Never surrender - The real Donald Trump E-Book

Alessandro Nardone

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Few know Donald Trump better than Alessandro Nardone. In 2016, when he ran for the White House as Alex Anderson, he made headlines around the world. As U.S. correspondent for Vanity Fair, he was at key events and at the presidential inauguration. One of the few to predict Trump's victory, he has spoken about Trump at major marketing events, written more than 200 articles and interviewed his former chief strategist Steve Bannon. He's the author of "Trump, Alex and me" and the novel "The Predestined 2," which features Anderson as Trump's vice president. The New York tycoon is the most misrepresented leader in modern history: with "Never Surrender", Nardone aims to introduce the public to the real Donald Trump before the 2024 presidential election.

Leseprobe

Contents

Titolo

Diritto d'autore

Index

They say about him

Introduction

I. The man who became a brand

1. Trump’s “10 commandments” on branding

2. The art of the deal

3. The art of comeback

4. Never surrender, his motivational speech

II. The politician

5. The ice rink

6. The 2000 candidacy

7. The 2016 victory

III. The president

8. From economics to foreign policy, America First

9. The fight against woke ideology and cancel culture

10. Patriots Vs. Globalists

11. From words to facts

IV. Opponents

12. Russiagate: the biggest fake news in history

13. Durham Report: Obama, Clinton and Biden spied on Trump

14. Hunter Biden’s crimes obscured by media and social networks

15. January 6 is not 9/11

16. Trump banned from social media: the truth emerged by TwitterFiles

17. 2000, 2004 and 2016: when they were the democrat stalking about stolen elections

18. New York to San Francisco: wherever democrats govern deline wins

V. The 2024 challenge

19. Judicial troubles won’t stop him

20. Taylor Swift & Co. don’t move a vote

21. Democrats have no alternative to Biden because of their establishment

22. Republicans have no alternative to Trump Thanks of their establishment

23. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and the end of mediated information

24. Donald Trump in the White House Will strengthen Giorgia Meloni in Europe

Conclusions

Achnowlegments

By the same Author

About the Author

Guide

Copertina

Sommario

Start

Alessandro Nardone

NEVER SURRENDER

The real Donald Trump

Title | Never Surrender - The Real Donald Trump

Author | Alessandro Nardone

ISBN | 9791222745862

© 2024 All rights reserved by the Author.

No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Author.

Alessandro Nardone

Website: www.nardone.org

E-mail: [email protected]

Social: https://linktr.ee/Nardone

Printed in Italy

Youcanprint

Via Marco Biagi 6, 73100 Lecce

www.youcanprint.it

[email protected]

Back cover photo by Gage Skidmore

Made by human

To those who have fallen and found the strengthto get back up, even when all seemed lost.

I’m not the richest, smartest or most talentedperson in the world, but I succeed becauseI keep going and going and going.

Sylvester Stallone

Index

They say about him

Introduction

I.   The man who became a brand

1.    Trump’s “10 commandments” on branding

2.    The art of the deal

3.    The art of comeback

4.    Never surrender, his motivational speech

II.   The politician

5.    The ice rink

6.    The 2000 candidacy

7.    The 2016 victory

III.   The president

8.    From economics to foreign policy, America First

9.    The fight against woke ideology and cancel culture

10. Patriots Vs. Globalists

11. From words to facts

IV.   Opponents

12. Russiagate: the biggest fake news in history

13. Durham Report: Obama, Clinton and Biden spied on Trump

14. Hunter Biden’s crimes obscured by media and social networks

15. January 6 is not 9/11

16. Trump banned from social media: the truth emerged by TwitterFiles

17. 2000, 2004 and 2016: when they were the democrat stalking about stolen elections

18. New York to San Francisco: wherever democrats govern deline wins

V.   The 2024 challenge

19. Judicial troubles won’t stop him

20. Taylor Swift & Co. don’t move a vote

21. Democrats have no alternative to Biden because of their establishment

22. Republicans have no alternative to Trump Thanks of their establishment

23. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and the end of mediated information

24. Donald Trump in the White House Will strengthen Giorgia Meloni in Europe

Conclusions

Achnowlegments

By the same Author

About the Author

They say about him

Hillary will win in November, and she will be sworn in as our next president on January 20.

21 GIUGNO 2016, JON WIENER, THE NATION

Karl Rove: ‘I don’t see’ Trump winning the election.

23 OTTOBRE 2016, THE HILL

Donald Trump’s chances of winning are approaching zero.

