The Onliness of Strong Brands

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It's riding multiple trends, including design (BMW styling), community ("Let's motor"), and green living (better gas mileage).

And its communications are not only compelling, but in harmony with the brand's witty personality ("The last 3,000 pounds are the hardest to shed."). Zags shouldn't just happen at the product or service or company level, but at every level, including all the communications and company behaviors that surround the product or service or company.

In helping a company find its zag, you suggest that it imagine that it has been wiped out in 25 years and it must write its own obituary. How is that useful?

I was introduced to this exercise by my friends at C2, a firm that specializes in corporate storytelling. The idea is that you write your company's obituary the way you'd like it to read. What did you achieve? Why is the world a better place because you were in it? What this gets at is where the company's true passion lies. Passion is the beginning of an authentic brand—a brand that people will seek out because it gives more meaning to their lives.

In looking at companies that have managed to zag—you mentioned 3M in the case of Post-Its or Herman Miller in the case of Aeron—do you see any common organizational structures or processes? Is there something in particular that allows these companies to navigate the Good/Different waters?

My guess is that they succeeded mostly through the dogged persistence of one or two champions. But it doesn't have to be that way. When you understand that a breakthrough innovation exhibits a certain pattern in the early stages, seeing that pattern can instill the "group confidence" to go forward.

You break down zagging into 17 steps. Of those, which is the most common point of failure?

It depends on the company, but there's one point at which a lot of companies seem to fail—and when they fail here they have no real platform for building a brand. In the book it's checkpoint six, "What makes you the only?" The test for "onliness" can be found in this simple sentence: Our brand is the only _______ that ________. For example, Cirque du Soleil is the only circus that combines acrobatics with theatre. Unless you can fill in the blanks so that customers see your brand as both unique and compelling, you're starting in a hole. You'll have to scramble harder and spend more to get where you'd already be with a zag. In fact, you may never get there at all.

Can you give an example of a company or product that failed at that point?

All the world's me-too brands are busy failing, or at least not succeeding. Think about Burger King (BKC), Ford (F), Coldwater Creek (CWTR) clothing stores, Dasani water, Holiday Inn, Continental Airlines.

You warn that "best practices" are usually "common practices" and as such are incompatible with zagging. Does zagging really mean abandoning all accepted best practices?

You can't be a leader by following a leader. Period. Best practices are great for streamlining operations, but they won't catapult you ahead of the competition. In reality, best practices are just me-too practices, except for the companies that invented them.

To compete in a fast-moving market you need "new practices"—inventive solutions that align with your onliness, that underscore your differentiation, and drive you forward. It would be an exhausting, not to mention wasteful, exercise to invent new practices in every part of your business, but a few new practices at the right leverage points can make all the difference.

Do the fundamental principles of brand management need to change given the ever-increasing speed of the marketplace?

The old fundamentals of brand management, demonstrated brilliantly by P&G in the last century, are no longer relevant. It was a top-down approach, and what we need today is a bottom-up approach. In the top-down days you could build a brand that lasted 25, 50, even 100 years.

Today's brands are more likely to last only 5, 10, or 20 years. As P&G and others are realizing, we need new fundamentals that address the speed of the market, that create agile companies that can capitalize brands and quickly move on. If you're not zagging, you're lagging.

Jessie Scanlon is the senior writer for Innovation & Design on BusinessWeek.com.