I catch up on the blogs over the weekend and saw your post about branding. It made me think about the nature of brands and how they represent the total customer experience. Well, that got me thinking about how we met on a panel about the candidate’s experience during a job search. My first impression of you was as an advocate for the job seeker and that has summed up your brand to me ever since.

At NETSHARE, our brand is built on personal attention and one-to-one and many-to-one support for our members. That is the customer experience and the extension of our brand. I am sure your members have a deeper experience and expectation beyond “Career Toolset.” You’ve built your brand on the frustration you experienced as a job seeker, and that comes across as your brand, but it is not captured by the phrase “Career Toolset.” The tongue-in-cheek way you approach job search, and the tools you created to meet your personal needs are an important part of your brand that can’t be expressed in two words.

I’ve had conversations with Mark about taglines and the promises delivered and undelivered on websites. I think many of his points are well taken however it’s shortsighted to say that a tagline represents a company’s brand. Volumes have been written on what it takes to build a brand experience, and it goes well beyond a single tag line. As Al and Laura Ries note in their book, “The Origin of Brands,” what makes a brand valuable is its dominance of a category. Can you give me the tag lines for Coca-Cola, Microsoft, or Lexus? But I’m sure you know what each brand stands for because the brand is a really an impression; a brand promise validated by the customer experience.

The notion of a “brand bake-off,” is interesting, but you should be clear about what criteria you need to use to fairly judge the entrants. The brand is more than just a tagline; it’s defined by customer expectation and experience, and trying to distill any brand to a tagline is a mistake.

By the way, which do you prefer, Coke or Pepsi? http://blog.netshare.com