I’ve written often about the need for a brand to define who it is and what its core values are. I wanted to take that further by saying that it is equally critical to define the goals of a brand in terms of purpose for the year. Without doing so a brand is likely to slip backwards within a marketplace that is moving so fast. You only need to look at the leadership positions Nike, Pepsi, Starbucks and Coke are taking in the social space to see major brands that are tracking with the marketplace.

To be fair brands are often so overwhelmed by the need to survive, meet their next quarterly projections or turn themselves inside out in the face of social media, that they don’t get time to sit down and articulate how the next year can contribute to what the brand wants to be. Yet there is time if a brand puts it first at the beginning of the year.