Healthy, flexible, living brands are strategic business assets that enhance the value of your company. They inspire customers to repeatedly choose your offerings over the competition¹s ­ not only because you meet their needs but because you reflect and share their spirit. At BRAND CORPS, we immerse ourselves in brands that share our values and attitude. We constantly generate insights because we don't over think this stuff, we live it. Every day. All the time. For example: Brand-building requires more than generating awareness. This is why advertising and traditional, results-oriented marketing are almost never the best way to build a brand. Successful brand-building comes from thinking like your customers and taking on their attributes, not from trying to coerce them to take on yours. Brands with small but intensely loyal audiences have more power and can be more profitable than than those with lots of casual, indifferent customers. Authenticity is perhaps the most important brand attribute. The style and substance of all brand manifestations should create genuine emotion around the brand in a way that is real and legitimate, not forced and phony. It's no fluke that brands such as Apple and Volkswagen have made strong comebacks on the basis of true innovation that put substance behind their emotional appeals.   > opinion DESIGN IS NOT ART