There are key brand definition components that need to be identified , understood and mantained by upper management that has the vested interest in long term brand strenght . This is the only protection for the brand against the personal interests of short term meddlers.

Good to know some people are still wondering about our Rainier Beer tv work as indicated in a recent PI article.

We always found it interesting when people in our business told us we were lucky to have a client that allowed us to do tv like that. Like permission is all you need.

Sometimes I feel brands are living entities. One day there’s an idea , it gets a name and it takes on a life of its own. It’s nurtured and grows , often out lasting its creator and generations of others servicing it. People easily identify their personalities and give them human attributes and characteristics. Brands become significant others that act as guides through the jungle of commerce. 

How often we hear ” we don’t want contrived name” when we’re asked to do a brand name. Well what do you mean exactly because that’s what you’re asking us to do …to come up with a unique brand name. When we learn a client wants a literal descriptive name instead of a fabricated or contrived name we get to talk about the important criteria of an effective brand name and the differences between brand naming and what we call ‘reference naming’. It’s always an interesting discussion.

If we’re brand building, we better know what we’re building. Here is how some smart brand builders define a brand….

1. “Branding supersedes logic. Accordingly, brands are primarily aspirational and exist to build emotional attachment to a product or company. –David Aaker, Professor
2. “Products are made in a factory, but brands are created in the mind. Simply put, a brand is a promise.”– Walter Landor
3. “By definition, brand is whatever the consumer thinks of when he or she hears your company’s name.”– David F. D’Alessandro, Brand Warfare
4. “A brand is a fundamental promise, a name for your business strategy and what you’re prepared to enforce. It’s not what you say, but what you are or aspire to become.”–Keith Rienhard, CEO , DDB Worldwide
5. —branding is the promise you keep…. Brand is the intersection between core company ( or product or service) strenghts and what customers value”. –Joseph Lepla, Lepla Parker Integrated Branding Quorum Books
6. Brand. (1) A name, usually a trademark of a manufacturer or product, or the product identified by it’s name. (2) Particular type of something , a distinctive type or kind of something. — Encarta
7. “A brand is a combination of features ( what the product is), customer benefits (what needs and wants the product meets) and values ( what the customer associates with the product). brand is created when marketing adds value to a product , and in the process differentiates it from other products with similar features and benefits.” –Timothy Mooney, Brand Strategies
8. “I am going to define a brand as an entity that satisfies all the following four conditions; (1) Something that has a buyer and a seller. (2) Something that has a differentiating name. (3) Something that is created rather than is naturally occurring. (4) Something that has positive and or negative opinions about it in consumers minds for reasons other than it’s internal product characteristics. — Adam Morgan, Eating the Big Fish
9. “A brand is an intangible but critical component of what a company stands for. A consumer generally does not base a relationship with a product or a service , but he or she may have a relationship with a product or a service , but e or she may have a relationship with a brand. In part, a brand is a set of promises. It implies trust, consistency, and a defined set of expectations.”– Scott Davis, Brand Asset Management
10. ….A brand is a concept that provides the thread of unification within a business that yields a consistently broader brand value experience . So many businesses are a series of disconnected silos under-leveraging their brand. They think of their brands as products rather than total experiences.”— John Wong, Brand Imperatives
11. “Branding is something you do to cows. Branding is what you do when there’s nothing original about your product.”– Roy Disney quote from WSJ article 3.4.04 

We could go on and on , but it gets to be the same thing over and over, ” a brand is a promise”. It sounds like a good sound bite. It doesn’t help me much as a brand builder. A promise sets up some kind of a performance expectation. When I pick up an orange with the intention of taking a bite there is the promise it will taste like an orange. When I pick up an orange with a Sunkist logo on it, it also promises me it will taste like a orange. Of course the Sunkist orange is signaling it’s a branded orange but both the branded and unbranded oranges are presenting a promise. All kinds of generic unbranded entities make promises.

We think a brand can be anything someone is trying to own and make special. Ownership can be legal as well as just in people’s minds. It could be a company, product, service, program, organization, group, person, sensory experience or ranch. You name it and someone has probably tried to make it a brand.We like this definition because it’s simple and can deal with any branding situation. There are many different brand classifications, types and roles they can play. When brands are defined by equity qualifications or specific value variables people can quickly find themselves dealing rhetorically with what is or isn’t a brand. We’ve been in situations where certain marketing people have told us ” it’s only a brand if it has a consumer facing and revenues of a certain level”.