Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Communications – Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1.2, Central Queensland University, course: Creative Arts Administration, language: English, abstract: The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a ‘name, term, sign, symbol or design’ intended to identify and differentiate them from competitors (Lake, N/A). Walter Landor, one of the greats of the advertising industry, said “simply put, a brand is a promise. By identifying and authenticating a product or service it delivers a pledge of satisfaction and quality’ (Nelson, 2008). Bates (N/A) believes that the best definition is that a ‘brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer’. This definition clearly distinguishes that a brand is very different from a product or service.
A brand is intangible and exists in the mind of the consumer (Bates, N/A).
Social media has turned the ways in which the brand interacts with the customer on its head. With close to 2 billion internet users worldwide, 126 million blogs, 12 billion videos viewed per month in the US alone, (Thomas, 2009), 2 billion tweets on Twitter per month and 500 million people on Facebook (Van Grove, 2010), the face of the consumer may remain essentially the same but the way in which they interact with brands has changed dramatically.
It seems brands are now impacted by the creative arts, the ones more specifically known as social media sites, blogging and user-content creation leading to direct consumer participation in the modification of brand identity. The creative arts and technology have allowed the consumer to have their say heard by an audience, to rapidly share information and empowered brand-users to gain control over how a brand is perceived, their reputation, product quality control and even direction. Amidst the impact of these creative arts, brands now ignore their customers at their peril.

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