I can’t tell you how to build your brand

I can’t tell you how to build your brand. Only you will know how to do that.

Only you know and control the combination of culture, values, promises, products, services, profit, non-profit, audience, market, location, online, offline, investment, revenue, story, profile, awareness and too many other things to list here that drive the things you do every day that build your brand.

I can’t tell you how to build your brand and why would you want me to – because then it isn’t yours anymore.

I can’t tell you how to build your brand and neither can any of the other brand practitioners, brand help books, brand this and that blogs out there.

I can’t tell you how to build your brand and that’s a very good thing. Because you should build your brand. You should sweat the details. Push for discipline and consistency that I talked about last week. Look and keep looking for the right people to populate your organisation, who share your brand of great and crazy, caring about your one thing.

Here’s what I can do.

I can give you some guidelines I see that appear to have worked for others when I’ve looked at what they have built (but even then, who knows, I could have missed the magic ingredient, the one thing that makes that organisation and their brand work for them).

I can tell you that brands that are strong and resilient, that resonate, are a result not an intent. The organisations who build them make promises they can keep and do so deliberately, consciously and continually.

I can tell you they are disciplined. They care a lot about what they do and how they do it and know why they are doing it. They know that they are never “there” and if they want their brand to matter to people they need to front up tomorrow and do it all again.

I can’t tell you how to build your brand. That’s up to you and that’s the way it should be.

See you next week.

Michel is an independent brand analyst dedicated to helping organisations make promises they can keep and keep the promises they make – with a strong, resilient organisation as the result. She also publishes a blog at michelhogan.com.