Tom Asacker

Hi Tom,

I'm very suprised by what Chris Kenton wrote. The guy obviously knows his stuff, yet he completely blows it in his article. He's talking about about logos and trademarks, but calling them brands.

On his personal site, Kenton writes about the difficulty of adding value in 900 words. Perhaps that's why he's fudged the Business Week piece.

If I were king of the world, I'd come up with a new word for "brand". The current word is too closely tied to its original meaning (a physical mark) to mentally convey what branding actually means.

Well, now you've gone and inspired me to write more on the subject! Just when I was about to get some work done too...

Chris Keaton is off the mark in thinking that a brand is a logo or packaging. The problem isn't that he had only 900 words; it is that he doesn't understand that in today's culture, a brand is defined by everything that stands behind it and meets the standards its customers set for it. Having edited your new book, A Clear Eye for Branding, I can truthfully say, "Help is on the way."

Hi Tom!

Keaton writes as a designer and an obviously talented one at that. He's an image maker, not necessarily, a truth-teller. The true beauty is when business meets brand and the synergy happens. So Keaton's point of view is valid, and actually benefical when one doesn't want the brand to equate to reality. He doesn't know any better, so he's an (un)witting accomplice in projecting one thing, when truth lies elsewhere.

His examples refelct an "image is everything" mindset that can occassionaly workout. My experience tells me that is the exception, not the rule.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

If you believe the definition that a brand is just an image, or a logo that a company uses the issue becomes simpler. The article gives the brand an awful lot of credit why some of their clients have been successful. This is gross in its bravado. Even if you buy that the brand of a wolf howling at the moon was part of the success of CopperMountain, I believe that could only create a good initial impression - that's it. After that, the company will only be successful based on the service or product it provides and how it does it. If the brand opened the door of opportunity, great, but after that, it's inconsequential. What people will think when they see the brand in the future will be what they have experience when dealing with that company and its products.

I've got to agree with many of the comments above regarding the article focus on "designers." Brand is as much a business process as it is a design exercise. I was encouraged when I read "First, make sure your business fundamentals, product platform, and value proposition are well in place. Without that, branding won't help," but after that there was nothing impressive other than what seemed to be a fair amount of self promotion.

My experience is that branding requires a marriage between design and the entire business all aimed at influencing the perceptions of stakeholders. Most great brands are built over time as a representation of their entire business, not simply created by a series of design consulting engagements and a subsequent "brand launch." Kenton's article misses the mark in this area.

Tom,

I don't think your point came across very clearly. But if you meant to criticize Kenton, then I think you're on the right track. Kenton writes "brand" when he really means logo; unfortunately that's all too common in the design community. But a logo is only a very small part of a brand, as you, I, and most real marketers know. The error begins right in his subtitle: "First, make sure your business fundamentals, product platform, and value proposition are well in place. Without that, branding won't help." If crafting your value proposition isn't an essential part of developing your brand, then I don't know what is.

If everyone would just remember this old Cheech & Chong joke, the marketing/branding world would be so much better:
-------
Two guys go into the woods and come across a large pile of something...

One guys says, "What's that?"

"Looks like dogs**t," says the other.

"Oh. What does it smell like?"

"What?"

"Smell it. What does it smell like?"

The guy smells it. "Smells like dogs**t."

"Oh. What does it taste like?"

"What?"

"Taste it. What does it taste like?"

The guy tastes it. "Ugh. Tastes like dogs**t".

"Oh. Then it's a good thing we didn't step in it."

Everybody defines "brand" according to which definition validates them the most.

Obviously, if you are in the visual business, the brand-as-visual object works for you best.

People exploit what God gives them to the best of their ability, and forget the rest, to the best of their ability.

Tom,

Here's my response to Chistopher:

Christopher,

Here is a piece I recently posted at Soflow -- with some minor changes -- to address the "branding problem" to paraphrase philosophers and scientists who talk about the "mind problem" in referring to inscrutable consciousness:

I don't think defining "brand" and "branding" in a marketing context is all that complicated -- certainly not so complicated as to have had volumes and volumes written on the topic in which untold incidents of conflict and muddle-headed propositions exist.

First, let's go back to the origins of the term "brand." A "brand" was originally "a piece of burning wood." The word comes from West and North Germanic "brandaz", a derivative of the same base that produced "burn", "brandy" and perhaps "broil."

In the 16th century, the term came to be applied to an identifying mark made with a hot iron. In the 19th century, the term was first applied to a particular make of goods. In other words, a brand was a signifier of a specific product's identity.

How many books can you write around that?

Well, in any event, if we adhere to the linguistic (and semiotic) foundations of the term, a brand is a product presented in a way to facilitate its distinctiveness from other products in peoples' minds. But we must not forget that a brand's minders do not entirely define a brand. Wwe know from recent research involving brain scanning technology that brands are mentally processed primarily in the emotional, subjective right hemishpere of the brain. That means anything brain minders say about a brain is reprocessed by each consumer who internalizes the results in an idiosyncratic form. So -- as a story has as many versions as there are people hearing it, so also it is with a brand even though veins of common inference streak through consumers' mental models of the brand.

I like what Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson say in "The Hero and the Outlaw" -- to my mind one of the most useful books ever written about branding -- on what branding should be about. They say branding is (or should be) about "meaning management."

