Imagine you’re about to build a brand from scratch or strengthen one to stand out in a competitive market. Where do you begin? Do you focus on strategy first or on visual identity? How do you bring that strategy into action to generate real results?

In my experience as a brand consultant, I’ve found that the most successful organizations align their efforts under three basic strategic visions: Think, BE, and Do. Each one addresses a different approach to building brand value:

1. Think: The intellectual and strategic perspective that defines the brand’s DNA, its reason for being, and the foundation for decision-making.

2. BE: The brand’s appearance and personality, translating into how the market and consumers perceive it.

3. Do: The concrete action of selling, communicating, and bringing that strategy to real-world execution.

Think of them as the three pillars that hold up a building. If one fails, the structure wobbles. In this document, I’ll guide you step by step through each vision and its fundamental elements so that, like an experienced builder, you have the necessary tools to erect a solid, competitive, and memorable brand.

The “Think” Dimension in Brand Governance

Within the value structure of a brand, the “Think” dimension refers to its intellectual and strategic aspect, also known as “Brand Governance.” This component lays the foundation upon which key decisions are made, the brand’s DNA is defined, and strategic objectives are aligned with its purpose. As a consultant, I always recommend starting here: establish the essence and mission of your brand before designing any visual identity or campaign.

To achieve this governance, I often propose three questions that serve as a compass:

1. Why do we do it? – Defines the brand’s core values and purpose.

2. How do we do it? – Determines the methods and strategies employed.

3. What do we do? – Specifies the actions and activities to achieve the objectives.

The answers to these questions become principles guiding all brand decisions. Within this “Think” dimension, two key factors are particularly relevant and contribute directly to the brand’s financial and strategic value: brand currency and investment history.

1. Brand Currency

For your brand to stay relevant and competitive over time, it is essential to preserve and protect the core elements that set it apart in the market. From my consulting perspective, I can’t stress enough that your intellectual property is your greatest asset.

These elements include:

• Verbal Communication: Tone of voice, slogans, naming.

• Visual: Logos, colors, typography.

• Spatial: The design of physical or digital spaces that reflect the brand’s identity.

Keeping these elements consistent and protected ensures long-term coherence and immediate recognition in your consumers’ minds.

ISO 10668: Financial Brand Valuation

One aspect I recommend considering is ISO 10668, the international standard defining the principles for financial brand valuation. This standard helps you understand and quantify how the brand adds economic value to your business from three perspectives:

1. Legal: Protecting intellectual property elements and their influence on the brand’s value.

2. Behavioral: How customers, suppliers, and employees perceive and value the brand.

3. Financial: Impact on metrics such as ROI, CAC, and other key indicators.

Keeping your brand current, its assets well safeguarded, and following international standards is the best investment you can make to ensure its longevity.

Key Value Indicators According to ISO 10668

When analyzing your brand’s value, check these areas:

1. Brand Equity Strength:

   • Brand awareness and perception among consumers.

   • Levels of satisfaction and loyalty.

2. Financial Performance:

   • ROI generated by marketing and communication activities.

   • Sales volume directly attributable to the brand.

   • Costs related to brand maintenance (branding, advertising, etc.).

3. Ability to Generate Future Revenue:

   • Sales growth forecasts based on brand strength.

   • Premium Pricing: the ability to charge more due to brand recognition.

4. Brand-Related Risk:

   • Exposure to reputational crises or market trends.

   • Reliance on external factors.

These criteria not only serve to measure your brand’s current value, but also indicate where you should focus efforts to enhance it over the long term.

2. Investment History

Investment history measures the achievements and tangible results your brand has accumulated over time. I like to think of it as a logbook that shows which strategies have worked and how they have contributed to your positioning.

• Awareness: The impact generated by your corporate identity and advertising efforts.

• Return on Awareness: Measured by ROI (return on investment) and CAC (customer acquisition cost).

It’s crucial to continually assess whether your communication activities genuinely boost the perceived value you seek to build. To do so, monitor the value indicators most relevant to your main stakeholders.

Key Stakeholder Value Indicators

1. Customers

   • Does the brand justify premium prices?

   • Do you generate higher sales volumes at lower marketing costs?

   The answers to these questions lie in the trust, loyalty, and differentiation your brand projects.

2. Suppliers

   • Have you obtained better conditions and pricing thanks to the brand’s reputation?

   Credibility, strategic partnerships, and financial stability often translate into more favorable business agreements, whether in pricing, access, or preferential treatment.

3. Team

   • Are you able to reduce hiring costs and increase internal productivity?

   An attractive brand to work for retains top talent and fosters productivity and organizational culture.

4. Media and Networks

   • Do you positively influence attitudes and behaviors with lower marketing costs?

   Relevance, authority, and the network effect inspire more people to speak organically about your brand.

5. Finance

   • Do you have better payment terms or new sources of revenue?

   A trustworthy, well-positioned brand achieves financial credibility, income diversification, and expansion opportunities.

When the answers to these questions are positive, it means your brand is aligned with stakeholders’ values and thus reinforces brand governance.

