From Target Marketing Magazine, this article embodies what I (and many customer-centric Marketers, I believe) think about when the subject of Brand and authentic Brand Advertising comes up.  Here’s the six disciplines of a Great Brand, according to the article:

#1: Know Your Position
#2: Know Your Customer’s Position
#3: Share Your Position
#4: Stay Focused on Your Position
#5: Leverage Your Position
#6: Delight and Reward Those Customers Who Support Your Position

Hmmm.  Sounds like Marketing to me.  This as opposed to the “awareness, recall, intent” mantra continually put forth by the Brand-ing folks.  You know who they are,  They’re the ones that believe when people “interact with your Brand” though a game on your web site that something of value occurs.  Perhaps so, but it’s not Brand, at least not unless you are an online game developer.  Awareness is not Brand, folks.  Recall is not Brand.  Intent is not Brand.

Trial is Brand.

I’ll have more on the history of this problem and how it applies to many of the current issues in Marketing shortly (I hope, promised a while ago).  Meanwhile, read the above short article and let me know what you think, here’s another link to it.