24 OTTOBRE 2016. CHRIS CILIZZA E AARON BLAKE, THE WASHINGTON POST

And just like that, the bold, combustible and sometimes brilliant political career of Donald J. Trump comes to an end.

7 GENNAIO 2021, LIZ PEEK, THE HILL

President Donald J. Trump: The End. This terrible experiment is over.

19 GENNAIO 2021, THOMAS FRIEDMAN, THE NEW YORK TIMES

The idea that Donald Trump is a conservative is a complete farce. He is a con man pretending to be a conservative.

EVAN MCMULLIN

I am terrified by the prospect of Donald Trump becoming president. I think it’s disgusting, offensive. I think it would be embarrassing for our country to see him sit down with world leaders and try to have a conference or even take a picture. So we’ll see what happens, but it’s a very crucial moment for the United States.

JULIA STILES

Donald Trump is a disaster. He’s a bully who doesn’t have the curiosity to understand the issues; he contradicts himself repeatedly; his worldview is an absolute disaster for America and the American people, and I think all of that will become clearer with time.

HAIM SABAN

Donald Trump has had several foreign wives. It turns out that there really are jobs that Americans don’t do.

MITT ROMNEY

Neo-fascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big business, linked to the creation of xenophobic scapegoats against the vulnerable, such as Mexicans, Muslims, women and black people, and militaristic policies abroad, with a strong, charismatic and autocratic personality, and that is Donald Trump.

CORNEL WEST

Donald Trump may have a long undiagnosed learning disorder that has interfered with his ability to process information for decades.

MARY L. TRUMP

Donald Trump’s candidacy is the open sewer of American conservatism.

BRET STEPHENS

There is a reason why most Republicans and the vast majority of voters detest Donald Trump: his vulgarity, his blatant ignorance, his constant dishonesty, his venality and his total lack of knowledge, judgment or temperament to be president of the United States.

RICK WILSON

Donald Trump worked with the Russians for years. He brought into his campaign people who had ties to the Russians.

ERIC SWALWELL

When I saw the rise of the anti-Christ Donald Trump, I thought, “Hell no.” We can’t be in a country where we love celebrities so much that we let the executive producer of “Celebrity Apprentice” become the GOP nominee.

CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD

NBC has created a monster named Donald Trump.

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL

He is fucking stupid! Look at the stupid things he says. He is so stupid that he can’t even say something intelligent.

ROBERT DE NIRO

Confronting Donald Trump as the Republican candidate is like being told you have stage 1 or stage 2 cancer. You know you will probably survive, but one way or another, there will be vomiting.

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

To say that Donald Trump would be a disaster for our country, our democracy and our future would be to do a grave wrong to the word “disaster.”

TOM STEYER

When the country gets to know me better, they will understand that the reason I care so much about Russia is that I understand why they thought to help Donald Trump.

ERIC SWALWELL

If there is anyone who should not be trusted with regard to intelligence, it is Donald Trump, both in a literal sense and with regard to our intelligence services. He should not have access to these briefings.

EVAN MCMULLIN

To just be grossly generalist, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call ‘the basket of deplorables. Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.

HILLARY CLINTON

Introduction

On November 27, 2019, Trump published on Twitter1 the photomontage I have chosen for the cover of this book, in which he put his own face on a famous photograph depicting Sylvester Stallone in the guise of Rocky: it took only a handful of minutes for it to bounce from one side of the world to the other, picked up by televisions, newspapers and websites whose analysts racked their brains to find a connection, the motive that prompted the then president of the United States to publish such content. Clearly, almost all commentators did not even come close to a plausible interpretation, stopping at the snide comment summarized by the comparison with Obama, who by now, even in the face of Biden’s blatant inadequacy, has become the Mussolini of the radical chic, who regret him to the tune of “when he was around...,” evoking his placid rhetoric, his being ever so fair, perfect, that’s it... politically correct.

A drunkenness so strong and widespread that even all the bombs (27,171 in 2016 alone) dropped on as many as 7 countries during the eight years of his presidency have become politically correct. But let us return to Trump, and try to analyze from the perspective of political communication the different meanings we can attribute to the Donald - Rocky photomontage. Being probably the most reviled character in the world, Trump enjoys making his detractors gnaw on him. As we will see in a moment, as soon as he entered the business world he understood that he could only break through if he invested in his personal brand, which is why he fed much of his private life to the media. Despite his high visibility, his great worry has always been that he never felt completely accepted by certain circles, something he has now made a real strength of. For him, in fact, becoming president was also a great personal revenge, which he probably began to desire more than anything else from the evening of April 30, 2011, when he was publicly ridiculed by Obama himself during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner2.

