Fast Pack 1999

Nick Shore: In the old days, first you'd create a product, then you'd build a brand around it. In the new paradigm, it's the other way around: The product is driven by the brand. The nature of the product -- what it's about, how it's configured, how it's improved -- is all driven by the brand. First you build a brand idea -- you tap into the values that people are interested in, you understand what people are up to these days, you tune into what's happening in pop culture. Then you create a territory, a mind space -- and only then do you build your product.

Tim DeMello: One of the toughest problems with brands today is that success breeds failure. Ingrained in every consumer is a sensibility that roots for the underdog. Take Nike, for example. That company has gone from making an emotional connection with its customers -- because it was the outsider -- to being the biggest, baddest brand around.

Which is why I don't buy Nikes anymore. Products get to a point where, all of a sudden, they're no longer cool. So here's the basic problem: You do everything right. You hit a home run in your market. You create a smash success in your category. And then, because customers root for underdog brands, all of a sudden, they leave you. What do you do?

Scott Bedbury: The most successful brands need to adopt a credo: As you make your brand ubiquitous, make every new source of ubiquity a means of refreshment -- not a means of punishment. At Starbucks, we differentiate our stores: Some are plows, and some are probes. Plow stores are our acknowledgment that, as a publicly traded company, we have to hit our numbers. Probe stores are for experimentation. They come out of our skunk works, where we challenge people to come up with a thousand different ideas. We don't want a one-store look and feel. We want a palette from which to paint, with the freedom to draw on dozens of different design and performance factors.

Howard Schultz was once asked by USA Today how he created Starbucks as a huge brand. His response was that he didn't set out to create a brand -- he set out to create a really good company, and the brand developed. There are three legs to the stool: The first is product superiority and product integrity. The second is the integrity of the company -- how it treats its people, how it treats the environment. And the third is how the company connects with its customers -- the words it chooses, the spokespeople it uses in its ads.

Laurie Coots: Brands do not exist anywhere other than in the minds and hearts of the people who believe in them. I've had the opportunity to work with some great brands: Nike, Reebok, and Apple. To me, branding is the new buzzword because companies have figured out that consumers are not willing to buy products just for the sake of the products. A good product is not enough; consumers today are also looking for soul -- and soul is one thing you cannot invent. It has to be authentic. It has to be in the company. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there who really don't have soul, but who are doing this branding thing as a way to stay alive. All that does is to dilute what is authentic about branding. But the good news is that consumers can smell a fraud. That's the reason Nike got into trouble: It started celebrating athletes who didn't want to play the game! That's the reason Apple got into trouble: It tried to be all things to all people. To me, soul is where it starts.

Mary Furlong: One way to think about the power of a brand is to look at the company through the eyes of a new employee. When a new recruit walks into the company and is able to meet the person who started it -- the living, walking visionary, the person who put it all on the line to start the company -- that communicates more than any company "vision" statement can. For me, that's the intangible value of having a company born out of a vision -- and of having the leaders who created that vision available for everyone to see, to hear, and to relate to.

At the same time, there's a risk: Companies need to be able to outlive their leaders. One of the great examples of this is the HP Way: People who come to work at Hewlett-Packard know what the HP Way is. They may not be able to name the current CEO -- I don't think I can! But HP has made the transition from being the inspiration of its founders to creating an enduring brand that has its own values and its own vision.