The Brand

It's a heavy word, "brand," and it should be. It's a very involved subject. For most people, however, it's a nebulous one. The two most common associations with branding are the company logo and the company slogan or tagline. Now, while these are very important parts of the brand it's really only the tip of the iceberg. A brand is not the print collateral, it's not the website, it's not the products. It encompasses all those things, it uses those as vehicles to spread the brand, but they're not the brand itself.

A brand is an idea, a feeling, that is produced through the look, behavior, and level of product quality a company has. The brand lets customers know what kind of entity they're dealing with; is it a large corporate entity or a grassroots company? Does it take itself really seriously, or is it more casual? These decisions are made by identifying the target market. A successful brand immediately caters to the target market with every piece of identity the company outputs. It's not something that grows into the market over time, it entrenches itself in the middle and spreads. Nothing makes that more clear than the marketing shift to web 2.0 over the last seven years.

The purpose of web 2.0 on the advertising level is much the same as it is on a personal level. It's meant to connect with other people. The company that wants to annoy their potential customers will take this as an opportunity to spam them with offers and information across all social sites, damaging their brand identity's reputation. The intelligent company will make available, not necessarily send out, information that other people want to have. After potential customers have been hooked in by that information and are actively following the company, it can start sending out more information on their actual services because the customers become curious enough to ask for it. This ensures the brand stays healthly because the company has more to offer than products and services, it becomes a valuable part of the web 2.0 community.