Brands move and evolve regardless of planning, guidance, or thought. A brand’s image exists in the minds of the audience who experience its many touch-points. Most companies are in denial that their brands are connecting with their audience in the manner they believe them to be. A company’s brand is a significant factor in every single business action and interaction with its audience segments: clients/customers, investors, employees, vendors, suppliers, JV Partners, and... the most important of all... the silent opportunities in all the above groups that the poorly executed brand did not attract or ever meet.

It is no coincidence that over 50% of the top fortune 50 companies, by market cap, are present in the top 100 valued brands in the world. Google’s brand is now valued at $100 billion, 59% of its market value. And 3 out of the 5 top valued auto brands are German engineered and the other 2 are Japanese, proving that great audience experience turns into equity on the balance sheet.

So why???, with all of this evidence of the importance of brand value does the staggering majority of small and medium sized enterprise businesses in North America treat brand building as a transactional, “Oh, yes we need that too” afterthought, left to an inexperienced coordinator as a budget driven side project. The answer is simple... “they have not been shown a better way”.

A brand’s intelligence is key... call it what you want, the... idea, point, gist, manifesto, vision, identity, position, or strategy... the intelligence is the driving force that informs all business action. In order to control the judgment the brand audience concludes in their mind, the company requires Brand Intelligence to shape each touchpoint to be experienced with the desired perceptive outcome. This intelligence that controls perception is what Faulkner Brand is obsessed with.