The following post is an excerpt from PULL's Winter 08 publication "bluesky".  If you would like to receive a copy, you can download it. <a href="http://www.whitehotcenter.com/influence_by_design/files/bluesky_winter_08.pdf"></a><a href="http://www.whitehotcenter.com/influence_by_design/files/bluesky_winter_08.pdf">Download bluesky_winter_08.pdf</a>

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What does it really mean to be a truly “brand-driven” enterprise in the new economy? We persist in defining  brand as the external image of a company, product or service. In reality, brand-driven companies know intuitively it is first an internal activity that comes from the heart of the enterprise straight to the heart of the customer. It is always an honest, open, two-way conversation that creates enormous value for both participants. As products and services become more and more functionally similar, and the noise of marketing and message clutter becomes increasingly hard to navigate through, customers will have more difficulty differentiating and perceiving innovation from common, good from great.  Design is essential to brand-driven companies.

Brand design in the new economy is more about meaning than marketing. That being said, the whole notion of the science of branding as a means for determining quantitative metrics seems to be an over-sold idea.  Metrics are important and useful, but how do you quantify a person’s feelings, aspirations, passions, beliefs and devotion?  Yet the rewards for connecting these “soft” emotional attributes add billions of dollars of hard market value (think brand equity) to those who employ a greater conscious awareness of the power of break away brand design. Branding is no longer marketing shtick.  And it should never be a process owned solely within the disciplines of product development and marketing.  A brand  belongs to every discipline within the enterprise. All coming together to craft unified and honest answers to a few tough introspective questions:
<ul>
	<li>why are we here?</li>
	<li>how are we unique?</li>
	<li>how do we make a difference to our customer?</li>
	<li>who cares and why?</li>
</ul>
Brand design defines your business enterprise based on what you really care about and never letting any outside circumstance (think competitor) define you. A brand promise is a dynamic, living, relevant, inspired, on-going saga called “the values we care most deeply about”.  Brand leadership is living this truth by delivering a profound experience to an audience that cares with equal passion and devotion. Hence creating brand advocates, sneezers, viral marketers, a.k.a. happy customers who identify themselves and their aspirations through the shared values of a brand they love.  Brand design is in harmonious vibration with the customer’s emotional desires and aspirations. There is nothing decorative or superficial about it.

In the new economy, brand development and design are valued for what they really are – namely, twin activities that harness and connect the passion and emotion within the heart of the enterprise to the heart of the customer.  Essentially two sides of the same coin called a valuable relationship.