Even if it’s 4 year old In a article published on darwinmag.com, it’s still actual through the subjects discussed by four branding specialists.

Ten years ago, the average person thought of branding as that creative thing you do with the name of a product.Or it meant designing a new wrapper. Or maybe it was the print or television advertising that relayed the brand message.

Today, [tag]branding[/tag] is everything—and I mean everything. Brands are not simply products or services. Brands are the sum total of all the images that people have in their heads about a particular company and a particular mark.

Branding has become a religion in most corporations, and it’s very hard to dislodge it, because people believe that the brand itself is something that changes consumer behavior. We tend to think that branding comes first and the company’s success follows. In fact, when you look at most businesses, the products came first.

Historically, a brand has been a promise that says, “If you buy this product or buy from my company, you can rely on me because of the attributes attached to the brand.” We’re going to see a new kind of branding emerge, a much more customer-centric branding where the promise is, “I know you as an individual customer better than anyone else, and you can trust me to assemble the right products or services to meet your individual needs.”