Manage the brand. Your company is a brand. You may also have a portfolio of products that are also brands. All brands are a reflection of a positioning in the minds of customers and others who interact with them. The brand comes with a promise. The promise must be reliable and true to earn repeat business. Otherwise the brand loses equity and can be tarnished. Marketing and communications programs designed to reinforce a brand are important and a critical piece of the puzzle.

If you visit a Starbuck’s Coffee Shop, anywhere in the world, you see a dramatic illustration of a company effectively managing their brand. I have been fortunate to have built my career from the very beginning with a keen understanding of the enormous impact branding can have on the perceptions of the products and services. A well managed brand can command a premium, because it is trusted and respected. My experience with some well known brands, and some less famous, caused me to adopt the challenge to “Make good brands better and new brands known.” It has been my privilege to leverage brand equity in the context of a number of new product launches from JVC consumer electronics to Matchbox die-cast miniature vehicles (toys) to the TRUE series plasma cutting line from Thermal Dynamics and the EDGE series regulators from Victor Technologies. As diverse as those and dozens of other brands of which I have had the peasure of working are, it always come down to leveraging the equity already in the brand itself.

Here’s a bit of advice. Remember the brand is not created by advertising or marketing. Rather, the brand assets are leveraged by advertising and marketing. A great brand well marketed has the best chance of getting terrific advertising. A lousy brand cannot be saved by advertising and marketing. Manage the brand first.