To be a leading brand, you must always deliver

Your customers and the customers you hope to get have choices. What's more, the marketplace is crowded with lots of advertising noise, making it a challenge to get noticed through the clutter.
How do you stand out? A powerful brand is a core necessity.

Your brand goes well beyond your logo and slogan.

Does the brand Harley-Davidson carry a loyal following? Ask anyone who owns a Harley if they would ever own a similarly-styled Yamaha motorcycle.

Does BMW live up to being the ultimate driving machine? Take an M6 on a test drive and you'll agree.

All brands make promises in the media, corporate brochures and advertising, but successful brands deliver on their promises with service and product quality.

In order to become a leading brand, a product must be credible. That means delivering each and every time on your promise.

To illustrate, imagine if your favorite lunch venue that promotes itself as having the "thickest and tastiest heroes" started making your sandwiches thinner. Bad move. Even if the joint is trying to reduce expenses because of the economy, it's not worth it. Never ever stop delivering on your promise.

It is just as bad if the sandwich shop had varied hero thicknesses based on which employee made it. Keep your product quality consistent.

Creating and maintaining a successful brand also means providing a superior product. If the sandwich shop was not making heroes with quality meats, that will never allow the shop's claim of the "tastiest heroes" to be credible with customers.

I recently purchased a few televisions for my new office. I already made up my mind to buy Sony-brand flat-screens. But one of my friends took me to the local electronics store and helped me compare the Sony product with brand B. I couldn't tell if there was a picture quality difference and the specs on paper were very close. The Sonys, however, were hundreds of dollars more.

I ended up buying the Sony televisions anyway. The years of Sony advertising and articles touting the company's cutting edge quality made the brand strong enough for me to pay more for it. I'm not alone out there. In fact, Sony positions itself as a superior electronics maker and consistently delivers — giving the company one of the most successful brands in the world.
If you have your brand promise and execution aligned, get the word out to key audiences and continue to keep delivering on what you say.

Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a marketing and public relations firm serving the Hudson Valley. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 796-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at focusonmarketing.blogspot.com or visit www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.