Brands are about perception, communication, aspiration, and identity.

In the simplest terms, a brand is a consolidation of what people think – their perception of you, your product, or service. What a brand means to you has a lot to do with who you are and what the other entity does.

What a company does communicates about its brand. In that sense, a brand is a communication between sender and receiver, usually a company and its customer. If you understand that you cannot not communicate, you know you are sending signals about your brand whether you intend to or not.

A brand is the sum total perception of the customer experience. A logo is part of the brand, but so is a late delivery, unusable website, or difficult setup instructions. Leaders who don't want to invest in their brand fail to see this connection.

Communication theory also tells us that meaning is not something you give or send. Rather, meaning co-created between sender and receiver. This is why it's so important to be people-focused and other techniques stay close to your customer.

Customers tell you want they want, but not what they need. This is why user research is a better method to understand not just what customers currently think, but how they're thinking, what they believe, and what they really do.

Sophisticated brand programs are designed to highlight not just what the customer buys, but what they buy into. What Nike, Apple, and Starbuck sell (what the brand means), is not what customers buy (how they make money).

Ultimately, people align themselves with brands which reflect their own aspirations and ideals. In an era of choice, selecting a brand is a reflection of a person's identity.

Your brand means something. Is it intentional? Memorable? Meaningful? Like a garden collecting weeds, the meaning of a brand will become something whether you work on it or not.

The question is whether you will take the important step to develop a strategy to better understand what your brand currently means in the mind of your customer, clearly identify what you want it to me, and use this platform to align your resources to inspire action, innovate, and grow.