Some of you probably remember Wag the dog, a 1998 film tracing the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, in which Robert De Niro plays a spin doctor who will use a film producer-Dustin Hoffmann-to stage a nonexistent war in Albania. Motive? To keep the media quiet about the sex scandal that has engulfed the president two weeks before the election. “Wag the dog”, is a figure of speech representing the use of a gimmick to shift attention. Here, I imagine Trump and his aides amused as they read the venomous comments of journalists and opponents to his photoshopped Rocky’s sculpted physique: «look at them, instead of thinking about impeachment and campaigning they’re all busy talking about the muscles I don’t have!» Exhibiting muscles, even if not his own, at a time like that, had a specific meaning: if you hit hard I hit even harder.

In this sense, there are other details in the image that should not be overlooked:

• the ring, which is not there in the original photo: having it included is a reinforcement of the concept of garrisoning the battlefield;

• beyond his friendship with Stallone, the choice of Rocky is by no means accidental, as it is a character that synthesizes several intrinsic meanings with which Trump himself identifies:

1. Represents the emblem of the one who gets up after falling down

2. Is known to take hits very well

3. has always overturned predictions

This brief analysis may certainly be useful for you to understand the amount of work behind the political communication of a leader like Donald Trump, who has certainly not by chance succeeded in subverting the balance of the system by having against almost all the mainstream media. Every piece of content published, even the most seemingly nonsensical, is the result of a strategy that has a specific goal: to monopolize the debate, catalyzing all the attention on himself. Not once, but every single day. One of the many confirmations of the goodness of this tactic lies in Joe Biden’s main campaign topic: not a dream or a vision, but always him, Donald Trump, who for opponents has become an obsession, if not a real frustration. In addition to always being undervalued, Trump has fallen and gotten back up many times, just like Rocky. In the early 1990s the bankruptcy of some of his casinos brought him to the brink of bankruptcy but, thanks to the popularity of his brand, the Trump Organization was able to rise again. When, on June 16, 2015, he announced his candidacy in the Republican primary many even mocked him by calling him a clown, but he routed the field and won the Republican nomination. After that, throughout the campaign pollsters and commentators joined in a unanimous chorus that a victory for him against Hillary Clinton would be “technically impossible,” but on the night of November 8, 2016, he became president of the United States. Once elected, the media onslaught immediately set off with the impeachment over Russiagate - a sensational fake news story that marked the lowest point in mainstream news - followed by the one over the wiretapping of the Zelensky interview, which also fizzled out within weeks.

Then, after the controversial 2020 election and the assault on Capitol Hill, came the exclusion from mainstream social media. Even then, almost all commentators, including conservatives, were quick to perjure themselves that he would not survive the images of the shaman in the seat of Congress, let alone the censorship imposed on him by Twitter and Facebook or the trials against him. This time it is really over, they said, taking it for granted that even the Republican Party would turn its back on him. This is in their fantasy, because reality tells us that Donald Trump has risen again by launching Truth Social, his social media platform, and holding firm to the leadership of the Republican Party, as shown by the plebiscite results of the primaries, where he had virtually no opponents. In short, like the protagonist of a video game, at the end of each level Trump seems destined to face an ever-stronger final monster. Some time ago, I stated during an interview that assassinating him would be the only way to prevent him from running for the White House. Of course, I realize that at first glance this may seem like a strong statement, but only for those who do not know the real Donald Trump, who is light years away from the devil in the flesh that political opponents and mainstream journalists insist on talking about, two categories that, in order to attack him, have been reduced to fabricating and spreading fake news on a daily basis, causing incalculable damage to their own credibility. In essence, a series of processes have been triggered around the figure of the New York tycoon that are contributing to the mutation of some substantial aspects of our society: information, which for the reasons we will see below has failed the principle of verticality; Western identity, which is under attack by woke ideology and cancel culture fundamentalists; and polarization, which is the child of the current context and the dominant position of the tech giants, including in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Big issues that on the surface might seem disconnected from each other, but instead are part of a definite pattern for which Trump is the equivalent of a bug that threatens to blow up the whole system revolving around globalization and the interests of multinational corporations, which-this is obvious-do not coincide with those of the middle class and small and medium-sized enterprises. I guess it is now beginning to become clearer to you why all this aversion to Trump who is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most hated and misrepresented leader in modern history. Now, while it is true that the U.S. president is elected by Americans, it is equally true that his actions produce concrete repercussions on the lives of every single Westerner, which is why the stakes in this year’s Nov. 5 election are really high, even for the government led by Giorgia Meloni. For all these reasons, against the backdrop of my experience in the United States and my in-depth knowledge of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, I decided to write this instant book so that you can find out who the real Trump is in all his most important facets: the communicator, the entrepreneur and the politician. This is not a rambling ode to the former U.S. president-which would make little sense-but an attempt to put together the most significant stages of an objectively revolutionary character in order to learn to know him for what he actually is, to decipher the complex contemporary context, and, why not, to grasp some very powerful communication concepts in order to be able to put them to use for ourselves and our businesses.

