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When you stay at a Double Tree hotel, you get fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

When you go to a Disney theme park, you are treated to clean facilities and clean cut, personable staff.

When you shop at Nordstrom’s you expect superior customer service.

These are all examples of intangible branding. They are examples of a brand expressing itself through characteristics that are qualifiable, not quantifiable.

As I mentioned in previous posts, your brand can have a look and it can have a sound. But when it comes right down to it, it is how your brand feels that usually ends up being the most important.

For example, when you think of these brands, what do you feel?

• Nascar
• Pepperridge Farms
• McDonald’s
• Disney
• Apple

You may not be familiar enough with all of them to have an associated feeling, but I’m sure at least one of those brands communicates with you on an almost subconscious level. When I think if Pepperridge Farms, I get a warm, homey feeling inside. Disney make’s me feel like a kid again. And Apple is just plain cool.

How do these brands accomplish this emotional feat? They do it by incorporating intangibles into their brand. Intangibles such as:

• quality of products
• quality of service
• innovation
• cleanliness
• attitudes

What intangibles can you fit into your brand? I know this can be difficult to do sometimes. I know I struggle with it for the Women’s Business Gallery because I’m still in the stage of defining what WBG is all about. But I know that at it’s core, WBG’s mission is to help women build businesses they love, that they are passionate about, that they would keep working on even if they weren’t earning money for it.

I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say about your experiences with branding in you business. So leave a comment and, as a a community we can help each other build phenomenal brands for our businesses!

Additional Reading On This Topic:

The Quality Of the Experience Is Your Brand
By Jim Kukral, MarketingProfs Daily Fix

Gartner’s Seven Initiatives to Improve Customer Experience
By Randy Saunders
(Note: This site has several posts that would be good reading for this topic.)

ROI of Customer Experience
By Jennifer Rice

Branding Through Experience: Go With Your G.U.T.

Your Brand is Defined by the Customer Experience, Not the Slogan
Posted by Doug Meacham