第155页 TAKE-HOME LESSONS: CULTIVATE

CULTIVATE

Your business is not an entity but a living organism. Ditto your brand. Alignment, not consistency, is the basis of a living brand.

A living brand is a never-ending play, and every person in the company is an actor. People see the play whenever they experience the brand, and then they tell others.

Every brand contributor should develop a personal shockproof brandometer. No decision should be made without asking, “Will it help or hurt the brand?”

The growing importance of the brand has a flip side: its growing vulnerability. A failed launch, a drop in quality, or a whiff of scandal can damage credibility.

The more collaborative a brand becomes, the more centralized its management needs to be. The future of branding will require strong CBOs—chief brand officers who can steward the brand from inside the company.

Branding is a process that can be studied, analyzed, learned, taught, replicated, and managed.

It’s the CBO’s job to document and disseminate brand knowledge, and to transfer it whole to each new manager and collaborator.

Each lap around the branding circle, from differentiation to cultivation, takes the brand further fro commoditization and closer to a sustainable competitive advantage.