Globally, the mobile broadband market is already well advanced. Japan has about 89 million telephone subscribers, 77 million of which have data service accounts, and Europe is only slightly behind. North America, however, lags way behind, with only 12 percent of subscribers downloading content. And most of that is ring tones and simple graphics.

According to SearchEngineWatch.com, in November 2005 Google captured 46.3 percent of all searches. Yahoo came in second, with 23.4 percent, less than half of Google’s share. And MSN came in third with a paltry 11.4 percent.

The pie chart below illustrates an interesting pattern. In many markets, the dominant competitor holds about a 50 percent market share, the number two competitor manages to squeeze out 25 percent of the market, and all the other competitors fight over the remaining 25 percent.

This pattern repeats itself in so many markets it’s almost as dependable as the law of gravity. Even more important is the fact that almost all of the industry’ profits go to the top competitors. That’s why Jack Welch’s now infamous strategy at GE of becoming the number one or number two competitor or else exiting the market has proven to be so powerful.

When asked to identify a company’s brand touch points, most people point to the obvious, such as logos and advertisements. In fact, people often think of the logo as the brand and advertising as the primary way to build the brand. In reality, the concept of brand touch points encompasses far more than these basic visual cues. Every point of contact your prospects and customers have with your company and its products and services provides an opportunity to build your brand – or weaken it. How you manage those points of contact determines the relative strength or weakness of your brand.

Every company has an internal and external brand experience, and each plays an important role in developing your overall brand. Picture a massive iceberg floating in the Northern Atlantic. The visible portion poking its head above the ocean’s surface represents a small fraction of the iceberg’s full mass. Similarly, only a small portion of your company’s brand experience – the external part - is highly visible. Much more of your brand lies below the surface and is not as easily recognizable.

1. The Brand Promise is a commitment you make to prospects and customers. It answers the question on every customer’s mind: “If I engage in a relationship with you, your product or your company, what can I expect?” The answer to this question must address the big problem solved or the compelling need fulfilled -- in other words, the primary benefit of your product or service. Companies with the clearest brand promises have the strongest brands. And the simplest idea is often the most powerful.

2. The Brand Attributes include all the unique ways you deliver your brand promise. These comprise the feature set that describes the customer’s experience with your company. Common attributes might include your unique versions of quality, customer service, innovation and flexibility.

3. The Brand Personality describes the human characteristics people experience when they encounter your brand. It has by far the strongest influence on the emotional connection people feel toward your brand. Often a company’s brand personality matches the customer’s self-perception of their own personality or a personality they aspire to. Common brand personalities include ruggedness, sophistication, excitement, competence or sincerity.

Of late, Intel has garnered a lot of press regarding the sweeping changes management intends to make in the company’s brand and product line. In many ways, these changes will send the world’s largest chipmaker into uncharted territory. Some analysts are saying that Intel’s new direction will necessitate creating a new brand. However, at its core, I believe Intel will very much remain the same company, mainly because the deeply established core values that drive the Intel brand are alive and well and working exactly as designed.

Published in the January 2002 Harvard Business Review, the article briefly outlined a methodology and set of tools for gathering customer input in a way that actually drives product innovation. In addition, the article illustrated how Cordis -- a medical device manufacturer specializing in products for interventional vascular medicine -- used Ulwick’s approach to innovate the heart stent and gain market leadership in the angioplasty balloon market. As a result, Cordis’ stock went from $20 to $109 per share when it was acquired by Johnson and Johnson.

Now, Ulwick has updated his tools and provided a more comprehensive look at his methodology in his recently released book, What Customers Want (McGraw Hill). This book should be required readying for anyone involved in product development and marketing. Partly because it offers a comprehensive, step-by-step approach for converting innovation from a random hit-or-miss process into a more methodical approach, but also because it greatly reduces the risk of new product failure and substantially increases the odds of success.

In a world where some 80 to 90 percent of new products fail, the ROI for using Ulwick’s methods is substantial.

I’m not suggesting you actually walk down the aisle with your customers. But maybe the time has come to look at brand relationships in a different way?

We all know that the best brands make strong emotional connections with their customers. Recent research suggests, however, that the best brands don’t stop there. Instead, they leverage those emotional connections to such an extent that their customers feel “married” to the brand.

In general, customers come to strong emotional connections with a brand in two ways. First, they personify the product (or the company) so that they have a relationship with it just like they would with a real person. They sometimes experience a full range of emotions when they interact with the brand, and occasionally even talk about the brand like they would a good friend. Apple Mac users fall into this group.

Second, customers can become part of a group that shares a common bond around the brand. Harley Davidson and BMW motorcycle customers fall into this group, as do the user groups of many software companies.

