By: Marty Neumeier

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Building a brand these days is hard.

The problem, Marty Neumeier tells us, is clutter. There's product clutter - too many products and services. There's feature clutter - too many features in each product. There's advertising clutter - too many media messages. There's message clutter - too many elements per message. And finally, there's channel clutter - too many competing channels.

In this summary we are going to walk you through 17 steps you can take to create the brand you've always dreamed of. But first, we need to get a couple of things out of the way.

First, we need a definition of a brand. Marty tells us that "a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or company." It's not what you say it is, it's what other people say it is.

Second, building a brand these days is not about pushing products and services. It's about pulling people into a tribe they can trust. Your goal is to help people answer this question - "if I buy this product, what will that make me?"

Finally, your brand should be in search of white space in the market. The goal isn't be be better than the competition, it's to play where there's no competition.

When focus is paired with differentiation, supported by a trend, and surrounded by compelling communications, you have the basic ingredients of a Zag.

Let's get started.

Step #1: Who are you? (Focus)

Finding the white space with a brand does no good if you don't have the experience, credibility and passion needed to fuel that success day after day, year after year.

Questions to ask yourself

Where do you have the most credibility?

Where do you have the most experience?

Where does your passion lie?

Action steps to take

Write a future obituary for your brand.

Step #2: What Do You Do? (Focus)

The next step is to define why you exist beyond making money.

For example, Google's purpose is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible.

If it takes more than 12 words, go back to step #1, or set it aside for now and return to it later.

Questions to ask yourself

What business are you in?

Action steps to take

Decide what your purpose is, beyond selling a product or service.

State your purpose in 12 words or less

Step #3: What's Your Vision? (Focus)

Do you know and understand what your brand vision is? You need to be prepared to paint a clear picture of the future of your business.

The ultimate vision was John F. Kennedy proclaiming that there would be "a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's."

Questions to ask yourself

What do you want to accomplish in 5, 10, or 20 years?

How can you make this vision palpable and exciting?

Action steps to take

Paint a vivid picture of your future

Test it on a real piece of communication

Go back and refine it further

Use it repeatedly to illustrate the direction of your business

Step #4: What Wave Are You Riding? (Trends)

Do you know what current or future wave your business is riding? While you can build a business without harnessing a trend, it's just a lot harder to do.

As Neumeier tells us, it's the difference between paddling a surfboard and riding a wave.

Questions to ask yourself

What trend is powering your business?

How powerful is it?

Can you ride more than one trend at a time?

Action steps to take

Make a list of the trends that will power your business

Step #5: Who Shares the Brandscape? (Differentiation)

Neumeier reminds us that zagging requires us to define our company based on what makes us unique, not what makes us admirable.

That's why understanding who you are competing with in your category is important. The positions worth owning in any category are #1 or #2. If you are #3, a case could be made that you can look to unseat #2. But anything lower than #3 and you should look to invent a new category where you can be #1 in.

Questions to ask yourself

Who else competes in your category?

Who comes first, second, and third in customers' minds?

Action steps to take

Find out how your brand ranks with customers.

Design a strategy to become number one or two

Or, become the first mover in a new category

Step #6: What Makes You The "Only" (Differentiation)?

Our brand is the only ( ___ ) that ( ___ ). In the first blank put the name of your category, and in the second blank put your zag.

Here's a more detailed version of the exercise - using Harley Davidson as an example - to help you pinpoint your onliness.

What: The only motorcycle manufacturer How: that makes big, loud motorcycles Who: for macho guys (and macho wannabes) Where: mostly in the United States Why: who want to join a gang of cowboys When: in an era of decreasing personal freedom.

Questions to ask yourself

What's the one thing that makes your brand both different and compelling?

Action steps to take

Complete a simple onliness statement

Add detail by answering what, how, who, where, when and why

Step #7: What Should You Add or Subtract? (Differentiation)

Less really is more. The art of building a brand that zags is knowing when to add and when to subtract.

Here's a rule of thumb you can use - if adding an element to your brand brings you into competition with a stronger competitor, go back to the drawing board.

Questions to ask yourself

What existing brand elements are undermining your onliness?

What new brand elements could strengthen your onliness?

How do the remaining elements align with your vision?

Action steps to take

Make a list of all current and planned offerings and brand elements.

Decide which offerings to keep, sacrifice, or add

Be brutal - it's better to err on the side of sacrifice.

Step #8: Who Loves You? (Focus)

The goal with this step is to find your brand loyalists.

According to Neumeier, every brand is built by a community, including its partners, suppliers, customers, non-customers, and sometimes even competitors.

A brand is essentially an ecosystem in which each participant contributes and each participant benefits.

Questions to ask yourself

Who makes up your brand community?

How can you manage the "gives and gets" so everyone is happy?

Action steps to take

Diagram your brand's ecosystem

Decide how each participant will both contribute and benefit.

Step #9: Who's the Enemy? (Communication)

In brand building, apathy is the kiss of death. So instead of waiting for the fight to come to you, you should head on out and pick a fight.

