We’ve talked often about the role of branding in helping to improve marketing communications effectiveness and that certainly is its most obvious use, especially when you are trying to justify budgets to management and financial people.

Branding has a “softer” side, however. And that is branding’s role as self-revelation, as an opportunity to tell the world who you are.

For some, that can be a major event in a corporation’s life, giving you several equally-important opportunities:

• To understand the past, what made customers trust you years ago, and how they think of you now.
• To organize the present, to sort out what issues are temporary and transitory, and what factors have long-term consequences.
• To shape the future, to decide what kind of company you will be in five, ten, or even 20 years.

To do that, of course, branding has to be much more than graphics, colors, and typefaces. It has to be an expression of your company’s values, especially as they relate to your interactions with the marketplace.

Done properly, branding helps you find your niche in the world. Should you be a big, dominant player? Or a small, tightly-focused niche player? We’ve seen companies using both approaches that were highly profitable . . . or virtually bankrupt.

More importantly, good branding attracts kindred spirits – the right customers, the right partners, the right employees.

It’s more important now than ever, with our proliferating,  multi-dimensional media landscape easily fragmenting brands that are not well integrated inside and outside the organization. There are more ways for your story to be told, and many are outside of your direct control.

Ultimately, the only way to deal with our new media reality is to have a brand that resonates inside and outside your walls, increasing the likelihood that comments from customers, partners, employees, and even competitors will affirm it, directly or indirectly.