Creating a brand strategy for your company is an integral part of the strategic marketing function. In order to define the brand strategy, one needs to understand what a brand stands for.

Let us start by defining what it is not. A brand is not just an icon, a slogan, or a mission statement. Neither is it a set of brochures or a catchy tag-line. Brand-building comprises all these elements and more, but a brand itself stands for a promise of creating value that one makes to the stakeholders. And, if this promise is kept, time after time, the equity of the brand increases. This, in turn, creates stickiness or loyalty.

The value of a brand, therefore, is in its ability to create unassailable competitive advantage through enduring positive associations and perceptions created in the consumer's/customer's mind, in turn leading to loyalty to the product or service. The strongest brand identities are the easiest to recognize and the toughest to emulate. They command a presence in their categories and far beyond them. Coca Cola, Walt Disney, Nike and P&G are some of the strongest brands the world has come across. In the realm of technology, we have Microsoft, IBM and home-grown brands such as Infosys and Wipro.

One of the first steps in building the brand is to home in on your company's brand essence. What would you like your customers to associate with your company? This would require a discussion and consensus among your company's management, typically led and actively facilitated by the marketing team. The factors you would need to consider would be what your core strengths are, what values your company stands for, and a good understanding of your competitors' positioning. This process of arriving at a focused, credible value proposition is the kernel of brand-building activities.

Once the brand positioning is decided, communicating this becomes central to every marketing activity, every action, every corporate decision, and every customer interaction. Brand-building programs conceive, implement and integrate multi-pronged strategies to reach out to the company's various stakeholders, and shape their experiences to be positive.

The target audience

And who are these target audiences? Top priority should obviously be accorded to customers and prospective customers, followed by all those who can shape this group's perceptions. They are industry analysts, consultants who assist buyers with vendor selection, the government in certain geographies, and the business media. Prospective employees, current employees and investors and equity analysts are also audiences who will be influenced by any brand-building program, and hence it is imperative that the messaging is consistent and holistic across the various audiences.

The vehicles of communication are numerous - brochures, the corporate Web site, seminars and webinars, articles in the media and specialized programs designed for stakeholder communities. All leading consulting and first-tier companies have a customer newsletter or a journal. These are excellent vehicles to propagate thought leadership. Holding C level executive seminars and webinars are other tested ways to communicate with your stakeholders.

Let us dwell on marketing programs for specialized stakeholder groups. In today's crowded market place, one can never take one's position for granted. Every company needs to constantly communicate why your company is different in all the relevant forums and to all the relevant audiences. One such category of audiences is industry analysts. Industry analysts such as Gartner, Forrester and Meta are playing increasingly important roles in shaping buyer perceptions as well as lending a stamp of credibility to vendors. So, now is the right time for Indian companies to put in place a base level program to reach out to this community.

The methods

One question we are often asked by our clients is to suggest innovative and creative brand-building program that have never been tried before. While innovation is important, it is required to balance innovation with sustained and regular activity. We have seen that even implementing seemingly ordinary ideas extraordinarily can create a huge impact.

While we are on the topic of consistency of messaging, not only is it imperative to maintain consistency of content, but the look and feel that carries through all the marketing and business communication is also as important. There are few technology companies in India that have actually managed to present a consistent look across all their communication. As a simple test, take a look at your company Web site, your five most recent proposals, your five most recent pitch presentations, and your corporate brochure. See if the look and feel of all of these is similar. If yes, then even in the absence of well-formulated corporate standardization guidelines, you are moving in the right direction. Unfortunately though, we have not seen this to be the case in many of the companies we interact with.

In addition to the above, a powerful way to build a company's brand (as distinct from sustaining the brand equity of an already well-recognized brand) is by using the CEO, and the top management team, as brand ambassadors. Take any powerful technology brand today - we have Bill Gates and Microsoft and Narayana Murthy and Infosys. For young companies which are in the process of building a corporate brand, leveraging the CEO as a spokesperson and brand ambassador is very effective and necessary as well.

Efforts by the marketing team as well as management are strongly reinforced through each and every business interaction and, of course, the actual commitments kept through delivery of products and services. In fact, to get employees to believe in the brand, and empowering each employee to communicate this belief in all their customer interactions is probably the most effective and credible way to build a brand in the knowledge industry. For, customer experiences reinforce or take away from the brand equity, and in this industry, people are the brand.

And hence, external campaigns should always be complemented by internal communication and brand-awareness programs. An organization could use a multi-pronged strategy for strengthening internal communication. Workshops, seminars, newsletters and portals are ways to spread the message internally.

To conclude, enduring brands are built over time through relentless multi-pronged communication of consistent messages, backed by service delivery that matches or exceeds the promise. And hence, brand-building is not merely the responsibility of the marketing function; it's all-pervasive and a part of everyone's job description, from the receptionist to members of the board.