If you Google "What is a brand" you'll find hundreds of definitions. In fact, there are so many misleading definitions, it is rather easier to say what a brand is not: A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a name. A brand is not a trademark or a symbol or a song or a character. Yes, these are parts of a brand and affect the brand but a brand is much more than these.

To begin to understand what a brand is, you must first understand that your brand does not belong in the marketing department, nor in any internal teams, or your MD's or CEO's office. A brand exists only in the hearts and minds of your customers.

Clearly, a brand is the sum total of all the impressions a customer has, based on all the interactions they have had with you, your company, your employees, your agents or partners, your products and/or services and other customers.

If a customer believes that your product is new and innovative, then those attributes become part of your brand in that customer's heart and mind. If your packaging is beautifully illustrated, then they may view your brand as sophisticated or elite. On the other hand, if your service is poor, customers might think you're stubborn or rude. If your print materials are designed in MSPaint, you may look cheap and amateur.

Every customer interaction tells a story

Imagine all of these interactions as vibes, and each one setting a sense of feelings and thoughts. For example, one of your service (with a huge interaction) might give a vibe that your company is innovative. Another vibe may come from your beautifully-illustrated social media advertisements, giving the vibe that you're sophisticated and elite.

But what if customer service is rude and hard to contact? What if your MD or CEO made an off-color joke that was caught on news or social media? Every one of these things are interactions you have with your customers, and every one of them is going to affect their view of your brand. All of these examples of interactions create "vibes" pointing to 5 major human desires. These interactions create a muddy overall brand vibe where the customer knowingly or unknowingly decide to like or dislike your brand, whether they want to continue buying your products and services or go visit your competitor.

To manage your brand, you have to decide on a brand vibe that resonate well with you and then make sure that all of the interactions within your company, are aimed at your brand vibe.

Re-branding Maldicore

Recently we decided that our brand vibe is "Powering tomorrow's unique brands". We create this vibe in all of our interactions, at every level of the company.

What this means today is, for businesses seeking to expand and modernize, we deliver consultancy, design, development and support services, using digital solutions that transform their venture to a brand.

Yes, there are some obvious examples on how we do it, first of all, this blog post is aimed at creating such a vibe. Others includes mainly knowledge transferring like sharing success stories and best practices with our clients and documenting measurable outcomes of how to go from stability to extraordinary. Among our services, in addition to full branding services, we now provide minor branding sessions as a part of every project.

Even when providing customer services, all our staff members integrate the "Powering Tomorrow's Unique Brands" vibe. Aside from always sounding professional and eager to serve, we spend extra time reminiscing about past experiences, strategising, always staying curious, listening to customer stories or sharing our own relatable experiences. Everything we do, every one of our interactions, are aimed at "Powering Tomorrow's Unique Brands".

Please do download the Maldicore's Brand Book explaining all these in a bit more detail and feel free to send us your feedback or book an appointment to explore further.