By: John Mallen

Special circumstances aside, I believe that a brand should be a stand-alone entity. In our world, the brand is JMC Marketing Communications & PR – long name but it communicates 85 percent of what we do. We have a tag line, and just the other day, a contact of ours got the tag line and wrote about it as being the brand: “You folks are communications in the real world.”

I’d never thought about the tag being a stand alone, but it really is – maybe even better than the brand itself!

My point here is that a brand has a place within the organization that owns the brand and in the minds of customers and other stakeholders. But when the organization speaks, the brand doesn’t.

The company can be the first person narrator, as in “We greatly appreciate your business.” But the brand is always referred to by the speaking organization: “We value your selection of Acme products. Acme consistently outperforms competitors …”

The key principle is to always make the brand stand alone as third person, that which is being referred to. Even when “we” the organization are speaking, we treat the brand as a valuable third person entity. We call it by name and speak to its attributes.