I know we’d all like to think our brands are original, given to us by divine inspiration – but they’re not. Regardless if youre just starting out or have been in business for many years, we all are influenced on a day to day basis.

All of your past experiences, biases, likes, dislikes and predispositions all affect your decision making process. You also must account for anyone else who influences the brand. This includes key internal players in messaging, imaging and managing among others as well as external influencers of customers, competitors and partners. Add all of this to the influence of pop culture and media consumed and you have a tremendous amount of influence.

With all the forces vying for dominancy what can you do?

• HUMANIZE: Start thinking about your brand as a human. Each and every human has a personality with likes and dislikes.

• PERSONIFY: Create categories where you can list your brand’s preferences in music, art, literature, movies etc. The sky’s the limit here.

• SPECIFY: Give your brand specific attributes. If it were a human what would it’s demographics be? Gender, age, race, income etc

• ANALYZE: Analyze all of these attributes and figure out what feeling your brand conveys. Is your brand a posh upper east sider that comes from money and summers in the Hamptons?

• ATTRIBUTE: Based on your brand personality analysis what clothes should your brand wear aka what are it’s coloring, styling & imaging attributes.

• SYNC: How do others regard your brand? How do you want your brand to be received? Now that you know how your brand looks & who your brand is you need to make sure that the words coming out of your brand’s mouth syncs up with your image.

We as humans are always changing. New influences come into out lives daily and must be acted upon. Your brand functions in the same way. It’ll always be the same “person” at the core but it must be flexible adaptable and aware of decisions to change on a concious level. Remember, you are what you “eat”.