Companies must work hard to build brands. It takes innovation, faith and perseverance to create a brand. The sign of a great brand is how much loyalty and preference it generates. Apple is a great example of an exemplary brand that commands a great deal of loyalty in its marketplace.

A well known brand results in extra profits for the owner company. A brand is a reservoir of trust that matters to the success of the products involved, especially as choices increase.

The brand amounts to a contract with the customer regarding how a product will perform. The brand contract must be honest.

Advertising do not build brands. It only calls attention to the brand, creating brand interest and brand talk.

The building of brands occur holistically, through the organization of a variety of tools, including advertising, public relations, sponsorships, events, social media and spokespersons among others.

The real challenge is not the placing of an ad but getting the media to talk about the brand. A new brand should strive to establish a new category, have an interesting name and tell a captivating story.

Do not advertise the brand. Live it. Eventually, the brand will be built by your employees who deliver positive experiences to your customers. A brand must orchestrate the brand experience with the brand promise.

Richard Branson’s Virgin brand has established itself as one associated with fun and creativity. These attributes are constantly projected in all of Virgin’s marketing activities.

Great brands are the only route to sustained and above average profits. Great brands offer emotional benefits, not simple sensible ones.

Focusing on rational incentives such as the brand’s features, price and sales promotion contribute little to grow the brand - customer relationship. Great brands work more on customer emotions.

In the future, great brands will also have to show social responsibility - concern for the state of the universe.

A company needs to think through as to what its brand stands for. As such, a brand needs to be given a personality. It must flourish on some specific characters. These characters must permeate through all the company’s marketing activities.

Once the brand attributes have been defined, they need to be expressed in every marketing activity. Company employees must live out the brand spirit both at the corporate level and at the customer level.

If a company brands itself as innovative, it must hire, train and reward people in a corporate culture that encourage innovation.

Companies tend to over-focus and over-organize on the basis of their products and brands and under-focus on managing their customers well. The proliferation of various types of new media and message delivery systems has eroded mass advertising’s power.

Companies need to utilize a different paradigm to build their brands in a changing New Economy.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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