Brand is a difficult thing to get my head around sometimes. It seems like every marketing firm has their own take on it – sometimes it’s lifted from a book, sometimes it’s formulated entirely to play to their own strengths and sometimes it’s constructed around a central personality at the company.
None of these work for me – they all seem to start from the wrong place.
To my thinking brand first and foremost about your perception and relationship with the company and product. That said, I could never quite crystallize all of my various thoughts on the matter. So I was pleasantly surprised this morning to find that Seth Godin’s latest post spelled it out quite nicely:
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.