The opening of the excellent article in Marketing Week (26/05/11) on Coca-Cola quotes chairman and chief executive, Muhtar Kent. He says “A brand is a promise. A good brand is a promise kept.”

Anyone who has read our early blog series on defining a brand knows that this is something we agree with entirely. We phrase it slightly differently saying “A brand isn’t just a promise, it’s a resonsibility” but the thought is the same – brand can’t just make promise things, they must deliver the products and experiences to meet those promises and do so time and time again if they want to be successful. 

So from a little brand that is 25 this year we’ll raise a glass (of Coke, of course) and noting that great minds think ..and drink alike..say congratulations on 125 years.

We often take it for granted when we refer to a ‘brand’ that we all mean the same thing when we use the word.  Sometimes, however, it is useful to return back to basics and remind ourselves of the power of a really simple definition.

We believe that a ‘brand’ is more than a just a logo and is more than just an advertising campaign… a ‘brand’ is the total customer experience with a company across all of its touchpoints, as a result of buying and using the products and services sold and operated under the brand name. So, the brand name represents the overall promise of a certain experience which a company makes to its customers.

How would you describe your brand’s promise of a customer experience across all of its touchpoints? We can help you define this promise to help make your customers’ experience even more powerful than it is already and truly differentiated from the competition.

•  ‘Interactions with brands are sources of experience, experiences which influence consumer attitudes’ – P. Gomy / F. Casellas
• ‘The only source of knowledge is experience’ – Albert Einstein
• “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
• “What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children” – William Blake
• “Every detail…image…shadow…placements…contributes to the user’s associations and judgements about the company they are dealing with” – Shawn Borsky

Borrowed with pride from all over the place.