[D856C]

A brand is not a logo. This has been said several hundreds of times, by professionals in a variety of prestigious graphics, web design and marketing publications.

These logos are not really brand. Brand is the value you provide to customers; the level of service, the quality of the product or service, and a characteristic that you can rely upon when ever you purchase a product or service and encounter a company.
-- Brand is not a logo; John Cass PR Communications

... The Mercedes symbol, for example, has nothing to do with automobiles; yet it is a great symbol, not because its design is great, but because it stands for a great product. The same can be said about apples and computers. ....What makes the Rolls Royce emblem so distinguished is not its design (which is commonplace), but the quality of the automobile for which it stands.
-- Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons by Paul Rand
Originally published in 1991 by AIGA, the professional association for design

Seriously, the logo is just the simple mnemonic that can be used to mark (brand like a cow) products and marketing materials so that people know who made them or who is trying to say something to them. The logo itself only articulates what the brand already broadcasts. That’s it.
-- Logo Misapplication; Design View / Andy Rutledge

A brand is not a logo. Repeat that three times before you ask for a brand. Branding is not like ordering fries at the drive-thru. Branding is not like asking "cousin Joey" to fire up that bootleg copy of CS3 and play around with the colors and shapes you like for an hour.

Especially not when the results look nearly identical to five thousand other "me-too" companies (and sorry -- the only votes that count are customers.) Frankly, you should have a logo that looks nothing like all those others. Because you want to be identified. Most logos have a far better claim to business camouflage than a working busines identity. And that is a testable proposition.

The brand, and the branding process, is just about everything that happens outside the graphic program that you use to create the logo. Your brand is your position against competition, but also the story your customers tell themselves about who they are when using your product or service.

And that doesn't happen in a vector file.

Google is a brand, but given this -- how can you tell. Because Google is also a verb "to Google." One way to establish a brand is to identify what it means to verbify the name. Clever names do not a brand make.

A brand is not a slogan. Especially not a slogan that nobody can remember because it is a meaningless collection of buzzwords or superlatives.

What Branding Is
Branding is making a promise, and the style with which you keep it. Branding is a crystal clear understanding of a specific customer, not "the market." Branding is making good on the broken promises of competitors, not adding to the heap.

...Are you ready for our "bonus lightning round?"

Brand awareness is not brand preference. That means if everyone knows your brand, they can also know they don't want anything to do with it. Only brand preference results in the good things, like making the cash register ring and (positive), bankable, word of mouth.

Unfortunately not one of those things can be found in the drop-down menus of a graphic program.

[SGr]

Originally Posted by D856C

Unfortunately not one of those things can be found in the drop-down menus of a graphic program.

And that is how it should stay - believing that a application will aid you for ever and in every aspect is luda - and I prefer having competition by people who actually worked extra to under stand the scope of brand creation.

[Mr Fred]

Andy Rutledge.

I am saying no more.

[shakey]

the king has spoken

[agcreative]

I believe brands need a mark (logo), but in order to create awarness the brand needs to have leadership and a vision to share with the consumer to create a relationship and expose an image.

[Stohkt]

agcreative nailed it.