Branding

Plato believed that deep within everything concrete is the idea of that thing. That is the fundamental principle that lies at the heart of a great brand: the concept of essence.

Understanding a brand isn’t about listing functional benefits. It’s about asking, “How do I want my customers to feel?”.

It can best be understood as a cluster of perceptions — and the key challenge online and off is to extend those perceptions to every point of contact with customers. The brand should permeate the business strategy, product design, customer service — even the office environment. That’s what it means to live the brand. It becomes a thread — a consistent set of traits — running through the entire company.

When you understand the essence of your brand, it can be reinvented every quarter, and still connect to something larger and more enduring.

Brands, like people, evolve.

They’re dynamic, with changing moods and changing points of view. Shorter product lifecycles, a dynamic media landscape, and restless consumers mean that brands can become irrelevant over time.

Brand management is less a matter of guarding a brand’s integrity than one of facilitating its evolution.