The answer to this can be delivered in so many ways, so we will ad our own flavour to our perception of the terms 'Brand' and 'Branding'.

Not to sound too 'eye brow' but, a 'Brand' is an abstract concept held in the minds of everyone that interacts with it. It's basis is a promise to customers and is the sum of all communication in the mind of the customer.

This is one aspect that when asked (what does a particular brand mean to you?), the customers will very often give very different replies to the question based on their history and involvement with any given product or service.

The brand's job is to communicate an idea of what they will receive from a product or service in terms of relevance, utility, quality, value and emotional satisfaction.

This is why marketing communications for the brand need to be carefully planned as this is what is used to shape and mold these ideas and thoughts to allow a company some sort of control. These days it is more thought of that the customer or user is in control of the because its success is primarily based on whether they choose to use or buy it.

To build on this, the brand owner will now think of this as more of a relationship or courtship between themselves or the brand and the customer.

Getting feedback and knowing what your customers think or are thinking about your product or service is vital so you can constantly move with them, hopefully in the direction that helps the brand owners bottom line.

So to summarise the term 'Branding', we utilise all those tools we can afford to create a marketing mix that hopefully creates all the desired messages, responses, reactions while delivering a solid promise to the end customer.