'In it, to win it'

There's a very straightforward approach to successful brand building that is universally overlooked; and that is simply showing up day-in-and-day-out.

Perhaps because traditionally marketing folk tend to believe that the only time they should be communicating is when they have a specific sales target to hit, a scheduled promotion to run. or a carefully-crafted seasonal campaign to promote that they reserve their media budgets for these sporadic occasions in the year to give the messaging a good chance of landing well with the intended audience.

But going from silence to significant impact in short bursts of publicity like this doesn't actually work.

To successfully grow a brand you need to constantly be generating exposure for the brand in the marketplace - creating awareness, generating interest and generally being a part of the prevailing cultural zeitgeist.

Not that we are one of his adoring fans, but Gary Vaynerchuk makes a powerful point when he stresses the importance of constantly creating an endless stream of daily content that gets shared on multiple channels.

If your brand is out of sight, you're out of the minds of customers. If you are not easily available in their minds, you'll have a harder time showing up against your category competitors.

In his groundbreaking book, How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know, Professor Byron Sharp uses empirical evidence to demonstrate just how vital constant and broad-reaching advertising and brand communication is to effectively influence the memory structures of people in a marketplace, and how this kind of approach over time influences the purchasing behaviour of consumers.

Through the constant building and reinforcing of distinctive brand assets in the mental landscape of people, you reserve an availability for the brand that positivity impacts its overall popularity and performance.

But you've got to be 'in it to win it' all of the time.