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One of the toughest challenges you face as a brand marketer is, very simply, getting your brand noticed.

Today, you have to worry about not just your direct competitors but all of the other brands fighting for a customer's attention. Just breaking through and being heard in this over-communicated, noisy marketing environment is a victory.

So you need all the help you can get. And one place you might want to look for it is at the top of your organization. More and more, senior management plays a crucial role in the success of a brand that breaks away from the pack.

All of the "Chiefs"—CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, and even CIOs—should be enlisted to embrace your brand. Sure, it's "Marketing's job"—but it's management's responsibility.

The collective actions and attitudes of your Chiefs help turn customers, prospects, analysts, employees, and shareholders into brand enthusiasts. If your Chiefs are all on the same page and speaking the same language, your brand will project a stronger image to the public.

This means getting the Chiefs on board early when you launch a new brand or a new brand marketing campaign. It means coaching them on the brand attributes and keeping them informed about upcoming brand marketing activities.

Your Chiefs need to know that something will be happening before everyone else does. One of the worst thing is for one of your Chiefs to be caught off-guard by a customer or investor who has seen a new ad that the Chief is not aware of.

The CEO is the secret weapon

Ultimately, a brand's true hero—its "secret weapon"—is the CEO, who helps turn an ordinary brand into a "breakaway" brand. The CEO shapes the company's brand vision and demands that breakaway branding behavior take place.

The CEO's vision, determination, and guts push a brand to greatness. His or her involvement in the brand—and his or her recognition of the strategic importance of branding to the company's success—will often tip the breakaway branding scale. Without the CEO's functioning as a supportive leader who champions the brand, achieving breakaway brand status is all the more difficult.

A classic example of this is Steve Jobs, who left and then returned to Apple to reinvent the brand. Jobs oversaw the launch of an advertising campaign called "Think Different"—as much a marketing direction as it was his own mantra for the rebirth of a tarnished company.

Perhaps most significant in the Apple/Jobs comeback story was the 2001 introduction of the iPod—the digital music player that pioneered a category and turned Apple into a consumer electronics company. Apple said it sold 14 million iPods in the last three months of 2005 alone. Its revenue for the quarter was up 63 percent from the year-prior period.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barry Silverstein (barry@thebreakawaybrand.com) is a senior vice-president at Arnold Worldwide, a leading U.S. advertising agency. He is coauthor of the new McGraw-Hill book The Breakaway Brand (www.thebreakawaybrand.com).