Brand reputation.

I’ve never seen the point. As Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.

Where does that leave brand reputation?

Proponents maintain that the brand is what the brand owner intends it to be, while brand reputation is what people really think about it, based on their experiences.

This may all seem just semantics, but I’ve always found drawing such a distinction at best unhelpful and at worst misleading, for three reasons:

It adds unnecessary complexity.

Maybe it once made sense in a previous age where brands were images created through advertising. But in today’s connected world, brands are largely defined by the customer’s experience, and the sharing of that experience. Who can really say where the brand ends and its reputation starts? And why even try? From the customers point of view, it’s all just the brand.

It feels very brand-centric rather than customer-centric.

Brands only earn the right to exist by creating value for customers. They should be laser-focused on understanding customers, their pain-points, and how the brand can help them. Who then determines whether the brand has earned the right? The customer. If it hasn’t created value for them, then the brand doesn’t exist, regardless of the intention behind it. The customers view is what matters.

It risks separating the intention behind the brand from the reality of its impact.

If the brand is simply what the brand owner wants it to be, then it’s easy to dismiss anything else people think as a wrong impression, a communication issue that can be addressed through PR. Instead, this may well be the direct result of the brand’s impact.

Consider McDonalds. If you define the brand by its intention then you might consider the key elements to be:

• Its distinctive brand assets: the name, Golden Arches, etc

• Value

• Meals

• Convenience

• Family Fun

But if you ask customers what comes to mind, you tend to get a different response:

• Golden Arches

• Fast food

• Tasty

• Unhealthy

• Happy Meals

• Everywhere

Clearly McDonalds never set out to include unhealthy as a part of the brand. That wasn’t the intention. But in people’s heads it’s as much a part of the brand as Tasty and Happy Meals.

This isn’t some kind of misunderstanding on the part of the customer, that can be changed through persuasion (though McDonalds certainly tried). It simply reflects the reality of the brand’s impact. A combination of the nutritional make up of its core products together with its value-driven strategy that encourages greater consumption. Rather than an issue of reputation management, it’s central to managing the brand itself.

None of this is to say that the activities associated with reputation management aren’t important. But branding is about building and shaping memories (or mental availability as we’ve come to know it). It’s just simpler and safer to consider all those memories the brand, whether intended or not.

After all, as a man much wiser than me once said, “There is only one boss. The customer”.