For most technologists and scientists, however, this emotional model of branding is just too warm and fuzzy, especially with products that mostly satisfy functional needs. Most technology companies find it very difficult to methodically and systematically build emotional engagements. They also find it challenging, if not impossible, to measure and monitor these emotional connections when they do occur.

As a result, when trying to build a strong brand marriage, many technology companies are left standing at the altar.

That which we call a rose, by any other word, would smell as sweet.

In his famous line from “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare seems to be saying that a name is nothing more than an artificial and meaningless construct.

Granted, the old Bard could turn a phrase better than anyone. But he obviously never ran a business. For when it comes to positioning products, services and companies in the marketplace, a Lexus or a Starbucks by any other name would not smell as sweet.

Imagine if Intel were called “Microchip Systems Technologies.” Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Plus those little “Intel Inside” stickers you see on the outside of almost every PCs would have to get a lot bigger in order to fit the entire name.

Evidence of this principle abounds in the consumer electronics world.

In a 2002 poll, the Consumer Electronics Association discovered that 87% of people rated “ease of use” as the most important factor when considering a new technology. Lately, it seems like a lot of companies have rediscovered the strategy of simplicity and are incorporating it into their products and their messaging. But before we examine these newcomers to the simplicity scene, let’s look at a couple of pioneers who have held true to the principle of simplicity over an extended period of time.

The article, entitled “Six Types of Marketing Organizations: Where Do You Fit In”, is based on a study by Booz Allen Hamilton and the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) that identified six basic types of “marketing organizations” within companies. I found it to be a fascinating and insightful look at the importance of making sure the marketing function aligns with what the business really needs.

According to the article, the six types of marketing “organizations” (i.e. the marketing people, systems and processes inside a business and the activities they perform) are as follows:

I recently had the great fortune of working with Global Shop in Houston. Their business works well on a lot of levels, but the most remarkable thing about the company is the tremendous value it creates for its customers.

Global Shop provides comprehensive EPR systems to small- and medium-sized manufacturers. It helps those manufacturers automate their entire business from the initial quoting of a project to cash collections and everything in between. The primary benefits to customers are increased productivity and profitability, along with improved customer deliveries. But most customers would say that Global Shop has taken their business from chaos to order and given them tight controls.

Global Shop has emerged as the market leader in its category by focusing with laser-like precision on delivering the basic value proposition of “best total solution.” In fact, it is executing the business strategy of customer intimacy as well as any company I have worked with. As a result, Global Shop now has more than 1,000 installed customers and has grown at a sustained annual rate in excess of 25% for the past several years.

Dell executives say they're monitoring online complaints and taking steps to correct those issues. In particular, they've added more customer service centers and employees in an effort to better resolve customer complaints. These measures seem to paying off. In a recent article, Investor’s Business Daily cited internal Dell numbers that show a 35% year-over-year improvement in customer satisfaction and a 30% improvement in its ability to resolve problems the first time out.

Considering the fact that Dell surveys about 24,000 consumer customers a month, these numbers are worth noting. But I wonder if some of the steps Dell is currently taking might come back to bite their brand in the long run.

As professional communicators, we are taught to control the message, limit the spokespeople to those trained and credible enough to deliver our carefully crafted corporate message.

But blogs have changed this.

While not for every company, blogs are an incredibly powerful communication tool when put in the hands of the rank and file. The leveraging of blogs for the PR department and executive suite should be reconsidered and instead, the value of empowering your hundreds or thousands of brand ambassadors to speak their minds and hearts about their lives and your work should be evaluated.

But what if they share all your secrets? Tell your customers how they really aren’t respected? What about controlling the message?

Your company culture will be a big determinant here: if your culture is closed and secretive, this will never work. But if you can stand to hear the good and the bad, within reason (more on this in a moment), the blogosphere and your customers, partners, investors, will be better for it. Because blogs are all about being real, transparent, accessible. Who has more of these qualities than your front line brand ambassadors? Especially when your company or value proposition is complex, these daily touchpoints for your brand can be the clarifying experience your potential or current customers need.

The answer is, it depends.

The latest thinking in the field of branding (which first began to emerge as a true field of study back in the early ‘50s) identifies five branding strategies that reign supreme in today’s corporate world. Although each strategy can be successfully employed by companies offering very different products and services, they all seem to work best within fairly narrow parameters that pertain to the industry, product or service and market being served.

Choosing the best strategy for your company, then, depends on matching the parameters of your product/service and market to the appropriate model.

On the surface, the Intel Inside campaign looks like a simple stroke of genius. Shell out a few million bucks for some well-placed television commercials, and in no time consumers will be insisting that your customers put your name on the outside of their product, right? If only it were that easy. What most people fail to realize is that the remarkable success of the Intel Inside campaign -- or any campaign that seeks to turn a commodity into a recognizable consumer brand -- rests on two very important principles.