If brand awareness was once the standard measure for brand strength, and brand resonance and relevance are the new yardsticks, I suspect that brand karma will be the ultimate definition of brand strength one day...Brand karma reflects everything a company does as well as everything it elects not to do.

→ Scott Bedbury, A New Brand World

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Anxiety & stress - like money or notoriety - doesn't change us as much as they expose our more authentic selves.

Watch how someone running late for a flight treats the TSA agent who needs to search their bag. Watch how people hoard toilet paper in times of crisis. Watch how somebody reacts to traffic.

In instances like these, we don't act out-of-character. It's more that we haven't the strength to hide our character.

The same goes for brands.

Your people, they see how you're responding to these uncertain times. More than that, they feel it. Amid everything, they are rewriting their perception of who you are & what you stand for.

They're taking into account all the decisions you're making (or not), how you're communicating (or not), the ways you're leading (or not). Your actions are complexifying the picture they've been holding of your brand - a picture that once felt solid & now feels hardly that.

What you do today - how you respond to the challenge & uncertainty - will eventually reveal whether the brand that emerges is worth the stress, the hurry, & the sleepless nights.

It's not enough to hope merely to survive this mess.

You need to decide what this will make you become - because it is, without question, making you become something new. 

If you don't decide & act, you run the risk of reacting. Do that & you might not like what's revealed.

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