A genuine brand delivers superior value for consumers at every stage of the customer life-cycle; from the time they first become aware of the brand, through purchase and post purchase, until ideally they become advocates for the brand and enthusiastically recommend it to others. If energetic advocacy represents the highest degree of brand perception, marketers would do well to understand what motivates people to identify with brands on a deep, emotional level.

Branding has been a serious art and science of the advertising industry for the past 50 years or so. It can be argued that modern branding was born from the 50’s television era and the need to stimulate consumption among the mass market of consumers. The vast majority of branding at this stage was centered around consumer packaged goods (CPGs). Presently, we are experiencing a branding evolution. This can be widely attributed to digital based communications, mostly the Internet.

In today’s world companies don’t have the same control over their brand as they used to. Social media has, in a relatively short period of time, become a major outlet through which consumers can share their sentiments about brands. Consumer’s voices can seemingly travel at the speed of light through blogs, bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, MySpace and so many other social media networks enabling immediate sharing of brand perceptions. This confounds some companies as their old world methods of pushing out brand messaging as a means of control is no longer as effective as it once was. Now, companies need to engage social media as a means to promote and protect their brands through direct conversations with consumers.

In 2009 we have observed a continued shift of influence from companies to consumers, an overall increase in corporate responsibility and a growing desire for intimacy. Brands are becoming decentralized. Since publishing content to the web and sharing it with others has become so simple and widespread through channels such as blogs, social media sites and product reviews on retailer sites, companies are no longer in complete control over the messages that are being published about their brand.