A brand is not deception, it's having people trust what you say. Anyone can say that their software is easy to use, but most people won't believe you. Apple,

A brand is not deception, it's having people trust what you say. Anyone can say that their software is easy to use, but most people won't believe you. Apple, Google, 37signals, etc have brands that people trust and people believe that their message will match reality. I trust Dropbox to work, but no other sync product has built a brand strong enough that I would even bother looking at them. Said another way, brands are an ecosystem of response to a company's product and marketing. Despite kajillions of dollars spent on advertising, a lot of Microsoft's brand is BSOD, Vista, Clippy and constant restarts. Despite objective safety numbers and no evidence of failure, people trusted Toyota less, billions of dollars less, when the brake/accelerator "story" was happening last year. A brand is what people expect to get. The $2.99 corn flakes, even if they are as good as Kellogg's, are dragged down by every other crappy generic cereal a customer has ever eaten.