Even services need a brand

David Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision, LLC in Atlanta, posts at CommPRO.biz about the necessity for service companies to be concerned about their brand and their customers' brand experience.  He writes, "Sadly, we see way too many 'service oriented' companies out there that say their brand is all about integrity and reliability, or some other overly used and vapid term. Please understand this just positions you and makes you sound all the more like a commodity." He's certainly right -- think of the greatest service brands -- Amazon (after all, they just provide services -- selling and delivering to you other peoples' stuff: "We seek to be Earth's most customer-centric company for four primary customer sets: consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content creators"); McKinsey  ("Our mission is to help our clients make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in their performance" ), IBM (see John Iwata, IBM's SVP Marketing and Communications, discuss the IBM brand, here).