Leading the way for your messaging initiatives is the strategic direction from the top of your company on who you are and where you want to go.  That strategic plan is guidance to influence all decision making from every player and organization in the company. Every CEO will have this plan in their mind and at their staff level.  Disseminating that plan and direction to your employees and customers is a key priority.

A singular vision from your CEO enables you to capture one brand message as the projection into the future.  Your corporate brand was formed by your corporate history (previous brand equity).  It began with your core competencies and evolved from countless conversations about all previous success or failure.  Starting with that beginning, your one brand message from the top is the essence of who your company is (desired to be) and what spirit and values it represents going forward. 

You can play down your corporate history but you cannot ignore it.  This brand equity does exist so dramatic changes in direction can be very hard.  The easiest approach is to already have an authentic and believable brand (Wouldn't it be nice!).  Migration of this established brand takes less effort and investment since your advertising just extends the brand in the direction you want to go or the nearby space where you want to be. The shifts in the conversations are incremental.

Obviously, it is harder to shift your brand into a new space.  In reality, this still requires incremental movement since the previous equity cannot magically disappear.  You have to deal with it and the audience that holds this belief about your company.  It is possible to create a separate entity from the original brand as a premium effort or even a separate entity as a discount slice but the values of the core brand cannot be ignored.  An attempt to create a new or subsidiary brand requires taking some aspect of the existing brand and highlighting and enhancing that to create your newly targeted version.  Whatever the choice, you have to be consistent throughout your company and this direction has to come from the top to have full affect.

This is why it is critically important to distill the one brand message from your corporate strategy, drive that through all of your customer touch points, and deliver this message through all of your promotions.  The win here that proves your success is to see people nodding their heads in agreement when your brand message aligns with their value of and belief in your brand.  This kind of harmonic will increase the result of your brand investments and increase the distance between you and your competitors.  

Monitor and watch your customer reactions and look for the perceived nod.  Tune your messaging efforts until you reach a maximum harmonic where your message comes from your CEO and is amplified and echoed by your customers through their social media and communications with you.