Trust is becoming a scarce commodity in this season;  building brand profitability through trust must now be an integral part of any brand strategy if brand must make reasonable profit. Top executives of many brands can no longer be trusted and this has affected the confidence stakeholders have in many of the brands.  Many brands’ failure and liquidation are traceable to lack of strong corporate ethics. While I am not pre-empting anything, I do think that the breach of trust repose on top executives of many banks executives in our nation led to the dissolutions of many banks’ board of directors.  Imagine granting loans running to billions to individuals or corporate organizations without collateral. At least that was what we were made to believe by the investigating authority.

What will keep and sustain many brands today is the level of trust, confidence the customers have in them. One of the ways to build trust in a brand today is openness, honesty, entertaining, usable content that daily helps in solving the challenges of the customers. This route allows any brand at whatever level to participate. There is no excuse for any brand not to initiate the process. It may be a long term investment but it holds a sure result.

Even if your brand is a start up, begin by supplying insight, helpful information. After a while, your brand will gain some conversion rate out of those who feel you have been of help in resolving doubts they have. When you build trust, the conversion rate may be gradual but it will trickle as you increase your brand’s efforts. Remember that every buyer starts their search on the net as a browser. As a browser, this potential has no commitment to any brand. The potential can be classified as onlooker or as an unbeliever in religious parlance. If your brand can build trust through usable, relevant content, you can turn them to believers in your brand. To gain more customers, I think it is high time brands jettisoned sales pitches, old marketing principles by converting browsers to believers and believers to buyers.

When buyers are turned to buyers, the process must be continued. Keep lubricating, oiling the relationships. I do believe also that a strong brand activation process stands better chances of being successful if it is laden with trust building than any other alternatives.

It is is no longer news that as a brand strategist and communicator I have uncommon passion with regards to how internet, social media can aid the advance of brand’s corporate bottomline and visibility. In the past years I have dedicated time to acquiring and making available relevant knowledge that can aid brand engagement whether online or offline. I have also applied those learnt principles to my personal brand as well as corporate brand. At a time I almost became bored with results I was getting. I do know that there is no overnight success but I never imagined it will take such a long time to get the big break I was determined to get. My strong passion for web 2.0 and branding is as a result of my understanding that we now live in an information economy and that world economy is gradually going digital. It only takes ignorant brands; personal, corporate, national, services, products, to think that maintaining the status qou of staying offline will be the best decision. It is now a common acknowledgement that change is inevitable and growth is a choice. So here I intend to discuss advance laws of brand engagement. This has been my personal experience and I am still learning. This is applicable to both online and offline engagement 

Technologies: I am coming to a conclusion that no brand will survive the odds of our times now without basic application of certain technologies that are important. Brands need to create new positions like community and knowledge manager, online reputation and management or at least hire expert, consultant that can help them maximize values that guarantee result.

Time: It is no joke that there is no overnight success. If you think you will make it to the limelight overnight in social media, web 2.0, it will be a great mistake. The crash programmes do not last. It may eventually hurt the brand. Most brands that secure great brand engagement know that they must have specialized hands that help push stuff consistently

Money: As much as I know that most online social marketing, media do come free but real investment of money in basic software, knowledge acquisition will help the brand go ahead in its efforts to be at the top of mind and remain visible.

Sleep: every one needs sleep but a sacrifice of sleepless nights to invest in brand building, acquiring basic knowledge, reading up more information that will help the brand is important. Brand owners need trustworthy staffs who understand the sacrifices of the demand of brand engagement

Social life:  This concerns personal branding promoters. Are you ready to sacrifice a bit of your social life to build a strong brand engagement with your brand? Going to social function is good if it will aid the promotion of your personal brand engagement. If not drop the ideas for now and invest such in working it out. You will have enough invitation to attend social function as key note speaker when you hit limelight of success.

It is becoming a difficult issue to be evasive about branding. We live, eat and drink brands. Some one has said that brands constitute the organizing mechanism that helps us navigate through each day. We are all branded even though we may not want to agree with that. Brand perceptions are result of mixed stimuli of interactions that an individual has with a given brand. This fact accounts for why brand managers as well as activators must work hard to ensure that the perceptions of various stimuli are resonating with brand’s character, behaviour among others.

Brand activation demands that brand managers intensely ignite the passion of a big idea that customer will appreciate in all the processes. Effort must be made to connect the brand emotionally with the clients who eventually ‘owned’ the brand. Brand managers need to create strong believe in the offering through all the stages of brand activation. Brand experiences by the consumers must also create a deep relationship through education, interaction, motivation as well as communication that builds closer rapport.

Brand activation process must evolve and be able to change with time or remain in the present tense as a friend once asserted. Brand activation that will work must listen to and study the client’s preferences per time, the influencing factors in their decision making process.

A great brand activation effort must support, encourages customer awareness of the brand, good knowledge of the brand, promote liking, conviction and eventual purchase and re-purchase. I am also convinced that brand activation process must begin with what the brand stands for and proper identification of who the audience is. Brand activation process must show vividly the step by step guide on what to do at any point in time. It should guide the brand’s communication channels, designs, creativity among many other vital indices.  Brand activation is an expression of how a brand will approach brand management activities from within the organization. Be sure that as brand manager, one is looking deeper behind every possibility in the brand and find out vital assets that have relevant consequences for the entire organization or brand. Brand position must be clearly elucidated. Brand activation that is wholly controlled by external consultants is bound to fail because the employees are major actors in making brand activation process successful.

Great brand activation meets with customers demand and challenges. Let me conclude today by saying that when brand activation is done right, the followings can be an advantage.

1. It enhances effectiveness of brand communication

2. It serves as a rational and impactful means to advertising campaign process, design

3. It helps to build strong emotional tie with clients

4. It aids brand’s repurchase.