One of the things I love about marketing terms is how their elusive nature allows for open interpretation and individual definitions.
In my brain, branding is the art and science of forming an impression. The success of your brand is determined by how closely your customer’s experience meets (or exceeds!) their expectations.
Here’s what some of the blogosphere’s top bloggers have to say about branding:
Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog: “The reason people belong to brands is similar to why people join a cult.”
Paul McEnany from Hee-Haw Marketing: “branding still has a job of not just pushing things to push them, but when they need to be pushed, and then pushing them in the right direction”
Russell Davies: “Branding is no longer the future of business…Not everything is a brand…Branding is being replaced by design/technology as the future of business.”
Seth Godin: “The key word, I think, is spiritual. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can’t find on our own… or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own spirituality on.”
Shel Holtz: “I wish I had a dollar for every session on brands and branding offered at every conference I ever attended; I could probably buy a new car. Brands are big, especially in the marketing and PR worlds. Maybe it’s time to focus elsewhere.”
Guy Kawasaki and How To Change the World: “at the end of the day, customers ultimately determine what your brand means. To a great degree, you take your best shot, and then you see what sticks. Or, more accurately, you see what customers make stick for you.”
John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing: “What if you interviewed a handful of clients and asked them this question: ‘What’s the ONE word you would use that best describes what we do well?‘…Now, how does everyone in your firm define and own that word…That’s how a small business brand is built, that’s how you differentiate your business.”
Rohit Bhargava with Influential Marketing Blog: “Everyone has brands that they are passionate about…and the rise of consumer generated media are just a few of the symptoms that would point anyone towards this conclusion.”
Chris Houchens and Shotgun Marketing Blog: “Press Releases don’t change public perception of your brand. Positive customer experiences do.”
Brad VanAuken of Branding Strategy Insider: “For profitable market share gains, one must focus on all of the drivers of customer brand insistence: awareness, accessibility, value, relevant differentiation and emotional connection.”
Martin Jelsema – The Branding Blog: “Before the more traditional tasks such as naming a company or creating a logo, branding is a strategic activity that defines the very business to be created. It involves assessing the market, paying attention to trends and positioning the company in relation to competitors. It is the junction where customer desire and company strengths cross. I call it the brand platform.”
Steve Miller – Two Hat Marketing Blog: “Your brand is what your customers think it is and what you think dosen’t matter.”
Mike Wagner – Own Your Brand: “Wise brand owners know they might own the original ideas, vision and meaning of their brand, but the significance is something customers own.”
Johnnie Moore – “Branding used to be about polishing and smoothing, to make shiny images of products and services that we’d all admire…Now branding needs to celebrate the rough… the inconsistent… different people saying different things about different bits of you.”
David Report: “A brand is a perception in the minds of the consumers.”
Laura Ries – The Origin of Brands: “Brands are simply an efficient means to an end. And powerful brands are those that stand for and represents a distinct category or concept in consumers’ minds.”
What about you? Leave your branding quote in our comments section and the best ones will get posted in a follow-up post.
Andrea – encouraged to be listed among those you quote here.
And you are certainly right about “marketing terms” and their “elusive nature”.
For five years while serving clients as an Internet business strategist I would ask clients and seminar participants to answer this question: What is a brand?
Lot and lots of answers. Some predictable. Some not.
This little exercise did reveal to me how varied a marketing term’s definition might be.
And, since most of the answers were right from one perspective or another, I learned to not blindly defend my definitions.
Thanks for advancing the conversation on branding beliefs.
Keep creating…it freaks people out,
Mike
Mike – Thanks for the comment. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall with the wacky answers you must have heard.
Thanks for adding me to your branding quote list. My name is Paul, but I answer to whatever. :)