How to Build a Powerful Brand

As we look back over our years of branding experience, we've discovered there are key drivers that consistently create strong brands. Using several brands that recently ranked in CoreBrand's Top 100 Powerful Brands as examples, we've culled some specific tips for building (and maintaining) a powerful brand.

Spend more - Great brands spend more aggressively on advertising. According to a recent report from Kantar Media, while advertising expenditures declined overall in 2013, spending among the 10 largest advertisers for the first nine months of 2013 increased by 6.4%.

Although not a stand-alone strategy, advertising is a way to help increase a brand's power because it enables that brand to control the message and therefore, communicate more distinctive, emotional benefits. While other companies may be able to mimic product or service attributes, the combination of an organization's culture, personality and processes inform how those products and services are delivered. As the foundation of advertising messaging, this more emotionally driven approach helps create differentiation, favorability and lock-in.