Q. How do you know that a dog is man’s best friend?

A. Lock your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car. Let them out an hour later and see which of them is still happy to see you.

Loyalty is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It’s also the brass ring in branding: There’s nothing more valuable, but it’s extremely hard to grab. Why? Because a brand-loyal customer is revenue in the bank – and a disciple on the street.

Loyalty is derived from a mix of many different ingredients, each of which must be fully present for the magical formula to become – and remain – potent:

1. The brand needs to exist in a category the user cares about.  For example, I’ll never be loyal to any brand of paper towel because, well, I just don’t particularly care about the category.
2. The brand needs to promise something that the market desires or requires.
3. The brand has to consistently fulfill its promise.
4. The brand’s personality needs to somehow reflect the personality of its market.
5. The brand needs to be true to its personality and not waver.

Notice that “price” and “accessibility” are not on the list. Consumers who are brand-loyal are largely indifferent to higher prices or accessibility issues.

Apple is perhaps one of the best examples of a company that commands tremendous brand loyalty. Even in the ’90s, before their ultra-hip ad campaigns and retail stores, Macs had reached an almost cult-like status. Back then, Macs were two, three, four, or more times more expensive than their PC competitors (they still are); more difficult to find; way more difficult to fix (good luck finding an Apple repair shop in the mid ’90s); and extremely limited when it came to compatible software (in your average 1995 computer store, past the gleaming white shelves jam-packed with PC programs, games, and applications, stood a single dusty, cobweb-covered shelf housing a few Mac programs-each a version or two behind). But Mac users knew a secret that their PC counterparts didn’t know: Their Macs were better. They were cooler, easier, more intuitive, and they were the anti-Microsoft-and nothing was going to get them to change their minds. Not price, not accessibility-nothing. That’s brand loyalty at its finest.

To my knowledge (and some scientist somewhere could possibly prove me wrong), no two things can be 100-percent identical. Geography alone would make each of them unique, in that two entities can’t occupy the same exact space at the same exact time. Even if you clone a dog, with the original and the copy completely the same from a genetic standpoint, the dogs would still be unique based on the fact that at any given time, they would each standing in different places.

The same is true for companies. Take two competing comic-book stores in neighboring towns, for example. As chance has it, both are run by nice guys who are very passionate about comic books, both have exactly the same inventory of comic books, both present their comic books in pretty much the same way, and both charge the exact same price for their books. For all intents and purposes, both stores are the same. Their only real difference is geography, so it stands to reason that consumers will simply shop at whichever store is closer to them. Proximity to the consumer, in this case, makes each store unique enough.

But let’s place those stores across the street from each other. Now, even geography doesn’t make a difference. They’re competing for the same pool of customers. The natural tendency of each store owner would be to take some action – lower prices, offer a comic-book-delivery service, hold in-store comic-book-art workshops – that makes his or her store unique so that consumers will have a reason to choose his or her shop over the other.

So what happens when geography isn’t a factor? The same basic principle holds true. Take competing brands of soap. All manufacturers ship to the same supermarkets, so it doesn’t matter to the consumer where their offices, factories, or distribution centers are located. The competing products are on the shelf next to each other. If all these bars of soap were exactly the same, then the total market would simply be divided equally among them. But again, the natural tendency of competing companies is to try to stand out among their competition in order to draw in a larger audience, and to build a brand based on their unique qualities.

So the answer to the question “Does every brand have to have a unique selling proposition” is yes, they do. Without one, the company might survive, but not the brand. But what really matters is the relevancy of this unique quality. In the case of soap, if one company simply decides to carve an X into the center of each bar, it may make those bars unique, but not in a way that consumers will care about – so it won’t help build the brand. Instead, these manufacturers must instill unique qualities that are more relevant to the market – scent, size, price, shape, or something else along those lines.

It’s too easy to say that the personality of the brand doesn’t need to reflect the personalities of the company’s founders or executives. Their personalities will absolutely play at least a partial role in how the brand’s personality is developed. I have to believe that the key executives behind the popular video-game developer EA, for example, are at least a little edgy and fun. I’d be shocked to find out they all wear three-piece suits to work every day, where they smoke cigars while discussing the moral decline of modern society. But just how influential the personalities of key execs are to the brand may be somewhat minimal, and may instead depend more on the product being sold and the market being reached. In other words, it’s pretty safe to assume that the key execs behind Barbie aren’t eight-year-old girls.

