FORGING YOUR BRAND FOR THE FUTURE

Fast Company Now (Fast Company's blog) has an interesting post about a new book entitled, Fusion Branding: How to Forge Your Brand for the Future by author Nick Wreden.

In the words of FC blogger, Heath Row, the book, "challenges conventional wisdom by proposing that brand equity doesn't really matter. Customer equity does."

Interesting thought here. In terms of marketing, branding has to do with the "image" of a company - logo, slogan, the "look", etc... The challenge here is that reputation and customer equity is much more important than the brand itself.

Thinking of this in terms of the "church" is interesting to me. I remember a time, not so long ago, when all of the church marketing "guru's", etc... said that it's all about the name or the look or the logo of the church. The focus was primarily on the image and external "feel" that people got when they visited.

Well, in my heavily unsolicited opinion, I think that as important as those things are (logo's, etc...) - nothing can compare or take the place of authenticity and community and its role in the local church. I've seen churches that have the nicest and sleekest looking logos, buildings, graphics, etc... who didn't seem to know or understand the first thing about caring for people or building true Biblical community. Their logos, names and buildings didn't do it for them.

So perhaps Mr. Wreden is right in suggesting that the key to "forging your brand" for the future is not in the externals alone, but dependent primarily upon what's on the inside.

Your thoughts?