What's important is not only how good you make your product, but also how good your product makes the customer. Capturing key attributes, features and benefits from the customer point of view, then using the essence of these characteristics to define your brand in its competitive environment creates position.

Ask company managers: "What business are you in? What makes you better than the competition? What is the number one reason customers buy your brand?" Are the answers consistent and customer-relevant? Base your brand identity on researched customer needs, wants and deficiencies.

There's a place for those companies that elevate their craft to a level so far above their contemporaries that their very name defines marketplace position. If you want to lay claim to that position year after year, you must continually be the aggressor. And stand for something.