Last edition, we walked through the brand equity audit checklist and the blind spots most founders do not see until they are mapped out. This one picks up where that leaves off: once you have your MAD™ scores, how do you read them, and what do you do first? You just took the MAD™ diagnostic and you are looking at your scores. four facets and the centering point, each with a number. Some are strong, some are weak, and you are not sure what to do with any of it. Here is how I read a MAD™ report and what I look for first. I have gone through this with a lot of founders over the years, and the most common mistake I see is treating the report like a to-do list, lowest score gets attention first, highest score gets ignored. That is not how it works. Brand equity is a system, and these four facets and the centering point interact. Reading the report well means reading it as a pattern, not as individual numbers.
What do the scores across Branding (the centering point) and the four facets mean?
The MAD™ measures market authority across four facets, with Branding as the centering point dimensions: Demand, Credibility, Visibility, and Market Trust, with Branding as the centering point. Each one captures something distinct about how your brand operates in the market.
Demand is the pull. It measures whether the market actively seeks you out or whether you are always chasing the next client. Credibility is your standing; it is what the market believes about your expertise and your track record. Visibility is reach, specifically whether the right people can find you when they are looking. Branding is coherence, whether your visual and verbal identity reinforces or contradicts the position you are trying to hold. Market Trust is the deepest layer: the degree to which the market believes you will deliver on what you promise, consistently, over time.
A high score in any one of these is valuable. But the facets reinforce each other, and a collapse in one can undermine the others. High Visibility with low Credibility often makes things worse, not better. High Demand with low Market Trust is a short-term pipeline that does not compound.
Which MAD™ facet should you focus on first for brand equity?
I always look at Market Trust first, regardless of its score. Market Trust is the foundation the other four sit on. If it is strong, a weakness in Visibility or Branding is a growth problem, solvable with resources and strategy. If Market Trust is weak, a strength in Demand or Credibility will eventually erode, because trust is what converts market authority into long-term brand equity.
After Market Trust, I look at the relationship between Demand and Credibility. If Demand is low but Credibility is high, the brand has earned its position but has not communicated it widely enough. That is a very different problem than high Demand with low Credibility, which usually means the brand is growing faster than its substance can support. Both are real, and both have different intervention points.
As I often say to clients: "We need first to check where you are, not where you were, not where you want to be, but where you are, presently." The report is a present-tense document. It tells you where the brand stands today, and that is the only place from which you can build.
What does a strong MAD™ brand equity profile look like versus a weak one?
A strong profile is not a five-out-of-five across every facet. I have never seen that, and I would be skeptical of it if I did. What I look for is intentional asymmetry: a brand that has built genuine authority in two or three facets, has a clear path on one or two more, and has an honest assessment of where it is not competing.
The weakest profiles I have seen are the ones where every score hovers in the middle, a three or four across all four facets and the centering point. That is a brand that has not committed to being excellent at anything. The market does not reward average across the board; it rewards being distinctly strong in the dimensions that matter for your specific position.
Your MAD™ report is the starting point for knowing which dimensions are yours to own. Once you know that, the roadmap follows naturally.
TRY THIS
If you have already taken the MAD™ diagnostic, look at your lowest-scoring facet. Now ask: is this facet low because of neglect, or because another facet is dragging it down? For example, low Demand is almost never a demand problem; it is usually a symptom of weak Credibility or Visibility upstream. Trace backwards through the diamond. The root cause is usually one or two steps removed from the symptom.
— Jerico Lugo, MCIPR