- Brand is a promised experience - it represents the experience a customer will have when interacting with a company's products, staff, websites, etc. - A brand also allows for active expression, as people use brands to express their identity and values. - To create a meaningful brand, a company must develop a core experience strategy and ensure its corporate culture authentically delivers on that experience at every level.

1. Three Thoughts on BrandingSteven Koster

2. Brand is A Promised ExperienceFirst

3. Brand is Promised ExperienceStop Designing ProductsA directive from Peter Merholz, a user-experience expert, writing on product designNotably, he was talking about designing hardware products, consumer electronics mostly.A Product is not a thing, but an experience

4. Brand is a Promised ExperienceStop Designing ProductsKodak: 1888Roll film, a whole process“You press the button, we do the rest.”Polaroid cameraNot a piece of hardwareBut the chance for instant memories

5. Brand is a Promised Experience“When you start with the idea of making a thing [like a camera, or a website], you're artificially limiting what you can deliver. “The [best companies] succeed explicitly because they don't design products.

6. Brand is a Promised Experience“Products are realized only as necessary artifacts [or by-products] to address customer needs.“What Flickr, Kodak, Apple, and Target all realize is that the experience is the product we deliver, and the only thing that our customers care about.”http://core77.com/reactor/06.07_merholz.asp

7. Brand is a Promised ExperienceYour Brand is a sum of all the experiences your products, your staff, your websites, offer. You have to both ask diagnostic questions about past experiences and set direction for future experiences

8. Your Brand = Promised User ExperienceWhat do people experience when they hang out with you? How do they experience you? What kind of experience do they expect next time they encounter you? Have you actually asked? Focus group? Poll?

9. Your Brand = Promised User ExperienceTo whom are you making promises? Are there multiple promises to multiple groups? What do the experiences have in common?

10. Your Brand = Promised User ExperienceWhat do you want people to think of when they think of you? What experience do you hope runs through all your projects? Can you articulate it?

11. Your Brand = Promised User ExperienceAs in, if you want to experience XYZ, then associate with me, we’re the XYZ people. If you want to evangelize the world, Back To God will help you “let them hear,” “tell His Story, Share his love.”If you want to experience God more vigorously, then Walk the Way will challenge you to put your hands where your faith is.

12. Passive ExperienceActive ExpressionSecond

13. Passive Experience, Active ExpressionBrands as not only promised user experience, but promised user expression. In other words: People use brands to say something about themselves. Think ‘bumper sticker’ or ‘T-shirt’

14. Passive Experience, Active ExpressionThis has always been obvious with Luxury items and automobiles, for exampleYou don't drive a BMW just to commute economically and wellyou drive a BMW to show the world you're a BMW-type-of-person.

15. Passive Experience, Active Expression"Think of the owner of a Toyota Prius who wears eco-friendly Nau clothing, buy fair-trade coffee at Whole Foods, carries a Prada bag, and wears blood-free diamonds from Tiffany's. This person is borrowing the meaning from these brands to tell a story about herself that ranges from her commitment to social responsibility to her love of quality and style." Give Them Something to Believe In: The Value of Brand Culture

16. They express MeYou don’t give to BTGMI just to get rid of extra cash, you do it to evangelize & disciple the world

17. You don't wear a WTW t-shirt just to keep warm, you wear it to tell the world You want to live vigorously for God.

18. You don’t highlight ReFrame websites on Facebook because there’s nothing else to share, but to show more of God’s Story in your life (and to invite your friends to do the same) Our Brand = your chance to express your identitySo we promise not only an experience, but a way to tell your own story.How are you enabling your citizens to wave your flag? What experience can they share? How can they use you to express themselves?What language, story, or event can they use? T-shirt? Fundraiser? Facebook flair?

19. Creating a meaningful brandThird

20. Creating a meaningful brandHow do you build a Meaningful Brand?

21. Creating a meaningful brandMerholz calls for an ‘experience strategy’ A mission/vision statement of the core experience you offerA model, paths of experience building blocksHow do people encounter you, and what happens when they do? And what happens next? What are the levels of involvement from encounter to citizen?

22. Creating a meaningful brandHOWEVER, the experience can’t be faked. You can't consistently deliver what you're not passionate about. People will experience what you care aboutBrands cannot generally be manufactured

23. Creating a meaningful brandYour brand is your corporate culture. Is your team stiff? Disorganized? Wacky? Intellectual? Bored? Scared? Are they passionate about what they do? About your mission?

24. Our Brand = Corporate Culture"A company must develop (or unearth) an ethos and worldview that it absolutely believes in, and then perpetually act in accordance with that ethos and worldview....Customers shopping for meaning [to borrow] are either drawn to that ethos or not." But if attracted they "will not only patronize, not only prefer, not only be loyal, they will embrace that brand as part of their own identity."

25. How will they will know we are Christians?(Jn 13:31-35) A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

26. The Kingdom of God?(Lk 7:22-23) And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

27. Is Christ the only Way?(Jn 14:5-7) Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

28. Baptize and teach?And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Going therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mt 28:16-20)

29. Our Brand = Our Corporate CultureDo we want to live vigorously? To let them hear? To help people see their place in God's story? To experience his Love? His Shalom? These can't be mere slogans, they're a way of life.