Today’s winning brands can’t afford to play it safe. They don’t say "that's just how it’s always been done," and they understand that their brands are more just a sleek logo or a cool tagline. The brands that crush their competition understand that branding and brand strategy go much deeper than attractive website design and responsive mobile design.

Is your brand positioned in consumers’ minds against competitors in a meaningful way? Today, too many brand strategies lack strategic differentiation. Instead, they fall back on traditional differentiators like price points, product features, and customer service. Brands that rely on such ho-hum differentiators lose in the long run for three reasons:

A brand exists in its most elementary form, to provide a solution to a problem that exists in the marketplace. In agreeing to provide the solution, it is promising to make good on that agreement—offering a solution is a commitment to deliver a brand promise.