Brands are for companies like reputations for people – Jeff Bezos

The quote came in the context: It is very important for anybody who’s going to start a company or market an invention, to understand is that brands for companies are like reputations for people. And reputations are hard earned and easily lost so the most important intellectual property that a company can have is it’s brand name.

The quote was said during this interview: Jeff Bezos on Entrepreneurship and How Amazon Innovated.

Lately i wrote the analysis of this quote: You can’t ask for trust, you just have to do it the hard way one step at a time.

Brands are for companies like reputations for people, is somehow a followup to the previous quote. You earn trust as a company, and this trust is transferred to the brand name. In a way this trust, or reputation becomes synonymous with your brand.

For companies, it is like for people, reputations can be true or made-up. Companies can have a real earned reputation transferred into the brand name, or do the marketing / branding to create a reputation for themselves.

Fo example:
Rolex have the reputation of precise watches, earned through decades of excellent craftsmanship.
A high end bags brand, might not have the finess or prestige, but can still create a brand narrative by spending a lot on branding and marketing, to portray the bags in a certain way.