Starting with the first: never surrender!

_____________

1 The tweet: https://tinyurl.com/3u32jyfa

2 President Obama zings Donald Trump, birthers at White House Correspondents’ Dinner: https://tinyurl.com/558fxnr4

Part I

THE MAN WHO BECOME A BRAND

1

TRUMP’S 10 COMMANDMENTS ON BRANDING

Just do a quick online search or watch the documentary “Trump: an American Dream” to see that since the 1980s Donald Trump had his picture taken in helicopters and airplanes customized with his last name, denoting a marked predisposition to sacrifice some of his privacy in order to gain visibility. Trump understood the importance of constructing a narrative that made him accessible to the public, who were interested not only in business but also in his personal life, such as his marriage to Ivana or possible extramarital affairs. His ability to communicate clearly and directly has always been a conscious choice, aimed at creating empathy.

Many of his critics accuse him of having simple language, ignoring that this ability to express complex concepts in an accessible way is one of his best qualities. Trump himself is aware of this, so much so that in 2015 he ironically called himself “the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters” referring to his popularity on Twitter. While exposing so much of himself has resulted in a thinning of his personal phera, Trump has also managed to humanize his brand, using even moments of personal crisis to solidify it. During the 2016 election campaign, Brand Keys released a study that found that the Trump brand equates to between 20 percent and 37 percent more additional revenue for products or services associated with it. This success is the result of a consistent narrative and Trump’s ability to keep attention on himself while also exploiting criticism. His story is characterized by a continuous quest for greatness, both in successes and failures, and has been built on this very foundation. Trump has always worked to position his brand as that of a great entrepreneur, going to great lengths to gain visibility and authority; suffice it to say that in 1982 he played devil’s advocate to get on the prestigious “Forbes 400” list.

What you are about to read is the contents of a supplement to the book “Trump University Branding 101: How to Build to Most Valuable Asset of Any Business”, co-written with Donald E. Sexton. Ten points in which you will crisply review many of the communication techniques implemented by Trump since he stepped into the political arena: as I wrote at the outset, such successes do not come about by accident and it is amateurish, not to mention charlatan, to trivialize them by discussing clichés such as “to get votes you only need to speak to the belly of the country,” or that he wins millions of voters “by banking on the ignorance of the lower classes,” or, again, that “he has a limited, semi-illiterate vocabulary.” Reading the following pages you will understand that the reality is quite different from what the major media tell us on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, for them, the “real” Donald Trump is more annoying than the smoke in their eyes.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF BRANDING3

Introduction

Here’s a fact: Your brand is your organization’s single most valuable asset. If you doubt this, consider how easily you can identify Coke and Pepsi by their logos alone. Or think about choosing an airline for your next trip—whether you’re booking first-class or coach, you’re unlikely to choose any airline, regardless of how good a deal it offers, if it hasn’t established a consistent and proven reputation for safety. Your brand is what your company stands for and how it is perceived by the rest of the world. Well-known examples include Volvo, which is synonymous with “safety,” or FedEx, which is known for “on time delivery.”

At an intuitive level, we all have some understanding of branding. When we maintain interpersonal relationships, for example, we’re essentially managing our own brands. When we do the same for our businesses, we need to take a more systematic approach, one that coordinates all of that business’s different components. Nevertheless, whether we’re coordinating personal or professional interactions, the essence of what needs to be done remains the same: managing how other people perceive us. As an entrepreneur or small business owner, if you are a savvy brand manager, this can translate into more than a household name; it can translate into dollars. A lot of dollars. How much are we talking? Billions. In fact, for consumer products companies, brands can represent 50 to 70 percent of the company’s total value; for industrial products companies, it is about 10 to 20 percent. Brands are worth a lot of money. So how can we define and manage this valuable asset? First, let’s look at the three major components of a brand, all of which need to be managed:

• Identifiers—Name, logo, color; any cues that brings the brand to mind.

