13 command for brand masters

First command: Do not try to change everything in one day. Most o the time you only need one hour. Genius does not know time planning and any brand needs a bit o genius. Genial ideas have the gift to change and if they are correctly implemented they will bring great success. Creativity is just a part o a complete solution, that needs mathematics, skills and a lot o work. So:

Second command: Do not oppose the pass of time. Branding is a process and processes need time and resources. Unfortunately for their beneficiaries, brands do not just come to light, they cost money. This remark is not valid in what concerns the happiness of designers and consultants.

Third command: Study the market. If someone can kill you, it’s the market. ‘ Do not jump ahead” is an advice that works very well in branding. Find out who your target public is and what expectations it has from your brand. Find out who is the competition and how you can impose yourself on the market. Find out what helps you and what threatens you. Information costs, but analyzed and used properly it becomes an investment. In order to go out on the market you need more types of information. So:

Fourth command: Find out who you are. Branding starts at the interior, an immutable law.

The intangible values of a brand are repeatedly neglected. Your brand deserves a personality, a value to promote, a promise, a purpose to exist. And you must create all these.

Fifth command: Position yourself. There is a place reserved for each. The coordinates of that place depend on price, consumers, perception, availability and other tones o parameters. Define all these and then:

Sixth command: Create yourself. It’s really delicious to give shape to a brand. It’s a flavor to transpose into vision, values, strategy, name, shapes, colors, textures or other forms of verbal and visual dialogue.

Seventh command: Don’t back off unless you go forward. Happy the brands that will have an easy way. For the rest o them, active competition must be motivation, image costs invested, and the immediate result a happy happening and not a purpose.

Eighth command: Do not get too attached to your brand.

You might knock it down yourself, out of too much love. The market is active and the world is changing. Brands must always adapt to new realities. Be prepared for change. Don not get drunk with temporary success.

Ninth command: Brands, as the army and church, are the only non-democratic institutions left. They act with determination and initiative, like a master does.

The last five commands: Do not build a brand after your own taste. You are not the buyer. Do not look for a smart name for your brand. A functional one is to be liked better. Be different, but not just for the sake o fun. You will try to sell beer in milk boxes. Communicate. A brand must always have something to say. Respect the competition. They won’t.

And the fourteenth: Implement.