Step up and take on the biggest, most successful competitor you can find. The goal is not to topple the big guys, but to employ the principle of contrast to throw your zag into sharp relief.

And remember, sometimes the enemy is not a company but the old way of doing things.

Questions to ask yourself

Which competitor can you paint as the bad guy?

Action steps to take

Tell your customers what you're not, in no uncertain terms.

Step #10: What Do They Call You? (Differentiation)

This step is all about picking the right name.

Questions to ask yourself

Is your name helping or hurting your brand?

If it's hurting, is there an opportunity to change it?

If it's too late to change it, is there a way to work around it?

Is it suitable for brand play? Does it have "creative" legs?

Action steps to take

Choose a name that's different, brief, and appropriate

Make sure it's easy to spell and pronounce

Find out if the name can be used as a url

Determine how easy or difficult it will be to legally defend

Step #11: How Do You Explain Yourself? (Communication)

A trueline is the one true thing you can say about your brand, based on your onliness statement.

It must be something that your competitors can't or won't claim, and something that your customers find both valuable and credible.

Here's a trueline that people might use to describe Southwest Airlines: You can fly just about anywhere for less than it costs to drive.

Once you have a trueline, it's a short step to a customer-facing tagline.

For instance, when Southwest says "you're now free to move about the country", they are translating their trueline into a more polished form.

Questions to ask yourself

What's the one true statement you can make about your brand?

Action steps to take

Craft a trueline that tells why your brand is compelling

Avoid any commas or "ands"

Turn your trueline into a tagline to use with customers

Step #12: How Do You Spread the Word? (Communication)

A marketing plan based on zagging will appear much larger than it is.

That's because you will choose to compete only in the touchpoints where you can win, and win big.

Questions to ask yourself

How can you unpack your name, trueline, and tagline?

How can you enrol brand advocates through messaging?

How can you align all your communications with your zag?

Action steps to take

Make sure your messaging is as different as your brand

Only compete at the touchpoints where you can win

Step #13: How Do People Engage With You? (Communication)

When mapping your value proposition and how people will experience you, remember that best practices are usually common practices. Make sure to define your touchpoints based on first principles.

Questions to ask yourself

What are you selling and how are you selling it?

Which touchpoint will let you compete in white space?

Action steps to take

Map your value proposition against those of your competitors.

See which competitive areas you can avoid entirely.

Discover customer touchpoints where you'll be unopposed.

Step #14: What Do They Experience? (Communication)

Customers experience your brand at specific touchpoints, so choosing what those touchpoints are, and influencing what happens there, is important work.

Questions to ask yourself

How will customers learn about you?

How can you "enrol" them in your brand?

Who will be your competition at each touchpoint?

Where should you put your marketing resources?

Action steps to take

Map the customer journey from non-awareness to full enrolment.

Bet your resources on the experiences that zag.

Step #15: How Do You Earn Their Loyalty? (Communication)

When customers are loyal, (1) they stop considering other brands, (2) they request your brand by name, (3) they recommend your brand to others, (4) they wait longer and travel farther to get your brand, (5) they accept brand extensions more readily, and (6) they continue to pay a premium price.

Questions to ask yourself

How can you help customers build barriers to competition?

How can you avoid creating a "disloyalty program"?

Action steps to take

Start by being loyal to customers

Don't make new customers feel punished or excluded

Give loyal customers the tools to introduce new customers

Step #16: How Do You Extend Your Success?(Focus)

As soon as a company goes from a single offering to a line of offerings, it's in the brand portfolio business.

There are two models for organizing brand portfolios.

The first is a "house of brands", which means that the company markets a range of separate brand names. P&G is the most well-known example of this with brands like Tide, Crest and Old Spice.

The second is model is the "branded house", meaning that the company is the brand, and the products and services are subsets of the main brand.

Questions to ask yourself

How do you keep growing the brand year after year?

Action steps to take

Choose between a house of brands and a branded house

Add extensions that reinforce the brand's meaning

Avoid extensions that unfocus the brand's meaning

Avoid extensions that bring you into competition with leaders

Step #17: How Do You Protect Your Portfolio? (Focus)

There are four dangers that brand portfolios face that single brands don't - contagion, confusion, contradiction and complexity.

Contagion is the dark side of synergy. If one product line in a branded house has a problem, it can infect the rest of the product lines.

Confusion is another problem. When there is 17 varieties of Crest toothpaste, we don't really know what Crest is all about anymore.

Contradiction is a third problem that occurs when a company tries to extend a brand globally. Since brands are defined by customers, not companies, people in one culture might view a product or company differently. For instance, Disney might mean "wholesome entertainment" in some cultures, and "cultural imperialism" in another.

Lastly we have complexity. Multiple segments, multiple products and multiple extensions can easily create an over-grown and hard to manage brand portfolio.

Managing your brand portfolio requires clear roles, relationships and boundaries for brands. The most important task in brand-building (once you have built one) is the ability to say no.

Questions to ask yourself

How can the whole be worth more than the parts?

How can you stay focused under short-term profit pressure?

Action steps to take

Avoid C-Sickness - contagion, confusion, contradiction and complexity

Understand the long-term effects of brand extensions