• Attributes—Brand attributes include the economic, functional, and emotional benefits which are assigned to a brand by customers. They can be either positive or negative and are the basic elements of a brand identity. In the Volvo and FedEx examples, “safety” and “on time delivery” are attributes.

• Associations—Connections that customers make between a brand’s identifiers and its attributes.

While we may manage our own brand, ultimately brands are owned by customers. From this perspective, your brand is defined by what your customers will let you do—it’s that simple. More importantly, it’s true. Customers won’t tolerate gourmet prices at McDonalds. They wouldn’t allow it. And remember, customers will develop an idea about your company whether you manage your brand or not. You need to manage your brand or someone else (maybe your competitor) will do it for you. So, how do you develop, manage, and profit from your brand? With the right levels of discipline, persistence, and monitoring, anyone should be able to effectively brand their own business. This can take time. Some of the world’s most valuable brands, such as Coca-Cola and Marlboro, weren’t overnight success stories. Their achievements took a lot of time, effort, consistency, and strategy. This report offers you a “Top 10” list of strategic best practices that will help you maximize your brand’s value and, in turn, your profits. We call them: The 10 Commandments of Branding.

Commandment 1:Establish a Clear Brand Position

A brand position is a clear, unambiguous statement that communicates what your company stands for and what it offers. For example, we all know that FedEx is an overnight delivery company that promises, above all, to get your package to its destination on time. Most of us make a nearly instantaneous connection between FedEx and “overnight reliable delivery.” This is what a good brand should accomplish: an instant connection between the company and its key offering. If you’re FedEx, you want your brand to become synonymous with overnight reliable delivery. Consistency also extends to your brand position. The benefits you communicate should be the same over time and across various media.

But consistency without clarity won’t take you very far. In order to build a successful brand, your brand position must be clear. Here’s how you achieve this: You should choose one or two benefits that make up your brand position. These are the key benefits that your target market cares about and that you have the capabilities to produce. Why one or two? Because people generally can’t remember more than that. Focus on one or two benefits only. One of the most common mistakes companies make is choosing too many benefits to represent their product. Their message becomes muddled, and customers get lost in “information overload.” Before they know it, the window of opportunity to occupy a place in the minds of their customers has closed. Avoid ambiguity. Make sure that the one or two benefits that you decide to focus on are very specific. For example, it is too vague to say that you offer “quality.” You can be “fast,” however. You can be “fast” and “friendly.” But you can’t be “fast,” “friendly,” “safe,” “convenient” and “stylish.” If you try to be all these things, few will believe you and no one will remember you.

Commandment 2:Build Your Brand on an Emotional Benefit

You should always strive to build your brand on an emotional benefit rather than an economic or functional benefit. There are two reasons for this:

1. Emotional benefits are harder to copy.

2. Emotional benefits have more of an effect on people’s behavior.

When you think of emotions, you think of impact. And in the world of branding, an emotional impact is a very powerful tool that can be used to create recognition for your business. Your goal is to find an emotional benefit that is far superior to that of your competitors and to associate that benefit with your brand. In other words, you want to own that benefit. Energizer is an example of a company that offers a functional benefit. Their batteries “last longer” than their competitors’. What’s a good example of an emotional benefit? Consider “Peace of mind.” FedEx gives you peace of mind because you know that when you use the company’s services to mail important business documents, those documents will reach their destination overnight (and you’ll still have a job). Volvo’s promise of safety is clearly an emotional benefit: your family’s lives are at stake when you drive on the highway. Michelin similarly provides confidence that your children are riding on safe tires. Emotional benefits pose a challenge because they are harder to build than functional benefits. They are also harder to prove. A good exercise is to make a list of all the universal emotional benefits people want. For example, everyone wants peace of mind. Everyone wants to feel powerful, attractive, intelligent, productive and healthy. Can you link any of these emotional benefits to your brand? Remember, a brand is a promise. It builds trust and simplifies purchase decisions for people. If it can simplify people’s lifestyles and provide them with an emotional benefit that you can deliver better than anyone else, then you can distinguish yourself from the competition very quickly and make a long-lasting impact, both emotionally and financially.

