All too often, brands are just ignored. This would be less of a pity if so much time and money was not spent on the marketing communication.

Would getting this right get your brand noticed and desired, turning it into a bestseller?

Well, yes and no. No, because before you even set about the brand communication, there's much else in the marketing mix that needs to be right. Back in the day, the great Bill Bernbach made the point: 'A good ad will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it's bad.' Of course, you must first, have a sound business strategy and if your company has a portfolio of products or services, the right brand architecture too. Al and Laura Ries, in their book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, give an example of this going all wrong for a big corporate brand that 'makes everything from pins to airplanes but doesn't make money'. Making customers travel the path from awareness about your brand to becoming its advocates (as described in Kotler's, Kartajaya's and Setiawan's book, Marketing 4.0) is the ultimate marketing goal but it's precisely because this is a long, spiral process and marketers have a myriad issues to deal with, that often for various reasons, they get the brand communication wrong.

And yes, when you do get it right, together with the other elements in the marketing mix, it can make all the difference. Which begs the question, what does getting your offline and online brand communication right involve? Much can be said about the topic (and has been), such as how brilliant creative ideas and their execution in concert with the proper communication strategy can work wonders for your brand. A certain ad-man put it well, 'I have learned that it is far easier to write a speech about good advertising than it is to write a good ad.' So, we won't drone on about the subject except to say your brand communication should be so relevant and interesting that your audience goes Oh!