The real answer is that the personality of the brand isn’t reflective of any one entity in particular, but a balance of all of them. There’s no point in the personality of a brand being stuffy and serious simply because that’s the personality of the key execs, because it’ll turn off the market they’re trying to reach. At the same time, there’s also no point in a brand presenting itself as wild, crazy, and edgy simply because that’s what the market wants. If the decision-makers aren’t comfortable in that skin, they won’t be able to sustain that brand personality, and ultimately their efforts will fail.

Every brand needs to find a balance between what the market will respond to and what it can reasonably be expected to consistently present. The point where these two needs meet is the starting point for developing the brand’s personality.

What do you think the brand should reflect?

Suppose you’re planning a vacation. You visit a Web site that promises to provide more comprehensive information on remote destinations than any other travel site on the Internet. While using the site for research, you notice that it speaks highly of the island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean, detailing an exciting night life, a championship golf course, and award-winning restaurants. You’re sold! You book your flight, pack your bags, and head out, anxious to play a round of golf and dance the night away. There’s only one problem: the Web site neglected to mention that a hurricane that hit the island a few years back destroyed the golf course, which was never rebuilt. It also left out the fact that the night life consists of bars and clubs that are open only during specific months of the year – read: not when you’re there. So much for “comprehensive information!” the bottom line: The site did not deliver what it promised. It promised comprehensive information, but the information it actually provided was old and incomplete. The next time you are planning a trip, it’s highly doubtful you’ll return to the site for information.

While trust can be difficult to build, losing it can be a much quicker process. Keeping the brand promise is key to building trust in a brand. Initially, the consumer can only go by what the brand promises and assume that that promise will be kept. If the promise is kept, then the brand is strengthened. A positive reputation has been maintained, and the expectation of positive future experiences with the brand is increased, making it more likely that the consumer will use that brand again. If the promise is broken, the brand is breached, raising doubt and diminishing trust – and regaining consumers’ trust is often impossible.

Do consumers really give a brand only one chance to fail? It depends on the brand. How much leeway a company has in breaking its promise will largely depend on its longevity and history – or, put another way, how much trust equity the brand has built up. The more trust consumers have in a brand, the more likely they’ll be to forgive broken promises – to a point.

Take Nike, for example. Nike makes sneakers – the sneakers are their product. Their brand reputation is delivering high-quality, stylish products that will enhance athletic performance. When a consumer purchases a pair of Nikes, the expectation is that the shoes will be comfortable and last a long time, even after aggressive use. For decades, Nike has kept that brand promise and met consumer expectations, even though (to my best recollection) that promise has never been expressly stated. Now suppose a consumer purchases a new pair of Nikes and they fall apart in the middle of a basketball game just two days later. That consumer will be annoyed, but his confidence in the Nike brand won’t have taken too much of a hit. Because Nike has built enough trust equity to overcome a single bad experience, chances are the customer will assume it was just one bad pair of sneakers off the assembly line, and will obtain a new pair. But now suppose that a few days later, the consumer’s ankles start to hurt during his weekly tennis game because the sneakers aren’t proving the proper support. Will this consumer buy another pair of Nikes? Maybe, but his trust in the brand will have been shaken – and he just may look at a pair of Reeboks the next time around. Sure, after enough time has passed, the consumer might write off these negative experiences and buy the Nike brand again, but there is no question that on some level, damage will have been done. And of course, most brands don’t have the time, money, or exposure that Nike has to overcome isolated negative experiences. Brands must take care to keep their promises each and every time in order to develop the trust necessary for gaining and retaining consumer loyalty.

While the brand promise often has to do with the quality of a product or service, that’s not always the case. McDonald’s doesn’t claim that eating there is akin to dining in a five-star restaurant. Their promise is to provide you a quick meal that is inexpensive and tastes good. Women don’t buy sweatshirts from Juicy Couture because of their promised high quality. The subtle promise is that if you own Juicy products, you will be part of an elite, fashionable crowd. The promise in this case involves lifestyle factors rather than product-related factors, such as speed or quality.

