608 "What do you want to be remembered for?”

I've been occupied (but happily) with my own project to make a short presentation about what is brands and branding addressed to my colleagues. I'll start with giant brands --- Apple, Google and Coca Cola. What is difficult around branding is that companies usually disclose and announce its business plan, mission and corporate philosophy to public and shareholders, but rarely, as far as I know, explain its branding strategies. No wonder. First of all, branding is the management of intangible asset so its effect is hard to measure, and thus it's hard for a company to take accountability of its branding strategy. Second, branding is closely related to marketing strategy (in fact marketing is a part of branding) and never should be disclosed to its competitors. Finally, if you think brands as human personality (who you are), you will tell people who you are, what you do, what you think, what you commit, but you might not tell them "how you make them understood you" or "for what you want them to remember you", which sounds nonsense, and is, at last,  totally up to them. 

It's incredible how these companies identify their brand asset whose value on average accounts for one third of their market cap, and carefully manage it.