essential purpose
Once you figure out what a brand 'stands for' it's much easier to figure out what to do with their advertising and marketing.
Sounds pretty straightforward but I'm always surprised at how often it's either ignored or not deemed to be that important.
Particularly when looking for a role to play within the social media and using the social technologies that connect people.
Without a clear purpose then it's just papering over the cracks or sprinkling hundreds and thousands on the top.
This purpose is often described as 'brand essence' and lives at the centre of some kind of onion type analogy.
I would argue that it's simpler than an an onion, and is more akin to the diagram above.
And anyway, often this 'brand essence' may mean something to the people creating the chart but means bugger-all to a punter.
Once a clear purpose is established it becomes a life state that feeds into the outward facing physical manifestation of the brand (the things it says and does) and also into the spritual aspect (how we feel about it).
Built on shoddy or questionable 'essential' qualities will manifest itself as a reflection of those qualities in the physical and 'spiritual' truth of the brand.
The good news is, fixing the inside first, the essential, will alter the other two by default.
It can start right now and the effects begin immediately.
Herein lies the potential for innovation (and the ROI)...
