What is your Brand? Is it your name? Is it your Logo? Is it what you sell? Is it what you tell people about what you sell? While your Brand is a combination of these things, it is really what people think when they think of you and what they feel when they see your name, logo and what you sell. It is the position you take up in the real estate of your customers' hearts and minds. This has more to do with how you do business, than with what your name and logo look like.

And how do you do business? Do you conduct everything you do in a way that has your customers adore you, or do people just shop at your business as a matter of course, habit or not at all? The Surge Group asserts that if your customers adore you, you must be operating as an 'authentic business'.

A business that has grown into a large corporation as a result of a strong branding program is not necessarily an authentic business, although they could be. Think of Coca Cola, Home Depot, and McDonalds. What comes to mind when you think about these companies? Is it positive or somewhat negative? Why? While corporations may be good companies in terms of strong sales, good margins and profitability, one can question the motivation of those behind the brand. Is the company driven by profits only? Is the message consistent with the experience? Are customers viewed as a revenue stream and treated as mere transactions? When the customers feel the pinch of a recession, how will they make their purchase decisions? To whom will they remain loyal? Will your branding strategy stand up to the test of more discerning customers? Is your 'brand', in its simplest sense, all they care about?

Over the years the concept of Branding has gone from being hailed as darling to being despised and back to darling again making it confusing to ascertain if branding is good or bad. Branding, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. However, if branding is done in a manipulative sense then the business is not truly authentic. A brand is something that a company earns, for better or worse, for the value of its offerings and for its behaviours and actions. While branding can create loyal customers, customers may be loyal only out of force of habit or convenience. Customers may not actually adore the company with a deep emotional conviction. In this case, the relationship-building opportunity that could exist is lost.

If you are building an authentic business and your brand is well supported by stakeholders, think of it as acknowledgment for actually succeeding in this dimension. Continued efforts will further develop your stakeholder community and produce profits as well. In this respect, your brand is actually a result rather than something you push into the marketplace. It is the result of how you do business.