marketplace perceive you. We emphatically professed that brand equity is a real thing and should be an important strategic goal for any business. And we pointed out that too often branding and strategic planning activities are separate and that this divide leads to disconnects between brand promise and delivery, discontent among customers and employees, and the erosion of brand equity. Read more

If you “google” on the word “branding”, you’ll get 50,900,000 hits in .22 seconds. You’ll find articles from academic experts, marketing gurus, design divas, advertising whizzes, and thousands of companies ready and willing to help you create a powerful brand.

You’ll also find several definitions of the word “brand”, most of which sound something like this one, which most people would agree doesn’t even begin to describe what branding really is: “A distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, word, sentence or a combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others in the market”. Read more