New Riders, the publishers of my SocialCorp book, have made available Chapter 4, Can You Control Your Brand, or Just Share It?, on its web site. This chapter looks at a contemporary definition of brand, who “owns” your company’s brand, how to establish corporate identity in a Web 2.0 world, and other issues facing marketers and communicators. Here’s a brief excerpt:

“Any discussion of social media implications to the corporate brand must begin with a definition of brand, and some agreement as to just whether the company can control its brand, manage it, share it, or must give it over to the whims of consumers.

Merriam Webster defines brand as

• a class of goods identified by name as the product of a single firm or manufacturer.

True, but not very useful for this discussion. David Ogilvy, often called the father of advertising, defined a brand as

• the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.

I define a brand as the sum total of our experiences with a company, its products, services, and employees, and the way those experiences shape our perception of the company.”

I hope you’ll take a moment to look at the entire chapter and join the discussion by leaving a comment on the Peachpit (parent of New Riders) site or here. Thanks!

Tags: SocialCorp, David, Ogilvy, definition, brand, New Riders, Peachpit, Web 2.0