The most concise definition that I ever heard of brand is your brand is “what people will say about you when you are not in the room”.
When I hear “brand”, I think of cattle and what cowboys did back in the day. They branded their cattle. This act of branding made their cattle visible and recognizable to anyone.
When we brand ourselves, it does the same thing. Anyone who sees us coming or interacts with us knows who we are from afar. When they approach us, there is already a preconceived impression of us and some sense of what we are about.
In this day of digital social science, we have seen a crazy evolution of branding and its intention.
Brand is the sum of beliefs of a patron about EXPECTATIONS, RELATIONSHIPS AND MEMORIES that makes that patron choose one business over another.
A brand is not an eye-catching logo. The logo is a symbol pointing to relationships, expectations, and memories. It is a condensed reminder that punctuates 1000 words and memories of excellence into a symbol. That symbol can now be spread around the globe at warp speed in this hyper-connected marketplace.
The fundamental shift in the digitally connected economy, AKA social media, is that the power has shifted from the companies to the customers. Companies cannot simply pay for a production and then broadcast what they want the market to think of them any longer. The market is connected in new ways, and more and more customers will not just mindlessly buy-in.
The connected social customer does not trust the marketing anymore. Customers write reviews for other customers. Customers read reviews of peers and trusted authorities, which hold more weight than published company propaganda. Customers make and break brands in those digital chat rooms and forums when you are not in the room…
Customers may not recall what we said or did, but they will never forget how we make them feel. Perception is still a reality, but the customer is now driving a percentage of the perception/reality. Word of Mouth is still number one, and a close second by a nose is social media posting that extols the virtues of your brand.
Stephen Choo Quan
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