Corporations around the world are showing increasing interest in building and fostering their brands. Yet, not many of them can effectively create a solid and enduring brand that is appealing even to their employees, let alone the customers in the market.
This article has assembled an essential checklist that explains the prerequisites for any brand-building effort:
1.Comprehension
The corporation has to ensure that it has possessed a sufficient understanding of what branding is all about. If it cannot tell the difference between a product and a brand, it is almost pointless to start the brand-building process as it will be very difficult to conduct any constructive discussion about the brand.
Achieving an adequate level of understanding of brands is not the biggest challenge. Instead, the biggest hurdle is for the corporation to accept the fact that it may not possess the fundamental knowledge and is willing to pay an effort to close that gap. 
2. Consensus
Every corporation needs a brand champion. This may be an individual or a team that can serve as the steward for the brand. However, this is still not enough. The corporation has to nurture a culture that treasures the brand’s value and is geared up to convert all employees to become genuine brand ambassadors. The logic is quite straightforward – if the staff members are not convinced about the brand themselves, how can they convince the other people to embrace it?
3. Consciousness
Brand-building has to become a second nature of the team members to know precisely what to do and what not to do under any circumstance. This is because brand-building is an ongoing process, and every right move will reinforce or diminish the brand value, depending on what and how the message is conveyed.
4. Communication
Brand-building is about story-telling. Indeed, the emotions within the story can touch the audience’s heart and eventually turn them into brand advocates.
In this information-overloaded era, out of sight is out of mind. The corporation, therefore, has to make the best use of all the paid, earned, owned, and shared media to continuously communicate with its different stakeholders so that the brand perception will be aligned across the board.
5.Commitment
The last and probably the most essential prerequisite is “commitment”.
Brand-building is a significant undertaking that requires the top management to persistently invest both the financial and human resources to support the brand-building effort.
Simply put, there is no shortcut in brand-building. All the top brands around the world are the result of accumulated countless efforts and total devotion.
The assuring fact is that all these efforts and commitments are utterly justifiable as the brand will always remain the ultimate point of differentiation and the most valuable intangible asset for any corporation.