This should be your main aim with brand building

A lot of confusion exists about what exactly building a strong brand means, and why it is so crucial for organisations with aspirations of outperformance.

What we often find helpful is a slight reframing of the terminology to better understand what we are trying to achieve with brand building. This is useful because too many senior executives still have the perception that brand building is restricted to typeface selection and logo design.

So think of a brand as a containing system for a reputation - 'the beliefs and opinions held by people about a business / product / person.'

In society and business a good reputation is obviously important. If people don't trust your business they will avoid buying anything from you.

But far worse than this, if people are not aware of your business or product, they don't even get as far as to have an opinion of you in the first place. The opportunity to have judgment passed on your product is lost. Within the category you are competing in, this situation means that without your brand occupying mental space in the minds of potential customers, your brand doesn't even exist as an option. This is a 100% failure on your part.

The first goal of brand building is brand salience.

Salience is the quality of being noticed, remembered or having distinct prominence in someone's mind. It's what Seth Godin wrote about in his infamous 2003 marketing book The Purple Cow.

Standing out, making sure that your brand is constantly being engraved into the minds of people is the primary aim with brand building. Secondary to this would be the crafting of meaning that leads to the forging, over time, of a positive reputation. But it can easily be argued that a positive reputation is not nearly as important as salience.

Somebody like Donald Trump has a very strong brand. His brand building strategy is not to build himself up as a well-considered political expert, but rather to make sure that he generates extraordinary reach and penetration. Being 'in the news' (often by saying silly things) means he's winning. The worst thing that could happen to Trump is if he were to be ignored.

His reputation might not be positive for people with a more progressive outlook on life, but for many others he serves as a viable option for President of the United States because that option is available.

Marketers by default often try to focus their efforts on improving the quality of their brand's reputation rather than making it unforgettable.

The take out?

Worry less about trying to craft nice things to say about yourself and concentrate more on finding opportunities where you can get your remarkable-self in front of people.