Commandment 3:Build Your Brand as Early as Possible

If you don’t build your brand as quickly as possible, someone else may take the position that you want. That’s just a hard fact. There are two issues at stake here. First, your customers will create an image of your company in their mind’s eye nearly immediately, so you need to be ready from the get-go. Second, there’s a lot of competition in the world of branding; your direct competitors may be the fast followers who have entered the market soon after your launch. The earlier you establish your brand, the more customer loyalty you’ll gain. Ideally, before a competitor tries to knock you out of the market, you have established your company as the leader in a certain area.

In the late 1960’s, a company today known as Kraft researched the United States coffee market and found that there were two choices: brewed coffees, which were rich-tasting but messy to prepare, and instant coffees, which were perceived to be watery-tasting but easy to prepare. What people really wanted was a rich-tasting, easy-to-prepare coffee. Kraft used processes from the US space program and introduced a freeze-dried coffee, Maxim, that was richer tasting than the current instant coffees and was also easy to prepare. Maxim quickly achieved a 10 percent share of the instant coffee market. Meanwhile, Nestle was developing its own freeze-dried coffee. They introduced it with the tagline: “You know what freeze-dried coffee is, now taste the best, Taster’s Choice.” Within two years, Taster’s Choice overtook Maxim and Maxim never regained their lead. In those two years, Taster’s Choice charged the same price and spent less money on advertising. What happened? Kraft educated customers about freeze-dried coffee, and that was necessary to build the market. But Nestle seized the education that Kraft initiated and was able to focus entirely on taste. In effect, Kraft’s efforts ended up helping Nestle. Again, build your brand as early as possible with one or two key benefits—or someone else will.

Commandment 4:Be Consistent Over Time and Over Markets

Marketing strategies need to focus on the attributes of the product or service so that they are effectively positioned in the marketplace. Brand strategies must do that too, but a branding strategy must also focus on the associations and identifiers.

Developing brand associations requires consistency over time and across markets. This simply means that everything your company does and everything it says—in short, all of its communications, packaging, and management practices—should be going in the same direction as its brand. For example, if the key benefit of your product is safety, then everything you communicate across all your markets should be about safety. This kind of consistency and repetition will stay in the minds of customers; they will have the same experience every time they see your product, and they will remember it. That has been the strength of the world’s most valuable brands, such as Disney, IBM, GE, and Nescafe.

Sounds easy, right? It’s actually easier said than done. It can be a real challenge to stay on course when faced with daily obstacles and fierce competition. This is not to imply that brands should remain static—they have to change with the market—but at any given time, your company should consistently reflect its brand. This includes all of your company’s products, services, advertisements, communications, customer service, even the look of the building and vehicles. As you can imagine, this kind of consistency is particularly difficult to achieve and maintain when dealing with a global market that includes different countries and cultures.

Commandment 5:Make Sure All Your EmployeesKnow Your Brand Position

You want all the touch-points in your company to reflect your brand. For example, if your brand is built on “friendliness,” everything in your company must embody that, from the employees to the logo to the company lobby. Southwest Airlines is a fine example of superb branding. It builds its brand on friendliness. When people think “Southwest,” they immediately think “friendly.” Southwest employees are trained to be cordial and courteous at all times. If a flight attendant at Southwest is rude to a customer, the brand suffers, and ultimately business suffers.

Branding is making sure you have the right content, and then communicating that content over and over again until it creates a remembrance factor. If people already know what you do well, you have to keep hitting them with the same message. And that message starts first and foremost with your employees, who deal with the actual customers. They are the people who will carry your message further, so you want them to know your branding position inside and out. Branding should extend across all aspects of your internal communications. These include:

• Business cards

• Business environment

• Employee appearance

• Employee interaction with customers

• Ambiance

• Signage

• Stationary

• Bulletin boards

• Brochures

Even small details like pizza boxes should reflect the company brand. Communications with employees should always be motivational, not in the sense of motivational posters but in terms of something more factual, i.e. highlighting a successful week of sales, and explaining why consistency of your brand is important to your company’s success. Can you ever go too far with communicating your brand internally? The answer is no. Internal communication is synonymous with effective employee training. The more your employees understand your brand position, the better they can sell it to the rest of the world.

Commandment 6:Make Sure All Your Products and Services Embody Your Brand

We mentioned before that a brand is a promise. It builds trust with your customers. If you come up with a brand position and your product or service doesn’t embody it, your brand will have no credibility and will quickly fail. If Southwest claims to embody friendliness, then they must live up to that promise in everything they do. If FedEx promises overnight delivery, they must ensure that happens. If Volvo makes a promise of safety, they should test every last detail in their cars to make sure they are as safe as possible. The bottom line here is: live up to your brand position. Your customers and all of your potential customers are counting on it.