At Jones&Bonevac, we think there is a phenomenal lack of clarity on this vital issue. After all, how can you have a discussion with your agency (or your client) about brand building, if you don’t share the same definition of the term? If you don’t agree on what it means, how can you commonly agree on the right way to build yours?

A great deal has been written and said on this subject. For the moment, let’s simply ask “what contemporary definition should the lexicographers at Oxford or Cambridge put in dictionaries under the noun “brand?”

Here are some starting points. Some are definitions. Some are simply commentary. Vote for any you agree with below as comments. If you have a better suggestion, POST it.

“What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” - Al Ries

“A house of brands is like a family, each needs a role and a relationship to others.” - Jeffrey Sinclair, Brand Strategist

“Long-term brand equity and growth depends on our ability to successfully integrate and implement all elements of a comprehensive marketing program.” - Timm F Crull, Chairman & CEO of Nestle

“The primary focus of your brand message must be on how special you are, not how cheap you are.  The goal must be to sell the distinctive quality of the brand.” - Kerry Light, Brand Strategist

“Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.” - David Ogilvy

“Well-managed brands live on – only bad brand managers die.” - George Bull

“Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.” - Warren Buffett

“Brand value is very much like an onion. It has layers and a core. The core is the user who will stick with you until the very end.” - Edwin Artzt

“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I pour an extra strong lager, I am handsome, I say, as I put on my Levi jeans.” -John Kay

“A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” - Michael Eisner, CEO Disney

“Brand is the “f” word of marketing. People swear by it, no one quite understands its significance and everybody would like to think they do it more often than they do.” - Mark di Soma, Audacity Group

“Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you.” - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Chairman, EasyGroup

“We view the experience of a Krispy Kreme store (where customers watch their donuts being baked behind glass) as the defining element of the brand.” - Scott Livengood, CEO, Krispy Kreme

“One of the biggest responsibilities of management is to look after the corporate DNA.” - Andrew Rolfe, CEO, Pret A Manger

“The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” - John Russell, President, Harley-Davidson

“Brand equity is the sum of all the hearts and minds of every single person that comes into contact with your company.” - Christopher Betzter

“In a fast-paced world, today’s popular brand could be tomorrow’s trivia question.” - Wayne Calloway, American Industrialist, Chairman Of Pepsico Annual Report, 1989

“A brand name is more than a word. It is the beginning of a conversation.” -Lexicon

“Customers must recognize that you stand for something.” - Howard Schultz, Starbucks

“Brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed.” - Brandweek

“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.” -Walter Landor

“The customer is the appreciating asset.” - Federal Express

“Every status has its symbol.” - Advertising Slogan

“Companies have to wake up to the fact that they are more than a product on a shelf. They”re behavior as well.” - Robert Haas Of Levi Strauss

“In the context of Living the Brand, purposes and values are not created, they exist – the issue is how well they are articulated and embedded.” - Nicholas Ind, Living the Brand (2001)

“A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment.” - Scott Talgo, Brand Strategist

“A brand is a set of differentiating promises that link a product to its customers.” - Stuart Agres, Young & Rubicam

“The three key rules of marketing are brand recognition, brand recognition, brand recognition.” - Anon

“A trademark is a symbol of a corporation. It is not a sign of quality … It is a sign of the quality.” - Paul Rand

“We are no doubt in the Great Age of the Brand.” - Tom Peters

“A global brand-building strategy is, in reality, a local plan for every market.” - Martin Lindstrom, Clicks, Bricks & Brands

“You”re just anybody without your identity.” - Grenville Main, DNA Design

“A brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that you associate with a company or product.” - Charles R. Pettis Iii, Brand Solutions

“A brand is an image seared into your mind of how YOU BELIEVE others will perceive you if you own a certain product or service. It is seared into your mind through branding, which, thank god, is no longer achieved the old fashioned way with a hot poker.” – Jeff Shattuck, Copywriter

To help you understand the concepts we are presenting here on this site and in our forthcoming book, please consider the following definition of ‘brand.’

A brand is the sum of perceptions any given individual or target audience has about the object you are striving to market.

These “objects” can be products, services, concepts, theories, ideologies, candidates, nations, institutions, or even yourself. For the moment, when we use the term ‘brand’ we mean “perception of a product” and when we use the term ‘product’ we mean all objects, services, concepts, ideas, ideologies, candidates, nations, institutions, etc., to which an audience can assign a label and which they perceive as having either a positive, negative or even uncertain value.

Brands can be influenced by marketers, but three things about them are vital to understand:

• A brand, your brand, is owned by your audience.  They determine its value. It lives in their hearts and minds and not, as many suppose, on a piece of paper in an office or an artistic rendition of your logo, company or product name. A brand name, like a logo, only means what you can persuade someone to believe, think, and feel about it. Names, like words and symbols, are carriers of meaning, containers for meaning, and proxies for the meaning that resides in an audience’s mind. You, your CEO, your fellow employees, and your board of directors are one audience that has some common agreement on what a brand means to them and how much they value it. That meaning is never the same as the audience perception.  Your relation to the object differs from that of the audience.  If you forget that, you’ll rue it later as you waste marketing spend.

• Pre-commoditization of your product category, the primary source of brand perception is the merit of the product. Does it deliver at above or below the expectation of the audience? David Ogilvy was on to something in talking about the brand as including “the nature of the product.”  There is often conflict between the different individuals and organizations who contribute to the development of a brand, i.e. marketers, brand managers, agencies, product engineers, designers, on the one hand, and line management on the other. Lack of clarity and agreement results in poor performance. Yet only after a brand becomes completely commoditized—only after there are a multitude of options, all of which deliver exactly the same functional and emotional benefits—does perception based on non-functional attributes alone become the primary driver of branding. Sheery’s “emotional, subjective” understanding of a brand makes sense only at that advanced stage, and takes for granted the understanding of the nature of the product that is the primary content of the brand at earlier stages.  Unless we as “brand” managers can understand and appreciate that our role is complementary to our teammates’ roles on the product side, we will be too blinded by our own brilliance and biased by our own bullshit to see the truth: that a brand is developed in an interdependent partnership with product development and that neither group alone can claim complete responsibility for its health, success or failure.

• Great brands are built by teams that include marketers. At times however, they are incidental to the effort. A marketer’s success is often assured by a great product. Since the human mind nearly always assumes that correlation equals causation, many “great” marketers have had their reputations made because of association with great products. The converse is also true. Marketers are often blamed for brand failure, when in fact the product itself has failed: failed to deliver equivalent or higher value than competing products or failure to be relevant in a world that has evolved beyond its need or usefulness.

A brand is made up of perceptions. A brand perception is any brand claim or promise held in the mind of the audience. The claim may be true or false and the promise may be real or hyperbole. In either case, it is the perception that determines individual or group reality. Perception then determines action, purchase, recommendation, etc.

But perception doesn’t float free from reality.  The nature and quality of the product matters.  Marketing isn’t magic.  If you want to pull a rabbit out of a hat, it helps to have a rabbit.