Measure Your Brand Effectiveness, Online

Thanks to more than 100 years of memorable brand marketing -- along with recent breakthrough communication technologies such as the Internet and social media, your brand is at the center of a collection of core human attributes: love, desire, hope, fear, success, failure, and so on. More than simple human wants and needs, these are the basic building blocks of brands -- the raw human qualities, emotions and stories that successful business organizations want to associate themselves with.

Humanizing brands has gone mainstream. Consumers have gone all in and have projected an aspect of their inner beings onto brands, becoming enthusiastic co-creators of the new brand experience. Brand attribution is now like after shave that makes us smell like a celebrity apprentice. Advertising jingles are sweaters that really do make us look thinner.

Memorable customer stories are those that tend to connect with us in an emotional way. Brands know this all too well. In fact, product advertisements and brand taglines have been playing up the personal, emotional bond between people and products for years. Take a stroll down ad slogan lane for yourself to be reminded just how good brand marketing can be:

Have a coke and a smile (Coca-Cola). Remember all those times in your life when you were happy...enjoying a Coke.

You’re in good hands with Allstate. You need to protect your family and having your insurance with Allstate allays fears.

Reach out and touch someone (ATT). You can't always be close to the ones you love but happiness is just a phone call away.

Think different (Apple). Celebrate your individuality at all costs. Apple = nonconformist.

99.44% pure (Ivory Soap). Purity is synonymous with cleanliness. People trust brands willing to lay out the details to prove a point.

When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight (FedEx). We'll help make your hectic life a little easier.

Have it your way (Burger King). Each person has unique tastes and preferences that Burger King will meet.

It’s not a job. It’s an adventure (U.S. Navy). Satisfy your wanderlust and get paid for it!

Said another way, your brand is a delecate ecosystem -- the intersection of people, their brand experiences, how well they've been empowered and integrated into what you have to offer, and what they say to others about your brand. This kaleidescope of people branding is important to understand because it is a living, breathing testiment for all that your brand offers today and all that consumers are saying about it.

Brand trust can be fleeting -- something amost unthinkable just a few decades ago. One false move followed by distrustworthy actions triggering negative word-of-mouth and your brand is in big trouble. Just ask BP, the Britsh oil company struggling to fight the damage to its brand reputation after the recent Gulf coast oil spill disaster. One day they were sitting pretty. The next day, they are facing the wrath of the world's environmentalists and angry U.S. citizens.

For brands to prosper, it might be wise to try this exercise. Combine any two of the above five elements and brainstorm about strategies that could help you achieve your brand building goals & objectives.

For example, if you combine the words integration and conversations one might come up with the idea to combine Mahalo.com's Q&A API feed about your brand onto your website product page so that it sits alongside your 'official' branded content. Doing this might enstill visitor trust, it could keep some visitors from leaving your site (they want second and third opinions about your products anyway -- why not give them what they are looking for right here on your own website?), and it's not a large technical feat to integrate an API feed into a website.

When you focus your brand marketing efforts around your customers and follow simple approaches to optimizing the brand experience, nowing what to focus your marketing efforts on each business quarter becomes surprisingly easy.