As brand builders, marketers must manage how the promise is expressed and how consumers understand it to make sure they’re not inadvertently promising something they can’t deliver. That’s one of the most challenging things about marketing: The brand understands the promise, and the agency understands the promise, but does the audience? Building a brand involves using tangibles (Web sites, advertisements, etc.) to communicate intangible concepts such as a promise or personality in a way that makes sense, is perceived as desirable by consumers, and on which the brand can realistically follow through.

My point (and I do have one) is that this got me thinking about the power and necessity of brand building. (Yes, I am that much of a nerd that bad excuses for food can launch me into spontaneous thoughts on branding.) The city of Philadelphia had done such a great job building its brand as the premier spot for cheese steaks that I had abandoned my place in line for a meal I knew I would like to get a sandwich from a food vendor I had never heard of. Philadelphia has built its market. It has claimed ownership of the cheese steak sandwich, and in doing so, has built a market for them.

Cheese Steak Larry, however, doesn’t need to build a market. By virtue of being in Philadelphia, he’s got one built in – and it’s mostly a transient one. (Nobody who lives in Philly is going to go out of their way to eat in the train station.) So Larry just doesn’t need to worry about impressing customers with his cooking prowess, because we’re all just passing through. We can’t offer him repeat business or much in the way of word-of-mouth marketing, so why bother spending extra money on quality ingredients?  And as far as the regular train riders who pass through, I’m sure Larry is fine building a clientele from customers who simply don’t feel like waiting in line at the kiosks where they would rather eat.

But while the Cosi vendor might not have any more repeat business than Cheese Steak Larry does, Cosi does have a reason to provide quality food and service: The experience consumers have at this location will influence their decisions to eat at Cosi locations in New York, Los Angeles, or any other city. The Cosi reputation (its brand) precedes it.

Through brand building – managing and monitoring the elements of the brand and marketing and communicating its message and reputation – brands can effectively build their markets, creating loyal customers who buy purposely rather than randomly. Randomness and situation-based consumer purchasing may generate a few dollars for vendors like Larry, but it’s not sustainable and can’t be counted on. With brands, there is a constant need to communicate the promise and personality, generate awareness of a positive reputation, cushion the blow of negative consumer experiences, and ensure that the visual elements like the logo have recognition in the marketplace. Companies must make sure that their brand fulfills its promise to the market – and it’s the act of brand building (whether handled internally or through an agency) that communicates that promise. Brand building helps develop a relationship with consumers where decision-making is at least partly based on emotion and where there is reasonable hope for future purchases.

At the same time that police released the 911 call of a panic-stricken guy careening down the highway because the gas pedal on yet one more Prius got stuck, Toyota announced that for the first eight days in March, sales were up over 50% from the same period the year before.  This, after months of one embarrassing recall after another, the US congress calling Toyota’s chairman to testify, and rumors of a potential cover-up gaining momentum.  And of course, there’s been no shortage of people on Twitter who’ve mockingly noticed that the company that can’t seem to get their cars to stop accelerating uses the tagline “Moving Forward.”

So how is it possible that Toyota is actually seeing an increase in sales?  Okay, we can write off a portion of the increase to very favorable sales and payment terms.  Everybody, especially in a recession, likes a sale, and Toyota is offering some pretty good ones right about now.  But that alone doesn’t explain away their continued success.

Neither does the adage “there’s no such thing as bad PR.”  The concept here is that no matter how negative the coverage, PR keeps a brand name in front of consumers, generating recall and awareness.  If we’re to accept this at face value, then people’s ability to recall a brand name is stronger than their ability to recall any negative associations to it.  In some cases, that’s true.  Look at what’s become standard practice for Calvin Klein.  Every couple of years, the brand puts up a billboard in Times Square showing an image that’s just over the border of conservatively offensive.  Like clockwork, local church groups and mom’s groups get riled, send their letters to the media, and less than a day later CK receives millions of dollars worth of national (albeit negative) press for the cost of a local ad.  They apologize, pull the ad down, and life goes on as usual while CK reaps the rewards.  Negative PR helps the brand.

Milli Vanilli, however, had a different experience (ok, I’m reaching into the way-back bag, but it’s an appropriate example).  After being exposed as lip-synching front men for more talented but less attractive singers, their careers were all but over. Negative PR was the end of them.

