But there is another perspective that matters. Your customers chose you. We want to understand why. What people value, how they behave, what brings them together, the communities they participate in and what is changing around them.

We look for the intersection between what is true about the business and what matters to the people it hopes to serve.

The objective isn't to ask consumers to define the brand. It is to understand them well enough to discover an idea the business can credibly own.

Strong brands become associated with an idea, belief or role that people value beyond the functional benefits of the product itself. The product becomes an expression of that idea and a way for people to participate in what the brand represents.

When those things reinforce one another, they create something competitors find much harder to reproduce: preference based on what the brand means, not simply what the product does.

Russell Strategy brings an experienced outside perspective. Founders and leadership teams bring a depth of knowledge about their business that an outside consultant cannot replicate. The strongest work comes from putting those perspectives together.

Strategy also has to work after the consultant leaves. It has to help people make better decisions about the business, the brand and where it goes next.

If the organization cannot put the strategy to work, the job isn't finished.

As co-founder of Collective Arts, Bob helped build a beverage business around a simple idea: creativity. Before the first beer was sold, emerging artists and musicians from around the world were invited to submit their work. Their art became part of the packaging, their stories became part of the brand, and creativity went on to shape the culture, communication and community around the business.

The beer still had to be excellent. But the product wasn't the entire reason people cared.

They can copy what you make. It is much harder to copy what you mean.