Most companies see brand building as a process of addition, where every touch point adds to the overall experience. They summarize that each point of contact adds to their brand’s overall equity. Yet, branding is not based on the process of addition. It’s based on multiplication. The greatest return doesn’t come from improving the variables with the most value but rather from improving those with the least. In fact, a single point of failure can negate everything.

Excellent post by Mark Gallagher and Laura Savard at Blackcoffee on the nature of a well rounded brand and how a single point of failure can kill the viability of a brand.  The position of brand’s promises or expectations does not equal Customer Support + Quality + Functionality, but rather the equation is better represented as Customer Support x Quality x Functionality.  Score a zero in any of the category and your brand is at risk of loosing all crediblity with consumers.

To be effective, your brand must not only be the best at what it does, it must also improve upon its weakest traits or remove those variables from the equation all together.