Brand Management.

The framework

1. 01

   Emotional modifier, descriptive modifier, brand function.

   Keller's structure is three slots and it's worth writing to it literally. The brand function is the category you're in — entertainment, performance, transport, care. The descriptive modifier narrows it to your part of that category: family entertainment, athletic performance. The emotional modifier says how you do it, and it's the slot that carries every refusal you'll ever make: fun, authentic. A slot takes two words when the honest answer needs two — home care as a function, hard-won as an emotional modifier — which is how three slots come out at three to five words. What you never add is a fourth slot. Write the function first and the emotional word last, because the emotional word is the one that gets argued about, and you want it argued about once, properly, rather than re-litigated in each product meeting.

2. 02

   Test it backwards against the things you nearly did.

   A mantra is only worth having if it would have changed something. Take the last ten decisions of consequence — the product you launched, the partnership you signed, the campaign you approved, the two you turned down — and run each past your candidate words. If all ten pass, it's too loose, and you sharpen the emotional modifier until at least two of them fail. If nine fail, you haven't written the brand you have, you've written an aspiration, which is a different and considerably more expensive problem.

3. 03

   Give it to the juniors — a gate only you can open isn't a gate.

   A mantra anyone can invoke is Day 137's andon cord pointed at your own name, and the first time somebody junior pulls it, what happens to them sets the price for years. What's particular to a mantra is the escalation, so settle it while nothing is at stake. A decline on the mantra stands for that decision; the only route past it is to change the mantra itself, and that is a scheduled decision with a named owner and a date in the calendar — reviewed once a year, minuted, argued properly. What it is not is something a large enough number can carry in a single meeting, which is how most companies end up with words on a wall that senior people step around quietly when the revenue is large enough.

4. 04

   Why does a mantra die the week it goes on the website?

   It dies because public copy has a different owner and a different job. The moment the words appear on a homepage they get rewritten by whoever runs that page and softened into something agreeable, and an instrument quietly becomes a promise. Keep the mantra in the brief, the induction pack and the product review, and let the tagline live outside and change as often as you like. Then leave it alone: a mantra that moves whenever the strategy moves can't arbitrate the strategy, and arbitration is the entire job.