Good marketing and branding challenges, pushes, and cajoles companies into action and growth. And this is why companies buy work in marketing and branding in the first place: they want to achieve growth. What most companies don't realize is that operating at this level is much harder than they thought. Marketing and branding often communicate a vision of a company that is, and acts, much differently than it currently is. An emerging brand promise assumes that the company can acutally fulfill the promise. Isn't that the point of branding? Communicating a promise accurately and briefly? It seems that many companies assume (deep in their hearts) that marketing and branding is really just a whitewash. Thus, even with a marketing and branding overhaul, nothing really has to change in their operations. It's like buying a new suit. You just put it on and you look better. But, marketers and branders (the good ones) know better. To go to market with a new brand promise and identity is alter who your company really wants to be. And to go from who you are to who you want to be is often a difficult, painful process. This sort of unintended consequence is becoming more and more common. Companies recognize that they need to step up their marketing and branding to compete and thrive. What they don't realize (at first) is that this will also involve a big change in how they operate. It's easy to hire a company like Synaxis to improve your marketing and branding. What most companies don't realize is that they need to improve their operations at the same time. This is something we advise clients about, but I don't think they really believe it. Again, they think that marketing and branding is just about visual changes. The trouble happens later on. Eventually, it dawns on the company that all the things they said and promised in the marketing and marketing and branding will have to be done. And very quickly they realize that they don't have the staff, processes, salesforce, delivery team, etc. to do the job. (And that's if they are lucky. Most don't ever realize their shortcomings.) Without operational improvements they can never take full advantage of their new marketing and branding. When improvements don't arrive, then they usually think they wasted their money on the marketing and branding. And, in a way, they did. To do good marketing and branding is to do good business. Marketing and branding is just the central force of engaging your market. You still need to do the work.