Tim Calkins is clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois. Download our podcast to hear him discuss branding, what it means to your organisation and customers, and how to make the most of it.

Key points:

1. Really understand what your brand means: who is my customer – who is my target – and what makes my brand unique.

2. Look at an existing brand and ask yourself is what we’re doing with our brand consistent with what we want it to be. If not, how do you fix that?

3. Does everyone in my organisation understand the brand? Ask someone in the front line of the company what they think the brand means. If they don’t know then there’s work to be done to educate your staff.

4. Evaluate the brand on a continuous basis. Do customers get it? Tracking the brand is essential. Ultimately, a brand isn’t what people want the brand to mean, it exists in the associations your customers have with it.

Times Recommends

• Blackstone target at $7.75bn on China deal
• An opportunity in the Muslim community
• BSkyB deal may spell trouble for Virgin