The difference between these two stories is who they’ve offended.  Calvin Klein shows immunity to negative PR because the church groups and moms groups that they’ve upset aren’t among their core consumers.  Their target market is less likely to pay attention to the outcries of conservative watchdogs, and less likely to find the ad offensive.  In the end, the brand name becomes reinforced in their minds with no negative association.  Milli Vanilli, on the other hand, offended their core market, lying to the people who bought their music and went to their shows.  Negative PR in this case didn’t drive more people to their brand, it drove them to return the purchases consumers had already made and subsequently led them to turn their collective backs on the artists.

So where does Toyota fall in all of this?  Well, the negative PR is relentless, but the real question is who are they offending?  We can’t say it’s drivers in general – drivers who didn’t own Toyota’s before all of this happened feel disconnected to their problems; hey, it didn’t happen to my car.  And Toyota owners whose vehicles aren’t part of the recall likely feel the same way; hey, it didn’t happen to my car.  But the real reason why people still buy Toyota, and why they’ll continue to buy them in the future speaks directly to the power of the brand.  For decades, Toyota has built trust equity among consumers – demonstrating their ability to produce high quality, cost efficient cars that people like to drive.  In every way, shape and form, they have lived up to their brand promise, and ingrained themselves in the minds of the market as reliable.  Would they have survived their current problems if they were a new company and large recalls occurred right out of the gate?  Unlikely.  But because they’ve established a firm brand over a long period of time, they’re more able to weather the storm.

The end result, then, is a unique blend of negative PR around a brand that is viewed favorably.  The negative PR increases awareness.  The trust equity built over time thwarts any negative messages in the media, and the net result is a veritable mountain of free, sustainable PR for the brand, combined with favorable pricing, ultimately increasing sales.  The power of branding is not a vague concept, but a very key part of trust, loyalty and sales.

For example, suppose a marketing campaign for a retail clothing chain raises awareness gets people through their doors, but sales remain flat or even go down from previous quarters. Does that make the marketing effort a failure?  Not necessarily – there are other factors at play, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Can the shopper find the product they’re looking for easily?
• Is the store design simple to navigate and in keeping with the brand personality?
• Are the prices for the product reasonable – what the consumer expects and would be willing to pay?
• Are the salespeople helpful, or are they pushy jerks?
• Is there a competing product in the window of a nearby competitor that has a really eye-catching display and is on sale?

If the benchmarks for campaign success are gross sales, then a jumpy marketing director will quickly determine that the campaign has failed and pull the plug before any more “damage” can be done.  Blame will be placed on marketing creative and the real problems may never be noticed.  However, if success is measured by store traffic, then a completely different conclusion would be reached.

Marketing campaigns can do a lot. They can increase exposure and improve consumer perception of a brand, build trust, and even compel people to take action – all of which is measurable. And the agency creating the campaign should be held accountable for reaching their stated goals. But the goals have to be the right goals, and must take into account other non-marketing elements that may be needed. Otherwise, a perfectly good campaign could be scrapped for the wrong reason or, worse, a poor campaign could be kept longer than it should.

