Top 10 Insights Into Brands

As marketing makes a transition between traditional to digital media, understanding how this affects the practices of developing brands and brand strategy will be critical.

There have been a lot of articles and blog posts recently on branding and brand strategy, so I wanted to collect and share the work of some very smart people. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but they do represent some of the freshest thinking on the topic.

1. First, it may be helpful to start out by getting a definition of what a brand is, and I like the thoughts behind this definition at Stephen Sammartino’s Start Up Blog.
2. Of Max Kalehoff’s 10 principles on brands, I think transparency is the most critical in the new digital environment. Consumers will respond positively to your candor, and additionally, in a digital environment, keeping things hidden won’t last long.
3. I could do a top 10 lists of brand insights from the Brand Strategy Insider alone, however I’ll focus on this article by Brad VanAuken on how marketing research is essential across several steps of brand development.
4. John Caddell, as posted on the Marketing Strategy and Innovation blog, talks about how much we can actually change about a brand when a marketing team decides to do some “Re-branding”.
5. What separates mythic brands versus the ordinary is that brands with a mythology have a rich story that consumers can connect to and identify with. As Seth Godin points out in his post about Brand as Mythology, “People use a Dell, they are an Apple”.
6. Roger Dooley at Neuromarketing writes about how branding can be reinforced through the effects of sound. It’s why I think jingles had been so effective as an equity element.
7. By using the Method Home brand as an example, David Taylor at the BrandGymBlog, lists five principles why this brand has been such a success. The principle of defining your brand simply, but boldly can be found in their slogan “Detox your home”.
8. This post at WhisperBrand.com highlights the tension between living up to a Brand Promise and the need to deliver business profits: Johnson & Johnson 1, British Airways 0.
9. While this Wired article by James Surowiecki on The Decline of Brands is a couple years old, like most things by Surowiecki, it is packed full of evergreen insights.
10. Finally, Seth Godin shares some thoughts on a brand formula based upon people’s expectation of a brand and whether the brand delivers on that expectation. He cites FedEx:

“Fedex is a powerful brand because you always get what you expect, and the relief you get from their consistency is high.”

Are there any other great posts on branding or brand strategy that people could share?