In the spring of 2009, at every formal gathering of marketing, media, and advertising professionals, the two hottest buttons were: metrics ("What's all this information really telling us?") and the economy ("Are we a lagging or a leading indicator and how much time do we have left?").

Recently, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) managed to put the two together in a survey whose results were presented at a day-long event, entitled "2009 Brand Building in Tough Times & Beyond."

The organization polled its members twice – in February 2007 and April 2009 (in respective groups of 129 and 297) – to determine how marketers navigate their businesses through tough economic times and, more optimistically, how they planned to respond.

"I actually thought the number would be higher," said Katy Frohling, svp/brand management and strategy at Wells Fargo & Co.

Her company's 152-year heritage and its strength of brand equity "has positioned us well for tough economic times".

"In fact, it's been a differentiator and is even higher for us, than it was a couple of years ago. For us, it's all about people and customer service."

Frohling continued, "We also have a proprietary brand tracker. And we use the Reputation Institute to ask our consumers, 'How often would you recommend this brand?' Our brand loyalty is tied to our brand health."

Walls Fargo's Frohling was one member of a panel of three who walked through the results on the ANA survey with