Thus, I define a "brand" as "a product that bears the marks of a unique identity," and "branding" as "actions related to the management of the meaning a brand stands for." Fulstop! Period! Finis! So let's find something more useful than arguing over how many brands can fit on the head of a pin!

Hey Tom, well I just read his article and I think he, like many marketers, misses the answer he's sitting on top of. Since David's repiled here and I also referenced his comments over at Chris's, guess I'll do the same....

Christopher, I think several commenters have offered elements that complete your original (and perhaps underemphasized or underutilized) use of "Symbol."

Symbolic of what? That's what I want clients to get to: their innate hope and ambition for the business. Faking it, by often superfical measures and inevitably wrong reasons never works. David's right, Mark and Pearson do angle in on branding from an archetypal inner-meaning that's universal. Not deep enough in my view. They also note how many deeply valued and successful archetypal brands are accidental (i;e; Not managed, just became so after sheer luck or many fits and starts.)

But back to symbolism. What many branders/marketers miss IMHO is that they are really Jungian minstrels; writing tunes, stringing together stories that -- when done well (or accidentally) -- resonate with us in deeper "gotta have it; that's me!" ways.

And that brings us full circle through "make us look bigger" to Apd's "unique identity = truth." Truth is fluid, but it always derives from the Self -- an indivdual's or colective, company consciousness. (Proof of good branding is that both single and plural find each other and like the connection, like receptors and Dopamine in the brain. The proof comes in how many mistakes a brand "junkie" (consumer/employee) is willing to overlook from their brand "pusher" (company, etc.)

Note Ascend didn't ask: "Make us/me feel bigger"? Feel is what they wanted; mass equalled competence in their eyes, for purely irrational but very valid reasons. But Ascend's innate curiosity and drive is what made them "big" in the true "valuable brand" sense because that explorer''s ethic is universal and powerful.

Nothing wrong with insecurity or narcissim in branding - just make sure it's measured in frequencies and song your employees and customers want to march or dance to. And can hum with the slightest prompting.

[Apd: if you're inclined to jibe with David's thoughts and any of my mumbling above, you might want to peruse... http://www.alchemysite.com/blog/brain_brand_00.html ]

Dear Tom,

One, Literary advocation is the prerogative of the recognized. Or so,me thinks. Else why would Businessweek act trampoline to Christopher Kenton's fulsome 'self-campaign'.

Two, many a jargons on Brand come by. I believe, "Brand" is an implicit SLA. Good or bad. I rather pick up Evian
to Bisleri, because the former provides implicit assurance of safety, health, taste and purity.

Similarily, a brand can resonate an implicit "always the cheapest" SLA. Or contrarily the "premium" SLA. And both can be in money spinning business.

It's imperative that whatever it is that you as a brand want to resonate in consumer-cerebrum should come out bold in each consumer contact with your brand. Brand is built over and over again in each consumer contact. And each experience rendered accumulates to the emboldening (or withering) of a brand.

Perhaps logos and campaigns work. Interestingly I can't recollect if Evian has a logo. And 'am not sure if they are consistent in using "caps E" or "e". But does it matter as long as they are out selling trust. And safeguarding it.

You were named 'Tom'. That's perhaps your Logo. Several Tom's out there and several writing on the ether. You are you, because you have delivered substance in the past and are now implicitly expected to continue doing so. Sans that, one can't tell one Tom from another. A Brand is what one delivers.

Think Contrary.

Consumercy

P.S: Another spin off on the topic over at this permalink. you are welcome.
http://consumercy.typepad.com/consumercy/2005/04/are_you_done_wi.html

I psoted my comments on Chris's Blog. However, I am yet to see Chris .. step up to the plate and engage in the dicourse !!

I am seeing more chatter here then there !!

What I did not like about Chris's comments were on " Make it look Bigger" and then literally fudges' a brand/logo (?) identity which makes it look bigger !!

Is that not a outright lie ?? Then were is the integrity /trust model that will be built between me and the logo(brand?)

hi tom.

by no means i want to be short of a comment on your page.
so, i actually posted my comment on marketonomy.com as an ultra-long “why i hate brand- definition-discussions / in defence of ck, not that he needs it”-post.
:)

guess who was the “heavy first class passenger”-client that i am referring to (email only).

let’s keep the spirit!
there is only one direction!
we are all heading for it: the future.

regards

jens

As many have said --there is a profound difference between identity and brand. Still there will always be confusion, because brand has become vague shorthand in the marketing world. many who use it throw it around like they do "strategy" Identity contributes to brand in the sense that communicating identity in a pleasing, clear manner, supports the reduction of pre-purchase dissonace. That "pre-purchase dissonace reduction" is any brand's core value to its attendant business and it's customers.

More importantly though, branding is any and all the work a company does to reduce the leap of faith required to exchage hard- earned cash with a good or service that may (or more importantly, may not) hold the same value as the cash did--this is the essence of the consumer's dissonance-- particularly the surrender of the potential cash represents for the holder. Cash symbolizes potential--purchace is a sacrifice of that potential for a reduction of some sort of desire. Any activity associated with making buyer's value clearer and thus, sacrifice easier, is branding. The communication around how an offering reduces the buyer dissonance is only one part of the many things an organization does to brand itself . The identity a brand might take is a still smaller part of that communication.

When we only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.