By conducting brand exploration exercises like those described above, your management team should be in a position to assess the ideas that have been put forward about what the audience needs to understand about your brand -- global purpose, benefits, desired image associations, and unique personality traits.

You'll likely be starting with a laundry list of brand messages, image associations, and characteristics which can be overwhelming. To move from such a laundry list to a determination of core brand attributes, it's often helpful to sort the list into four categories: organizational attributes, behavioral attributes, personality traits, and tenets.

Organizational attributes are those that define what the company does now and may do in the future. Take as an example The Ocean Conservancy, which is in the business of advocating to protect the world's oceans. Behavioral attributes are those that reflect how the organization does what it does -- in this case, proactively and persuasively. Personality traits reflect the organization's unique approach to what it does -- a visionary stance, with an inspirational style of operation, a bold attitude. Tenets (lives depend on wild, healthy oceans) express those beliefs that motivate action and lie at the heart of all corporate endeavors.

It should become clear through this exercise that there are certain hallmarks of your brand that derive from a combination of organizational and behavioral attributes, personality traits, and tenets. Some will be more extraneous and less enduring than others. In the end, your core brand attributes will consist of a subset of the most essential and, importantly, most permanent of these hallmarks. These are the attributes which will not change over time or with changes in your business endeavor, and will need to be consistently communicated, verbally and visually, across all media.

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