Your brand should be memorable, compelling and carry implied value. It shouldn't be time-related to an event. When an interviewer says, "Tell me who you are," how would you complete the sentence: "I am ____"? 

A brand is a representation of uniform value that most often creates both intellectual attraction and, more importantly, emotional appeal and even cachet. Most people you ask will tell you that Coca-Cola or Coke is the strongest brand in the world, followed closely by McDonald's. A few years ago,BusinessWeek [now Bloomberg Businessweek], which uses a formula to calculate the worth of the brand appeal in building business, placed Coke on top of the list, at $80 billion. 

But at this writing, and for the past two years, the brand king has been Google. The web builds brands at the speed of light. 

So if you believe, as we do, that logic makes people think, but emotion makes them act, ask yourself these questions when people consider your brand or brands: Is it something special? What kind of emotions do you want to generate? Are you someone with whom they would like to do business or follow? 

If you don't blow your own horn, there is no music. At some point your horn can become a full orchestra, augmented by the web's scalability and power to leverage. The key is to create this presence in a non-narcissistic way, and look like a valued asset and not a late-night infomercial. 

The strongest brand is your name. "Get me Joan Larson" is a far better dynamic than "Get me an excellent strategist" and Joan happens to be a possible name among many. Not many people have said, "We need Summit Consulting Group." They say, "We need Alan Weiss." 

But on the way to your name recognition, and often in conjunction with your name recognition, you can and should create brands that "play well" on the web and enhance your appeal. Among the brands we've helped people develop: the Lion Tamer (working with aberrant behavior in executives); Lifeblood (working in the biotech field); the Technology Tailor; the Performance Architect; and the Sales Accelerator. 

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