____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WHAT IS A BRAND?
“You are a brand. Your company is a brand.
If your brand is strong (consistent), your personality, products & services
will reflect your branding, creating demand and passion in others to pursue your brand.
You and your brand must illuminate your uniqueness, helping others to recognize compatibility, and
motivating others to seek your brand, as well as to locate and remember you!
Don’t be afraid of branding. It’s like finding a shoe that undeniably is a perfect fit,
or a group of friends who love everything about you!” ~ Ellen E Brock
“[T]he product of two things: Prediction of what to expect [x] emotional power of that expectation.
If [you] encounter a brand and [you] don’t know what it means or does, it has zero power. If [you] have an expectation of what an organization will do for [you], but [you] don’t care about that, no power.
If you want to grow a valuable brand…keep awareness close to zero among the people you’re not ready for yet, and build the most predictable, emotional experience you can among those that care about you.”
~ Seth Godin*
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together,
account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.
If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium,
make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.
A brand’s value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay,
or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.
A brand used to be something else. It used to be a logo or a design or a wrapper.
Today, that’s a shadow of the brand, something that might mark the brand’s existence.
[I]t takes more than a hat to be a cowboy…it takes more than a designer…to make a brand.
If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.
Design is essential but design is not brand.
~ Seth Godin**
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
NOTES:
SETH GODIN:
* http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/the_brand_formu.html
** http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/define-brand.html