What I Learned This Year: Steve Phillips

We asked the most respected creative visionaries in Boston to create a piece, entitled "What I Learned This Year."

Here's what Steve Phillips, president of Phillips Design Group had to say.

Top 10 Things We Learned in 2010

1. We're entering a new era of branding.

2. You have to create more meaningful experiences to engage customers in your brand. Communication alone does not work!

3. Brands connected to a higher social value have greater appeal than brands that aren't.

4. In many categories, “low cost” and “great service” are becoming commodity attributes and won’t differentiate brands over the long term.

5. It's never been more important to ground strategic thinking in internal as well as external audience insights.

6. If you aren't measuring, you aren't learning. If you aren’t learning, you are guessing.

7. Design has never been more important.

8. Alignment is the most critical aspect for effective brand building. Not only does the brand vision have to be in synch with the marketplace needs, but the organization must align their objectives, strategies, resources, and timing to succeed.

9. Brands that move harmoniously across channels are more valuable than brands that don’t.

10. Despite popular reports, big ideas are not dead!