A strong brand is like a good wine. Easy to identify, but near impossible to copy.

Yet since Adam was knee-high to a Marketing Director, intelligent people have spent countless hours studying the journey of successful marques.

Distilling the elements, unravelling the alchemy, so that the magic might be revealed and replicated.

Of course, there is no formula.

Strong brands are an inexact mix of happy accident, passion and commodity.

The moment you remove the first two, all you are left with is the third.

Your brand's history is essential.

At Fenton Stephens, it's the first place we look to for revival.

Because what made your brand successful in the first place is what made your brand successful in the first place.

Choose one of the following:

• The founding owners have moved on, taking their essential passions and idiosyncrasies with them.
• Your customers have moved on, driven by technological, financial or societal change.
• It's become somthing it isn't. Diversification and brand extensions sound good in the boardroom, but the consumer often doesn't like them.
• Your consumer has been forgotten. Invariably, good brands are invented to meet a genuine need. As the stakes get higher, this need-meeting thing is sometimes overlooked.

None of these things are hard to fix. They're just hard to acknowledge.

What sort of promise should your brand make?

It has to be big enough to attract attention, but not so big as to be hard to keep.

It also has to be a promise your consumer will believe you can live up to.

(British Airways can never be mad and whacky, yet Richard Branson has been pulling it off for decades, flying the same planes on the same routes.)

Know what promises your brand will be allowed to make.

And once you've made that promise, keep to it every day, in every way.

The moment you don't, somebody will notice. And they won't like it.

Only you don't get to measure it. Your customer does.

It's the additional value he or she feels they are getting in comparison to your competitor.

It's a function of Awareness (how familiar they are with it) and Association (what they associate with it).

Everyone's aware of Qantas, and they can't help but associate Australian-ness with it.

The more aware people are of your brand, and the more positive category associations they can make with it, the stronger your brand will be.

(Awareness without association isn't terribly helpful. Everyone's aware of Barry Manilow, but what do they associate with him?)

Ask us about what associations might be relevant and helpful to your brand.

The moment you think you do is the moment your brand begins to lose its spell.

This is an age of unprecedented information exchange.

The people buying your product know more about what they want than you ever will.

And what they want is chaning at an exponentially faster rate.

Don't try to anticipate them; it's a game you won't win.

Instead, work hard every day to try and keep up.

That way your brand will keep its magic, and maybe find some new tricks.

There's a difference between reading the executive summary of a research study and talking to real consumers.

It's the difference between reading Tiger Woods' autobiography and playing nine holes with him.

You just learn a lot more.

Fenton Stephens' proprietary BrandBearing™ methodology requires brand team members to personally engage with consumers one-on-one.

By getting their own hands dirty, the ensuing conclusions are more likely to receive enthusiastic endorsement, rather than dysfunctional debate.

In other words, something might actually be done. And actually doing something is pretty important to the successful revival of a brand.

For brand managers, BrandBearing™ has proven to be a valuable tool for determining brand equity, customer drivers and competitive distinctions.

It helps them position their brands and find clarity in their marketing objectives.

and clarity of purpose is what we work towards every day. Isn't it?