Brand Week - Question #1

I thought we would begin with something simple:

What is your definition of a brand? 25 words or less.

I thought we'd start with this question to see where everyone is as we begin the discussion.

Comments

[fouroboros]

Ideals --> Bonds --> Communities. Another word for community is Brand.

[9 words, 2 arrows.]

A brand's job is mobilizing affinity, and assuming leadership of that community--sometimes benignly, sometimes forcefully, but always in service of the shared ideals of the group--company and consumer.

[30 more words.]

In this way, the most effective brands do have an almost visionary quality about them. They mirror back to consumers and employees and even competitors an imagined ideal future they often can't enunciate themselves. They guide. They imprint. And that's gold.

[41 more words.]

80 words and 2 arrows. One hopes the first 9 give me permission to offer the next thirty. And then, those 39 have opened the gate to 41 more. If I do the rest right, I may have just found a new friend. Another relationship based on shared ideals—a brand—may have begun.

Now, I have to grow both of us.

[johnmoore (unitedstates)]

My simple, jargon-free, active defination of branding is:

Branding is about being remarkable. Branding answers the question of why a company/product exists. Branding is the heart, the soul, and the essence of a company/product.

[Michele Miller]

Combining my Wizard knowledge with study of the brain, my generic, simplified definition of branding:

Branding means planting your business in the reward behavior area of a customer's brain - the same area that responds to chocolate, sex, and beauty in general. You should be first and foremost in the mind of a customer when they need your product or service, and they should feel a sense of reward just by thinking of you.

As for how to do that, well, that's another topic...

[Jennifer Rice]

A brand is the idea about your company that resides in the minds of your stakeholders, and is created by what the company says (marketing) and does (operations).

[kirsten]

posted an answer over at re:invention's site. re:invention believes a brand is an empty-page book. read more:

http://www.reinventioninc.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_reinventioninc_archive.html#1081208112122074

[johnmoore (unitedstates)]

Great answer Jennifer.

[Wayne Hurlbert]

A brand is a promise. It's a promise of quality and a promise of excellence.

[Todd]

Here is another contribution to the conversation:

http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2004/04/power_brands.html

[Tom Asacker]

A brand is the expectation of someone,something or some place to deliver a certain feeling, by way of an experience and/or outcome.

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

A brand is a story. And the customer puts him or herself in the role of the hero or heroine.

[hugh macleod]

"That which separates one commodity from all other commodities."

9 words. Yay!

Denition 2: "Word often used by marketing schlumps to hide intellectual bankruptcy."

10 words. Yay!

[Mesothelioma Info]

If the consumer has heard of us, we've done our job." Fortunately for agencies, brand value is extremely difficult to measure, so branding campaigns can be easily defended with grandiose predictions of future glory.

[Alice]

Big Boobs -
College Girls -
Milf Pics -
Shemale Movies -
Big Tits

[Danielle]

A brand is an image that people trust due to it's price, reputation or quality.