Brandstanding

If you've ever hugged your Dell, loved your Nokia or sworn that HP is the only kind of printer you'll ever buy, you've intuitively experience the power of branding. Brands create loyalty, relationships and add more value to products than you can imagine. But what exactly is a brand? Although most people are familiar with the concepts of brands and branding, not many know exactly what a brand is.

Popular misconceptions are that the brand is the logo, jingle, tagline, a product or a company positioning. It's not one of these, but is a blend of all of the above, and more. Advertising great David Ogilvy summed up a brand when he said: "A Brand is a complex symbol. It is the intangible sum of a product's attributes, its name, packaging and price, it's history, it's reputation that you associate with a company or product. A Brand is defined by consumers' impressions of the people who use it, as well as their own experience."

This is precisely why it is so difficult to build a brand. A brand is not just a product a company or a name. A brand is the sum of the experiences a customer has with your communications, products, services and people. Every experience that your customer has with your brand will influence what they think about the brand, and will ultimately add or detract to the value that the brand has.

Think of a brand as a living organism, a dynamic collection of everything your company and products stand for. A collective that influenced by your products, staff, country of origin, the relationship you have with your customer, the relationship you have with your suppliers, the imagery and symbols you attach to your brand as well as the nature and personality of your company.

By being conscious of how each aspect of your business both depends and develops your brand, you can consciously decide what to do to build and nurture your brand so that it can begin adding real value to your business.