Brands are in motion.

Brand Streams started out as a rough idea in 2007. I was getting more involved in Web marketing and studied consumer behavior, their perception of and interaction with brands. By 2008 I held several speeches that involved Brand Streams. The idea received a lot of feedback from people in the fields of technology, marketing and advertising.

Brand Streams is based on a new thought model: brands that are not only owned by their creators, but also by the people participating and contributing to it. Instead of a pond, brands are perceived as a stream that may have one source, but multiple contributors. It is a process rather than a static entity.

The perception of what brands are and how they operate has dramatically changed over the past couple of years. A brand is more than the summary of its parts, its design, its implementation in products or even virtual services.

Brands are no longer tied to a corporation or one author. The body of a brand, its values and perception, are heavily influenced by the public. In consequence, brand assets are fed by various sources, not only the main source that invented the brand.

I wrote an article series about brands (German), which was the foundation for a White Paper (also in German), which was published by Namics in September of 2009.

On SlideShare I published my most recent slide deck, which summarizes the effect of Brand Streams and provides insights for brand strategies today.