What is a brand?

The word "brand" gets thrown around a lot these days. (I know I use it all the time.) But what is a brand?

A brand in a marketing sense is essentially everything that has to do with a company or product. It's not only the visual logo and identity as the term is often used, but it's also how people feel about a product, and all of their experiences with that product, both positive and negative. Companies try to influence brand perception with advertising and marketing...I should know, it's my job...but a brand isn't something physical you can hold in your hand. It's an intangible, ephemeral concept that can determine the success or failure of a company. To put it simply, it's quite a powerful little word influenced by more factors than you can count on your fingers and toes.

I read today in the Brand New blog that the Department of Psychology at Harvard University is currently running a "mind study" that examines how people perceive the 'mental' capacities of corporations. Here's how Harvard explains it:

Every day we buy products from a variety of corporations. Each of them employs marketers to see into your mind - the mind of their consumer. Here is your opportunity to turn the tables and evaluate their minds. Of course, corporations do not have minds in the normal sense, but they do possess certain abilities. We are interested in how people perceive the mental capacities of corporations.

It's essentially an exercise to see how you perceive the brands of the 13 companies they're testing. First you meet the companies, ranging from companies most people like (Google, Whole Foods) to companies most people are ambivalent about (Playtex, TWA) to companies most people despise (Phillip Morris, Enron). Next you're given a series of tests to take — the first one I took was "Harm" and others include Worth, Punishment, Morality, Guilt and Desire — that take between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. You're given a series of match-ups of two of the companies on the list...so in my first quiz, I was asked, "If you were forced to harm one of these corporations, which one would it be more painful for you to harm?" Based on my results, here is how I ranked the 13 companies they were testing.

1. Google
2. =Disney
3. =Apple
4. Toys 'R' Us
5. =Ben and Jerry's
6. Starbucks
7. Whole Foods Market
8. Playtex
9. Walmart
10. Trans World Airlines
11. Enron
12. Exxon
13. Phillip Morris

Google, Disney and Apple are tied for first because I love them all and couldn't inflict any pain upon any of them, then Toys R Us because it's a happy place, then Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's are tied for 3rd because they're both guilty pleasures. Next comes Whole Foods, which I don't actually patronize, but I think well of, then Playtex, which I don't really feel one way or the other toward, followed by Walmart, which I'm not a big fan of to say the least, then TWA, which doesn't exist anymore so I didn't feel so bad inflicting pain on it, followed by my three least favorite companies on the list, Enron, Exxon and Phillip Morris. I obviously feel stronger about high gas prices and smoking than I do about corporate scandal.

My results didn't surprise me much...given the list of companies, I probably would have ranked them similarly, with just a few changes in the middle perhaps. But it's interesting to see how emotions can be tied to our feelings about a company's brand, especially in the circumstances Harvard is asking us to put them in.

How do you rank the companies? Take the quiz and find out if your perceptions are in line with your actions. And see why even though a company might spend billions on marketing, or "branding" themselves, there are so many other factors that influence consumers' perception.