CEOs and executives have understood for a long time that a company’s brand is important and goes way beyond just a logo and tagline. But questions about the actual value of the brand have often relegated this vital asset to a fuzzy, feel-good, slightly nebulous item that rarely gets the executive attention it deserves.
It turns out that companies can determine how much a brand is worth. We’ve seen this most recently in the bidding war breaking out for Steinway, which is a brand that transcends time and technology. It has legendary cache, in a way that fabled brands like Kodak or Polaroid did not. We know that strong brands with good reputations have 31% better total return to shareholders than the MSCI World average....
Via Jeff Domansky
I think getting a good brand to your name/company is so important. I think that this is really the only true difference between your coffee shop and the coffee shop around the corner or that soap over this soap. The coffee may be exactly the same and the cafe have the exact same menu, however the brand is what will bring the consumer in and keep them coming back. Just like Starbucks, in my opinion the coffee it self is actually pretty rubbish same goes for the food (also over priced) compered with most cafes in auckland there are hundreds of nice and better options, yet I will still go there over the next door cafe purely because of the brand.
I also think this is where it is going to become a lot harder for companies and products to create this brand when they have to rely solely on digital media to do so. As I beleve the strongest brands are formed thru a tactile encounter with the product by actually going into the shop or business and experiencing it for your self. This becomes much harder when it is only on a screen with a million other distraction as well as sitting anywhere doing so in a very uncontrolled environment.