I read The Brand Gap (Amazon) on the recommendation of my colleague Michelle. I wanted to better understand what branding is, how it works, how it fits in with marketing etc. At the end of it, I bought her a small gift which demonstrated that I had understood the book.
The gift was a Yoko Ono seed, which has the word “LOVE” engraved on it. It turns into a leaf with the word “LOVE” on that. This so well demonstrated what I learned in the book – that branding is about aligning the story told about you internally with what gets said about you externally – because brand is what people say about you. This is obviously a lot easier said than done, and requires a lot of thought and care for both internal and external communications.
The book is a little dated now (one chapter on digital was a bit bizarre to read in 2018) but I learned a lot from it, and it’s worth a read if you’re looking to understand more about these topics, too.