Of course, we’ve based our whole business on Burnt Sienna.

Ok, so yesterday gave me two perfectly wonderful examples of Opposite Ends of The Spectrum when it comes to understanding what a brand is.

One one end, there was a great article in the New York Times Magazine.

It seems that “dead” brands like Brim coffee, Nuprin ibuprofen, and White Cloud bathroom tissue are being re-introduced on the strength of their brand equity alone. In some cases, it’s not even really the same product. (Brim, for example, was originally strictly decaf. Not so with the new one.)

In fact, there is a company called River West that does only that. As the story says, the brand is the only thing River West is interested in acquiring. Nothing else. Says founder Paul Earle: “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.” On the value of the brand and nothing else.

And on the other end (what made yesterday funny for me) was this:

Karen and I were having dinner out, and at the next table were two women. One was obviously giving the other career advice. My ears perked up when I heard her mention “advertising” as an option (along with public relations and, I suppose, barrel racing). With only a bit of eavesdropping I heard her explain very patiently and authoritatively to her companion that the marketing department at a company managed the brand. “The colors,” she said.

The colors.

Karen was ever so proud of me for not injecting myself into the conversation, rolling my eyes or doing one of those spray things that they do on TV when they somebody takes a big drink of something and then hears something funny or shocking and they spray it all over everybody. (Very Jerry Lewis, you know. In any case, I didn’t do it.)

I saw a great quote recently from the VP of Corporate Communications at Coca-Cola. “If Coca-Cola’s assets were destroyed overnight, whoever owned the Coca-Cola name could walk into a bank the next morning and get a loan to rebuild everything.”

I doubt they’d be able to do the same with a Pantone 185 chip.