What Euan says is certainly true of traditional “message” brands--lifeless artifacts to promote and persuade--but brand programs can be powerful methods of cultural innovation, collaboration and value creation. Internally, a properly-developed brand is an operating system that unifies the vision and values of a company, and then provides a clear set of operating principles and practices. It is human to the core. The brand becomes a “way” by which a company can operate effectively and deliver new contexts of value above and beyond products proper.

Externally, such a brand considers customers to be co-creation partners, not passive “consumers.” Instead of being symbols and slogans brands become customer-facing applications, designed to advance customers to richer realms of living and more productive platforms of autonomy, self-expression and achievement. (Smartphones + apps + ecosystems are a good model.) Such new brands incorporate value networks, peer-to-peer collaboration, and certainly, knowledge flow (which is also a brand priority internally). The brand goal is to flow the knowledge, vision and values of creators into the lives of customers. The brand (as operating vision and values) becomes a framework for social learning as well, inside the company and in the larger brand community.

As I see it, leading brands such as Zappos, Patagonia, Nordstrom and Apple incorporate many of these precepts.