The way we think about brands need to change. In the past, they were objects or concepts. You had a relationship with a brand. But in this social age, brands are the relationships. By defining a brand’s particular kind of relationship, companies can create greater engagement, differentiation, and loyalty.

To understand this new mental model for brands, it is helpful to see how the concept has evolved. A brand started out as an identifying mark. Cattle owners would “brand” their cattle to indicate ownership. We can still see the “brand as object” model in the American Marketing Association’s definition: “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” In this view, a brand is something applied to what you make.