As learnt in our marketing classes, the brand is more than just your logo, advertising, and miscellaneous marketing campaigns. What is important to keep in mind is that the gist of a company’s brand comes from its ability to execute its promises and meet the needs/wants of the customer. To take a step further, the company’s brand can also be seen as a type of criteria. Based on this criteria, customers judge and reflect on the company overall because it’s all about whether the customers’ needs/wants are met. So, a company’s brand is (to an extent) a reflection its reputation in the market, not just its physical logo, advertising approaches etc. Coca Cola is an excellent example of this. Coca Cola aims to provide beverages to potential consumers and delivering the promises of Coca Cola being part of family-oriented drink and painted as a beverage that inspires optimism, happiness and affection. That is exactly what consumers who use Coca Cola perceive the drink as (looking at the brand as a criteria in terms of meeting needs/wants).

In contrast, let’s take a look at Enron. Enron (before the scandal) was seen as a company every other company learnt from in terms of the success the company had presented in the market. At that time the Enron brand had a very strong reputation as it was at the time (in the eyes of consumers) a brand that had kept its promise of meeting the needs/wants of consumers and keeping them satisfied. However after the scandal, everything quickly changed, the company’s rep also did a complete 180 on its head. As a result the Enron brand is synonymous and to some extent, interchangeable with concepts like fraud, cheat and never focusing on the needs/wants of the customers.