By: Steve Cuno

Branding has become the hot marketing topic of the new millennium. Advertising agencies have taken to calling themselves “branding agencies.” New books and magazines about branding sprout daily. Marketing talk everywhere centers on the brand.

Yet amid the babble, there’s little agreement about what constitutes a good brand. Some marketers equate the brand with what the rest of us call “corporate identity” consistent visual presentation. Others equate it with a catch phrase, like any number of news outlets offering news “you can use.” Still others default to awareness and recall: If a sizeable market sample can regurgitate your product name unassisted, you have “brand equity.”

We think these definitions fail to get to the crux of a strong brand. To demonstrate why, we invoke the memory of the high school class nerd. This person dressed consistently geek-like, repeated ad nauseam a catch phrase like “cowabunga, dude” and still springs readily to mind, by name. If consistent visual presentation, a catch phrase and high recall scores make a solid brand, then the class nerd is rock-solid. But a brand should also sell and you may recall that the nerd was usually the last pick in gym class and rarely went on dates. Seen in that light, the nerd may symbolize a brand, but not a useful one.

Marketing history brims with its own nerds. Consider a domestic car that was named after the founder’s son and was an utter market failure, a soft drink formula change that was recalled when it sparked protests and, more recently, a popular beer campaign that amused us all with its insights about manliness but was pulled when sales plummeted.

These products remain fresh in consumer minds. You may even be able to picture the logos and recall the taglines. If a consistent look, tagline or top-of-mind awareness makes a brand, then each of these failures was a branding success. But a brand isn’t any of those things. Your brand isn’t what you promise. Your brand is the net effect of your values, consistently delivered at every point of contact.

Thus a high-end department store has become known for over-the-top customer service and upscale decor without a tagline like “Great service, real marble floors.” A bookstore chain is known for its comfortable atmosphere where bookworms thrive on helping you find obscure titles without a word to that effect in advertising. And a burgeoning coffeehouse has become a hangout without ever advertising, “The Place to Hang Out.” These marketers have built their brands by having values and living them.

If you want to capitalize on your brand, you should work on your logo, tagline and noisemaking last. Start by defining your values. A few months ago, Deliver magazine ran a story about a global toymaker that has aligned its values with its brand messages and consistently delivered through direct mail and other outlets. They are as good an example as any of why brands have to define their values above all. And once you do, make sure you deliver on them online, on the phone, in the store, and face-to-face with vendors and employees as well as customers. Do that, and your brand will speak for itself. Then, when people remember your ads, they may actually believe what you claim in them and perhaps even buy from you.

Steve Cuno is the chairman of RESPONSE Prospecting & Loyalty Strategies and author of The Fallible Gut: A Marketer’s Guide To Surviving Intuition.