… and what it’s not.
The Media Orchard blog has an interesting post about brands and branding. They take on Jeff Bezo’s comment that “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” And rightly so. As the Baradels’ team at the Orchard point out, branding is a little more complex than that.
Instead, they say, branding is much more:
Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human … Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.”
But here’s the hard truth to the matter:
Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.
Now, these are important facts to bring up when discussing brands and branding, but they only tell part of the story.