In short, “Think” ensures that the brand is managed strategically, focusing on keeping its assets current and an investment history that strengthens its financial value. This is the fundamental pillar—the root that will provide stability to all other dimensions.

Value Dimension: BE (Appearance and Personality)

If “Think” outlines the strategy, BE determines how your brand is presented and how people perceive it. In my experience, even the best strategy can fail if the brand identity doesn’t connect emotionally with the public. This is where brand equity building comes into play.

BE is divided into two main elements:

1. Value Proposition: The promise the brand makes to the customer about how it meets their needs.

2. Intangible Assets: Elements such as logos, visual design, narrative, and customer experience.

Five Pillars That Sustain Brand Equity

1. Recognition

If nobody recognizes you, they can’t buy from you. With that in mind, we must create brand signatures or distinctive elements that spark the desired image in the audience’s mind. A clear example is Nike’s swoosh and “Just Do It.”

• Visual: Logos, colors, typography, packaging.

• Verbal: Slogans, names.

• Sensorial: Sounds, scents, flavors, or textures.

The key is maintaining coherence and consistency across various association elements; for example, McDonald’s consistently embodies “Joy” in their taglines, brand voice, packaging, logo, and other corporate elements.

2. Conceptual Association

Conceptual association links your brand to the solution you offer. If your brand is too generic, people won’t know why they should choose you, and you may lose relevance. That’s why it’s essential to manage your brand portfolio strategically, especially when you handle multiple business lines or different services. Below are various ways to expand or diversify a brand, depending on how complex your offerings are:

1. Brand Extension
   Imagine you already have a well-known brand and want to leverage that reputation to launch a new service or product—similar, but not exactly the same as what you currently offer. A clear example is Amazon, which started selling books online and then moved into cloud services with AWS. Here, the “Amazon” brand backs “AWS” for reliability, and both benefit mutually.

2. Line Extension
   This approach involves varying or adding features within the same product or service category. A typical case is KitKat, which keeps its core concept of a chocolate-covered wafer but constantly introduces new flavors or presentations. It’s ideal when you want to refresh your offering without losing the core association you’ve built.

3. House of Brands
   Here, the main brand (usually the corporation) acts as an umbrella for multiple independent brands. Unilever is an example: it manages Dove, Axe, Knorr, and others, each with its own personality and positioning. This model works well if you have a diverse product or service portfolio and want to prevent one line’s image from affecting another.

4. Branded House
   This strategy consolidates all products or services under a single main brand, like Apple. Each device and service (iPhone, iPad, Apple Music, etc.) carries the “Apple” name to harness the strength and coherence of one identity. It’s useful if you seek immediate recognition and a unified style across all your offerings.

5. Subbrands
   These are derivative brands that maintain some independence but remain connected to the parent brand. Toyota and Lexus are a good example: they share engineering and support structures but target different market segments. This allows you to address different audiences without sacrificing the corporate credibility the parent brand provides.

In general, each of these brand portfolio strategies responds to different needs and goals:

• Brand or Line Extensions: Ideal for expanding your offering when the new product or service aligns with the essence of the original brand.

• House of Brands: Recommended if you manage very diverse products and prefer distinct brands for each.

• Branded House: Effective when you want to centralize everything under one name, leveraging the strength of the parent brand.

• Subbrands: Useful when reaching markets with different expectations but still connected in some way to the parent brand.

• Focal Brand: Perfect for operations focusing on a single service or a narrow offering, and you’d rather concentrate efforts on one identity.

It’s also important to adapt these approaches to different cultural contexts and each market’s reality, avoiding negative connotations or confusion. Choosing the right strategy will enable you to more effectively align your products or services with the desired perception, consolidating your brand’s value proposition and position in consumers’ minds.

3. Perceived Value

Perceived value is essentially what your customers believe they gain by choosing your brand. To define it clearly and practically, I suggest using the Value Proposition Canvas proposed by Strategyzer. This model translates value strategy into two major parts that connect to each other:

A. Customer Profile Side

1. Jobs: What does your customer need to accomplish in their daily or professional life? These can be functional, social, or emotional tasks. For instance, someone looking for a fitness program might want to stay healthy (functional), gain the admiration of others (social), or improve their self-esteem (emotional).

2. Pains: What inconveniences, problems, or frustrations does the customer face in trying to do those jobs? Continuing the example, it could be a lack of time to exercise, low motivation, or injury risks.

3. Gains: What positive outcomes does the customer want or expect? Maybe they want to look better, have more energy, or feel proud of meeting their goals.

B. Value Map Side

1. Products & Services: This is where you list everything you offer to solve the customer’s jobs. In our example, it might be personalized workout routines, nutritional advice, and so on.

2. Pain Relievers: How does your offering solve or at least lessen the pains identified in the customer profile? It could be a platform that arranges your workout schedule or a virtual coach for daily motivation.

3. Gain Creators: How does your value proposition provide additional benefits? Perhaps you include a rewards program for meeting fitness goals or offer progress tracking tools to boost satisfaction.

