Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

1. Remain a "student" of marketing. Stay on top of best practices. Find out how the really great marketing companies got to be that way. Emulate what they do. Reserve the right to alter your views by being smarter tomorrow than you were today.

2. Define what marketing is at your company. Don't let the other functions define you. Get people to understand and then agree on what the marketing function is and what it is not. BTW, here's a good definition: "marketing" is what you do to give people reasons to buy your product or service -- and it includes everything, starting with the product's conception all the way through its consumption.

3. Always be recruiting. Find out who the up-and-coming young talents are. Introduce yourself, take them to breakfast or lunch, sell the opportunities that exist in your shop or company, whether or not there a specific opening.

4. Be your own toughest critic. Constantly critique your outbound materials and programs for their selling power, customer perspective, relevance and competitive advantage.

5. Focus on making your strengths stronger. Don't waste time trying to "improve" your weaknesses as a manager, leader and marketer. Instead, leverage what you do best by doing it even better. When you think about it, this is what your organization should be doing, too.

6. Think of yourself as the Chief Customer Officer. This is, after all, the only title that means anything to the people who buy your products. Be an advocate for them.

7. Market "Marketing" throughout your company. With an eye to #2 above, make sure the people who are depending on what you do understand what you're doing and why. Clarify the difference between logos and brands, customers and accounts, etc. First, understand the differences yourself.

8. Take a good, hard, ruthless look at your website. Ask yourself if you, if you weren't an employee, would think it's compelling, informative, engaging and cool. Does it reflect your company and its prospects? If it does, and it's none of the above, maybe is it time for you to relocate?

9. Take your people offsite to congratulate, challenge, coach, and excite them about the year ahead.

10. Meet one significant new customer per month.

Bonus 11. Prepare a top-ten resolutions list of your own, specific to your company's 2007 objectives. Make its preparation one of the things you and your staff do at your offsite meeting!