"Your reputation is who people think you are, your character is who you really are." - John Wooden
Wikipedia defines brand (or marque for car model) as a name, term, design, symbol or other feature that distinguishes one seller's product from those of others.
Brand is often associated with style, performance, quality, attributes, and sometimes emotion that DIFFERENTIATES among products or organizations. I believe that your brand flows from character, the core of identity defining "who you are."
You can have success playing "the villain" as some do in professional wrestling, but most individuals and organizations want brand positivity, excellence, and desirability.
We hear company slogans like "Quality is Job 1", "Coke is It", "We Bring Good Things to Life", and more which promote excellence, service, and industry leadership. Conversely, we see the damage that brands suffer after quality failures like the recent Chipotle and Volkswagen incidents.
Establishing your brand means daily and persistent commitment at the individual and the organizational level. The African proverb "it takes a village to raise a child" completes with "but one child can destroy a village." Some programs like the Oakland Raiders had a slogan of "Commitment to Excellence" but a culture embracing an outlaw mentality. Fairly or not, Kentucky has become known as a "One and Done" basketball weigh station, Michigan State became synonymous with rebounding toughness, and Butler under Brad Stevens radiated discipline and overachievement.
I think was Nick Saban said something like "avoid the 'troubled kid' who might beat you once a year with another team, instead of beating you every day on your team."
Effective branding has multiple foundations. You need a worthy product (leadership, detail-oriented people, and process) and the ability to deliver customer (fan, alumni) expectations day after day, year after year. That also means the ability to connect with people at many different levels...everyone from custodians to community leaders. It also requires some merchandising savoir faire.
But perhaps more than anything else, brand leadership means commitment and persistence to your core organizational values. When you stand for (allow) anything, then you stand for nothing.
I think Bill Walsh said it best in "The Score Takes Care of Itself", “I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself, and when it didn’t I would seek ways to raise our Standard of Performance.
