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“This sentence has five words.”

Is there any rational person out there who wants to debate this point? Probably not. It’s self-defining. It’s obvious. When we say, “This sentence has five words,” we are presenting our listener with a truism. It is, by its own definition, correct.

This is an Eigen Value, a concept from the field of cybernetics that describes a thing that is self-defining. Its outputs are replications of itself.

Conversely, when we say, “This sentence has lots and lots of syllables and words,” do the same conditions hold true? No. “Lots and lots” is a fairly subjective idea. What is a lot to me might be too few to someone else.

The first sentence – the Eigen Value – has meaning. The second does not. We’re busy and we don’t care enough about it to debate its truth or veracity so we quickly move on with our day.

And that’s the point here.

Eigen Values are what we, as businesspeople, do when we’re doing our best work. We produce work that is synonymous with our brand values, our mission and our strategy. Always. In everything we do.

Why is this important to us?

We have limited resources and we need to spend them wisely.

When you look across your company, how many companies do you look like? I’m not just talking about your packaging, website and collateral. Look at your management philosophy. Look at how you treat prospective employees – each of whom will exit the process either happy or not – and tell everyone they talk to about you. Look at your internal processes, from new employee on-boarding to procurement to finance to customer service. Touch points are everywhere and the more we focus on this and make each one synonymous with our brand and vision, the more strength our brand accrues.

Our customers – real, potential, past, future, on the fence, our influencers and others – are busy.

They don’t care that much about us. We only matter to them when they absolutely need us and are moved to comment or are screaming at us when we’ve failed them. We need to remind these critically important, stressed out, busy people who we are and why we’re relevant to them. And when we do this ambiguously, we become invisible to them.

Impressions build over time, just like advertising frequency, so why would we choose to do a sloppy job here?

Brand equity equals company valuation.

There is a large body of work that correlates brand equity with company valuation. Strong brands are financially higher performing and more successful than their lackluster peers. We studied this at Wharton back in my MBA days and a quick search turns up newer research to support this point.

We can discuss the research behind this contention, links to which are supplied below in the post script, but I think we all intuitively grasp what this army of brilliant management scientists have concluded.

When you’ve developed a strong brand, your valuation is higher.

What does this mean?

Look at the outputs of your brand. Are they self-defining? Would a random customer be able to look at your packaging or website or talk to a customer service representative on the phone and know, instinctively, that it came from you – even if your brand name was obscured or not mentioned?

Or is your experience generic? Is there a “check the box” mentality driving some of your critical consumer touch points?

Look at the rituals, practices and institutions within your company. Are they self-defining? Have you indoctrinated your employees and taught them what it means to be one of the tribe?

Or have they grown up on their own, prowling your halls like so many gang members having created their own rules and laws?

Once you view your company through the lens of Eigen Values, it changes how you view what must be done.

It’s not enough to be consistent. You must be self-defining.

Regards.

Please feel free to download and share my e-book on this subject entitled, “This Sentence Has 5ive Words: Eigen Values, Creating Truisms and the Future of Marketing.”

PS: The e-book is available without registration, but between you and me, please register! I’d like to stay in touch with you – I’ll give you a monthly deep cuts + interviews newsletter that goes a bit deeper into the blog topics, so if you like the content of what I’m sharing here, please sign up!

PPS: Here are a few links to research – many require purchase, but the abstracts point to a general consensus on the correlation between brand equity and valuation.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=856463&show=pdf

http://www.atypon-link.com/AMA/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkr.38.4.485.18905

http://www.atypon-link.com/AMA/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkg.67.4.1.18688

http://www.springerlink.com/content/51g1153m6p63325r/

PPPS: Photo courtesy of Flickr under (cc) Creative Commons license.