|  Scott Regan

Your brand is like a small stone tossed into a pond. As it splashes into the water, it radiates ripples outward along the surface, each band growing increasingly larger than those preceeding it.

Rippling water is a wonderful metaphore for brand building. Consider the stone your mission and vision statements. The first ripple in the water is your executive team. The second ripple is middle management. As the ripples continue to gain momentum, we move on through your medical staff, employees, patients, and the community at large.

The fact that the ripples grow in size is not important. The key learning here is that the ripples have an order to them. In other words, there are a series of concentric circles that envelope your brand and eventually become your brand. And to give your brand strength, you have to move through these circles in a logical order.

Should you do much brand building with your patients if your senior leadership team does not represent the brand in their day-to-day actions? Is it worth your while to invest on an external brand-building campaign if your front-line employees don’t understand what the brand stands for? And should you train your staff on the critical components of your brand if middle management is not first serving as a strong brand ambassador?

The answers: No, no, and no.

To build a successful brand requires that you first have a stone to throw into the pond. Having meaningful mission and vision statements are first and foremost in brand building. Second, you then have to work through your concentric circles — one at a time — ensuring that each circle is entrenched in the brand before moving to the next outward ring.

Do this, and your brand has a much higher chance of success. But if you fail to pay attention to the logical order of your concentric circles, your brand will likely have a rocky childhood. If your brand is currently struggling, review your concentric circles and see if one or more was left out of your brand-building process. Chances are, you will find the source of your struggles somewhere within the ripples.