Strong brand = “what-the-hell” decision

Don’t know if you feel the same way, but it seems the word “brand” has now been used for just about everything under the sun.  And I’m getting sick of it.  For example, Gawker’s piece on Desire Rogers, Obama’s Socialite-in-Chief (SIC) Determined to Ruin His Image, quotes her interview with the WSJ: “We have the best brand on earth – the Obama brand. Our possibilities are endless,” she tells WSJ’s Amy Chozick.  She likens her approach to that of Dove in expanding beyond a bar of soap.  I find it hard to think of President Obama as a bar of soap, but if his SIC thinks so, maybe we had been too harsh on Hillary back in the primaries.  Ms. Rogers has an MBA from the same university as the previous president.  And, as it happens, she donated $2,000 to Mr. Bush in 2004, according to Gawker.

I Googled “what is brand” and some pretty strange definitions came back.  Most authors describe what brand is not.  OK, let’s start there.  Brand recognition on its own doesn’t mean you have a strong brand. Most people in North America recognize GM, but that alone means next to nothing as far as consumers’ preferences go.  Let me give you an example from my own family.  Sam, my father-in-law, who is now 86 years old, said three years ago that he was going to trade his Buick, the brand he’s been loyal to for 30 years, for a used (!) Mercedes. That’s when I knew GM was toast:  if its old, loyal customers felt this way, this company was bound to disappear. RIP Buick.

I’m writing this post on my MacBook and I’m not dumb enough to think I couldn’t have done it on my Dell laptop.  But I like the feel of my Mac, the same way I like my iPod.  My Dell costs about half what I paid for my Mac, but it’s one of those “what-the-hell” decisions.  Could this be the definition of a real brand?  Something that gets you to make an irrational buying decision even though it makes no economic sense?