The key is to match both sides of the Canvas: the better you address “Pains” and reinforce “Gains,” the higher the perceived value. This allows your brand not only to fulfill its main promise but also deliver extra benefits your customer will appreciate and remember.

If you apply this model in a straightforward way, you’ll be able to define your value proposition more clearly and communicate it effectively. That way, the customer quickly understands why your brand is the best choice to meet their needs.

4. Satisfaction

The best strategy is the one that leaves your customer happy. To measure and improve satisfaction, I use tools like empathy maps, heat maps, or surveys. A typical example is the user experience in an e-commerce setting: the simpler and faster it is, the higher the customer’s satisfaction and likelihood of repeat purchases.

5. Loyalty

Loyalty is that invisible bond that makes your customers choose you even when there are similar options available. Achieving a high level of loyalty requires cultivating deep, genuine relationships across every brand interaction. To understand how loyalty evolves over time, I like to illustrate it with the following hierarchy:

1. Analog Brand
   Consumers choose it by default or because they don’t see a clear difference with competitors. The emotional bond is practically nonexistent.

2. Brand Parity
   The public sees your brand as one among several similar choices. There isn’t a solid preference, and any shift in price or convenience might drive the consumer to another option.

3. Optional Brand
   Customers begin to see your brand as an appealing alternative, though a truly strong differentiating factor may not yet exist. It’s the start of more concrete recognition.

4. Brand Nomer
   Your brand becomes so common in its category that people use it as a synonym for the product or service. For example, using “to Google” instead of “to search on the internet.”

5. Attitude Brand
   It fosters strong emotional ties even among people who aren’t direct users. Think of Harley-Davidson, which stands for a lifestyle centered on freedom and rebellion.

6. First-Order Brand
   Your brand becomes the go-to option for most consumers and is recognized beyond its niche. Coca-Cola and its product lines exemplify a global reach and strong brand presence.

Any branding project aspires to climb to the higher levels in this hierarchy. Achieving that requires a comprehensive strategy covering every customer touchpoint, reinforcing perceived value step by step. As you progress, your brand will claim a privileged place in the consumer’s mind and heart, guaranteeing a lasting, profitable relationship.

Value Dimension: DO (Selling and Communicating)

Once you’ve defined your strategy (Think) and your personality and identity (BE), the moment of truth arrives: Do. This dimension involves practically applying your strategy to generate sales, strengthen emotional ties, and optimize communication.

As a consultant would say: “Having a clear vision and a strong personality is fantastic, but at the end of the day, you need to implement concrete actions that produce results.” To do so, I rely on five basic areas, often referred to as the 5 Ps: Person, Product, Price, Place (Point of Sale), and Promotion.

1. Person

The person or ideal customer is the axis of all marketing actions. Before defining prices or campaigns, ask yourself: Who am I selling to?

• Geographic Segmentation: Location, climate, culture.

• Demographic Segmentation: Age, gender, income.

• Psychographic Segmentation: Lifestyle, interests.

• Behavioral Segmentation: Purchase frequency, occasion, benefits sought.

Get to know their consumption formats (video, reading, etc.), the technologies they use, and their means of transportation. All this will allow you to personalize your offer as much as possible.

2. Product

The product is the concrete solution to the needs identified in your “person.” Define its characteristics so that they truly deliver Elements of Value:

1. Functional: Saves time, reduces costs, simplifies processes.

2. Emotional: Inspires well-being, reduces anxiety, evokes nostalgia.

3. Life-Changing: Motivates, creates memorable experiences.

4. Social Impact: Positively transforms society.

Also pinpoint the purchase occasion and the level of familiarity your customers have with your brand (non-user, ex-user, potential user, etc.).

3. Price

Price expresses how you value your solution. Depending on your positioning strategy, you might opt for a premium, competitive, penetration, or volume pricing scheme. Remember that price communicates a lot about your brand.

4. Point of Sale

Whether online or offline, the point of sale is where the magic of the transaction happens. Make sure to:

• Be present in the channels where your customer genuinely looks for solutions.

• Offer a memorable experience (from store design to website navigation).

• Have an efficient logistics system that facilitates deliveries and returns.

5. Promotion

Promotion spreads your message and educates the market about your value proposition. Tactics range from traditional advertising to content marketing, SEO, email marketing, PR, and more. Consistency and frequency of exposure are crucial.

Conclusion

Together, the three dimensions (Think, BE, Do) form an integrated system for building and strengthening any brand seeking relevance and sustainability. My advice as a consultant is to avoid skipping any steps: first develop the strategy, then fortify the identity, and finally execute the tactics with determination. By organically aligning these pillars, your brand will:

• Boost customer loyalty.

• Build stronger relationships with suppliers.

• Strengthen internal teams and their sense of belonging.

• Increase positive media and network presence.

• Gain better financial opportunities.

In doing so, you create a virtuous cycle in which each action feeds your brand’s total value, keeping it alive in consumers’ minds and hearts for a long time. Bet on consistency, quality, and coherence, and watch your brand become a benchmark in its category!