What will it take to make your brand more durable? It is an important question for any business, and it’s worth some careful consideration.

Branding can be described as the “feel” that develops around a company or a person. Once a brand is forged in a person’s mind, it can be a time-consuming challenge to change that feel. Just consider the correlative affects of branding to understand why it is important to get it right.

Pick a brand - any brand - and consider what it brings to mind. For me, if you mention K-Mart, I think of grade school in the 1970’s when saying “Your mom buys your clothes at K-Mart” was an insult of the highest degree. That was memorable for me.

If you mention Applebee’s restaurant, I get a knot in my stomach, along with an ugly flashback of the last time I ate at Applebee’s. On the other hand, if you mention McDonald’s, I may nod my head and think to myself “yeah, I really do deserve a break today.”

My grandmother is intelligent. She can grasp a complex concept if you communicate it nicely. If you insult her intelligence, she may turn into a vicious ninja.

My grandmother will turn 95 years old in a few weeks. In honor of my dear Grandma and other real-world people like her, I’m here to deliver a valuable reminder about effective marketing communications.

Let’s consider Grandma for a moment, and imagine how she communicates. She talks like a real person. She thinks and communicates in logical phrases. Grandma uses plain and simple language to make herself clear to others. Most people are a lot like Grandma in this respect. Most of them will also find themselves indifferent and even insulted if you try to talk over their heads.

Your gargoyles say more about your brand than you may think. They are your front line. If your marketing doesn’t match, you’re asking for trouble.

I recently responded to a blog article written by Kay Ross, who wrote about the faces we put forward in a marketing message. Kay’s article is titled “In Your Marketing, To Thine Own Self Be True“, and it reminded me of many observations I have made about the overall feel of companies during my career, and personal encounters.

That “feel” of a company is what makes up a brand, and when it’s done well it involves every aspect of the company, and extends far beyond the marketing department. I want to share some thoughts about your brand, and I believe you will be able to relate to this from both a consumer and business viewpoint.

The topic which was addressed in Kay’s blog came from one of her subscribers who asked the question as follows: “Which is more important when communicating with your audience: say things you really want to say, or say things that people want to hear?”

Should there really be such a disparity between the two? If the marketing is reaching the appropriate audience, it should not have to be one or the other. The way I interpreted this question, it led me to imagine the question as whether it is acceptable to fake it in your marketing. If you know my brand at all, you can place your bets now about where I stand.

I turned forty today. I’m happy about it, too. It doesn’t really feel like forty quite yet, but I’ve done it! I have lived long enough to have some well-earned gray hair, and a good amount of wisdom that comes with it. For such a young guy, of course.

My forty years have come with a lot of lessons. Having spent well over half of those years as a marketing professional and business owner, I’ve learned a lot about marketing. I’ve shared large volumes of my experiences here on the Internet, and I feel great to say that I’ve helped a lot of people with that experience.

One of the things I learned about marketing is the value of brevity. Keep it short. Keep it easy. Don’t get too confusing with all of your wordiness. I learned it, and then I threw it out the window for the purpose of this blog. Brevity matters when you are selling something, but I am not. If you can embrace some blatant verbosity today, I’ll reward you with some valuable real life marketing lessons.

If you’re in the field of marketing, get over yourself. You’re a commodity. At least that is the way a lot of people will see it, even if you actually are as awesome as you say you are.

Looking at marketing as a commodity is something people can understand. That’s because if they see it all the same, it just comes down to the dollar amount, and that is what feels the safest for most people.

As it applies to the majority of people buying marketing services, the dollars which are easiest to concentrate on are the dollars going out, but without adequate forethought or examination of the incoming dollars the marketing produces.

It seems that a lot of people think of it like throwing those dollars to the wind and hoping some of them will float back.

That’s not the way it works when marketing is done well, but it is the easier way to digest. In the real world of business, marketing should be based on qualified mathematics, demographics, psychographics, and other principles of qualified market research and forecasting, but that is enough to make most people’s head explode. That kind of marketing comes with an investment and a commitment beyond commodity-style thinking about marketing. Many people confuse that as a risk, while the real risk is when marketing is based on guesswork and crossing fingers.