Leading companies have come to realize that the most valuable asset they can have is a strong brand. It’s almost impossible to win on price. That simply sets you on a race to the bottom that ends in a crash.It’s also difficult to compete on technology. Technology is bright and shiny (and the board of directors love it), but since technology has no ‘fence’ around it, it’s not long before competitors gain access to the same tools. Ultimately, technology is a leveler, not a differentiator.It’s brand value that separates you from your competitors and gives your company long term (sometimes over a century) of ongoing value.“The business case for branding is that it lets you sell more things to more people, for more years at a higher price. So if you find yourself lowering your price to be competitive, that's a tax on branding,” said Marty Neumeier, CBO at Liquid Agency (USA).What makes brand building so challenging is that it is as much an art as a science. It’s all of the intangibles that make brand development, execution and growth so complex.“The biggest hurdle is the mindset of what a brand is because many companies still think of branding as something that they do. That we control the brand and that we brand our products. It's not a very helpful way to think about it because if you think about what a brand really is, it's a person's gut feeling about a company or a product or service. It's in the minds and the hearts of customers,” said Mr. Neumeier.As brand builders our job is to help people form an impression of who we are, and that impression takes place in their minds. “If you just look at branding as logos and advertising and messages, then you are probably missing out on creating a brand that really connects with people. “It’s not what you send out, it’s what the customer receives that matters,” said Mr. Neumeier. A Change in FocusThe branding process needs to start with an understanding of your customer. What do they need and want? What matters to them? Does your brand make their lives better and perhaps also help society in general better? These are tough questions, but they are the foundation of building brands that develop strong tribes of loyal customers.The classic example of a brand who did this successfully, and has reaped the rewards for decades, is Apple. Companies who’ve done branding right have racked up massive brand valuations like Apple at $263 billion, Amazon at $254 billion, Microsoft at $140 billion … and it’s not just tech brands. Coca-cola weighs in at $64 billion, Louis Vuitton at $47 billion, Nike at $39 billion and Walmart at $29 billion. And that’s only the top of the list. “You have to start with human nature. Companies should focus on customers first. They should make sure that they are making customers' lives better. They shouldn’t start by trying to figure out how they're going to make a profit. If you start with ‘where's the money coming from’, you'll probably get some money, but you won’t necessarily build a tribe that lasts,” said Mr. Neumeier.“Business education teaches us that it's all about what we do as a company, not the things that we do for our customers. Today, the big revolution is understanding customers, and the groups that they form, and serving them in ways that are mutually beneficial,” he explained.The New Agile Strategy“Traditional branding is about surfaces, it's about the look and feel, or the surface understanding of something. In the old days an advertising agency would just come along and take whatever product existed, try to understand the customers, and then create some messages to make it look better than it was. It was just cosmetic because they didn’t have control over anything else in the company,” said Mr. Neumeier.“Agile strategy is based on the idea that there's very little difference between business strategy and brand strategy. These days, if a business strategy isn't based on building a brand, it's probably not going to be a successful strategy. Branding is about customers and if you don't include customers in your plan it's not much of a plan,” he explained.Too often companies try to build their success by following what other companies are doing. “Many times leadership just sees what other companies are doing, and they say, ‘look at look at those guys. They’re really successful, we need to go in that direction. It's like watching people fish. They’ll say ‘They're catching fish over there, row over there’. But by the time they get over there, there's no fish left,” he said.While following others seems safer, it's actually not because it's the path to commoditization. And that means low profit margins.“What Agile Strategy is about is not doing your strategy in a linear way but doing it all at once where everybody across multiple departments are working together at the same time. So that while you're in this process it stays ‘liquid’, and everybody - from marketing, product development, sales and senior management - has an equal voice in the big ideas of the strategy.”Why ‘Swarming’ is a Key Tactic“We call this process ‘swarming’ and that's a term that comes from the military. It’s what all the generals do as the leaders of the military when there's an emergency. They get together and since there's no time to do a lot of research, they only know what they already know. They have to make decisions on the fly with less than complete information, and they need to put their heads together and make a decision, all hands on deck. It doesn't have to be frantic, and it doesn't have to be done in a short amount of time, but the main thing is that it's done in an ‘all at once format’ rather than a linear format,” said Mr. Neumeier.“Too often what happens is companies will come up with a strategy on paper. When they go to execute it the people executing it just can't do anything with it - it lacks dimension or excitement. So they're just basically polishing and making this strategy look cool on the outside. When you ‘swarm’ - where everybody's in the room together - designers are there, the people actually speaking with customers are there, salespeople are there, and they all have a voice in the process. This leads to brands and products that really resonate with customers.”Why Winners Focus on the Long Term“Branding is all about the long run. It's about investing for the future, as well as the present, because a strong brand definitely supports sales and marketing tactics in the present, but it's also an investment for the future. The idea is to bring stability to the brand, or to the company, so that customers can last pretty long and they can be loyal for the rest of their lives. Brands that have a reputation can outlast the customers and can last generations. That really gives a company strength. That's what branding is about. It's about building a stronger company, a company that can be agile and strong enough to withstand competition, and any mistakes it makes, because companies make mistakes,” said Mr. Neumeier.