1. Relying too much on data and research: Let me make this clear: I’m a big believer in research, statistics, data, focus groups, etc. I think research can give you insight into the minds and movement of any audience, and brand managers and marketers should use this information as they make their decisions. But good brand managers should also have a sixth sense when it comes to their brand and what’s best for it, and be able to make certain decisions even in the face of conflicting statistical data – not based on common sense, but based on raw, gut instinct. Brand management isn’t accounting – it’s not always just about looking at the numbers. It’s creativity. It’s sociology. It’s psychology. There may not be only one right answer, and brand managers need to know when to go against the grain.
2. Being reactive instead of proactive: Being reactive is really just playing it safe. Too often, brand managers wait it out to see what their competition does before taking any action of their own. Or they’ll balk at trying something new because nobody else in their industry has done it yet. One brand manager told me that he doesn’t like to be the first to do something because, as he explained, “the first pioneers through the canyons were the ones who ended up with arrows in their back. The next ones through knew which roads to avoid.” I guess that’s true[el]but it’s also true that first one to find the treasure chest gets all the gold. The next ones just find an empty box.
3. Going for the quick buck rather than the long-term gain: Brand-building is as much a time investment as it is a financial investment – but brand managers are often under the gun at the office, with mandates coming from higher-ups to make things happen faster. It’s understandable that this will prompt the brand manager to attempt to accelerate results. But if there is one fight the brand manager must take on, this is it. Going for the quick buck and marketing for short-term results might in fact yield short-term results, but those results will be a far cry from the much greater results that can be achieved with a longer-term brand-building strategy.
4. Not setting firm goals: No, this does not contradict the preceding bullet. Goals are absolutely necessary; they just can’t be too short-term or unrealistic. The importance of firm goals can’t be stressed strongly enough, since numeric goals are the only way to determine whether the best, most cost-effective strategies are being used.
5. Not taking their own branding guide seriously enough: Don’t get me wrong: I believe people in branding and marketing – on the client and agency side – can ignore certain mandates established by the guide as long as they maintain consistency in key areas and stay within the spirit of the brand. That being said, though, it drives me nuts when a brand manager makes some flippant comment like, “It doesn’t matter if the color is off by a shade or two. Nobody will notice.” Yes they will! And if they don’t right away, they certainly will when a full year and five print runs later the color is five or six shades off. Don’t screw with consistency – it’s a brand’s best friend.

Every brand manager is bound to make mistakes and will need to retrace their steps at some point to get back on track. To be honest, I give any brand manager a lot of credit – there’s a lot of weight on their shoulders, and very often they’re flying in a fog as they try to move the brand forward. But avoiding the pitfalls outlined here will go a long way toward keeping everyone moving in the right direction.

Recently, I’ve found myself scratching my head over this.  As more and more of my agency peers express frustration with their clients’ lack of appreciation for creativity in marketing – apparently, brand managers increasingly define “creative” as “not strategic” – I’ve started wondering if maybe they have a point.  Is “creative” a bad word, a mere euphemism for any ideas that are lacking effective strategy?

In the end, I refused to give in to the cult of blame, reflective of a growing agency trend where we point our fingers at clients or the industry structure every time we don’t get what we want.

Creative is creative, strategy is strategy and vegetables are vegetables. We all know what they are. Creative includes an overriding concept as well as the design and artistic execution. Strategy is the plan of action to get a campaign or message noticed by a desired audience. When developed in tandem and executed correctly, the potential results are greater.

The issue here isn’t whether or not the word “creative” is being misconstrued or used to imply a lack of strategic sense. The problem is that agencies, anxious to have things our own way, try to force fit arguments and issues that simply don’t work. We seem, on some levels, unwilling to adapt.   For example, agencies insist that creative is the key to engaging the audience.  They’ve lost site of – or refuse to acknowledge – that we no longer own the word “engagement” in any sense.  Agencies have never presented creative as a means to engagement – at least not in the sense that the term “engagement” is more often used in today’s social media environment. Creative doesn’t engage the same way that Twitter does. However, using social media to draw attention to campaign creative is a component of strategy.  Clients get that, but many agencies, including the ones that claim to provide social media services, won’t let that reality sink in.

Another example of agencies’ unwillingness to adapt: our continued push for brand campaigns in a quick-results environment. The last year was bad for most everyone – the recession slashed budgets and many agencies starved. In an effort to generate income and secure retainer dollars, many pushed the importance of brand awareness (what some clients see as “creative” further defined as “long-term” or “having vague results”). When that didn’t work, agencies moaned that they were being commoditized. What’s missing here is the client POV – long term branding isn’t what most marketing directors are being challenged with. Their CEOs and CFO’s are saying “generate revenue this quater.” They want to keep their jobs, so their interest is in capturing low-hanging fruit and generating a short-term ROI. Until the recession is really over and budgets get back to normal, every presentation is going to be met with the question “so what’s the ROI?”

The problem with “creative” is that agencies want to push art and branding, and clients want results right now. An online display campaign generates low click thru levels (my blog on this: http://bit.ly/hYIm0), and we say “Who cares? You got great brand exposure!” as though long-term creative without short-term result is going to appease anybody right now.

Creative is fine, it’s necessary, and everyone knows what it means. It’s the agency attitude that needs to adjust.