A brand is more than a logo, tagline, and website. A brand is how you speak, how you say it, the relationship you build, the values you stand behind, how people perceive you, and what drives their loyalty.
What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change. – Seth Godin
Malcolm Gladwell on Brand
When you eat a McDonald’s hamburger, you are casting a vote for a certain kind of agricultural system, and for a certain kind of climate. In a sense, everything we do casts a vote for a certain kind of world… So it makes perfect sense that when you decide what car you’re going to buy, you think long and hard about the choice, and when you drive a Nissan Leaf, or a Chevy Volt, you’re saying to the world, “These are my values. This is the kind of world I want.”
Daniel Pink on the Definition of Brand
I would define it two ways: from the sender’s point of view and from the receiver’s point of view. I don’t want to make it overly complicated, but from the perspective of P&G or Dell or any other company, a brand might be a promise: a promise of what awaits the customer if they buy that particular product, service, or experience. From the receiver’s point of view, I think a brand is a promise … a promise of what you can expect if you use the product or service, or if you engage in the experience.