The way brands connect with consumers has changed drastically over the years.

A consumer-
brand relationship, also known as a Brand Relationship is the relationship that consumers,
think, feel, and have with a product or company brand. For more than half a
century, scholarship has been generated to help managers and stakeholders understand how to
drive favorable brand attitudes, brand loyalty, repeat purchase, customer lifetime value, customer
advocacy, and communities of like-minded individuals organized around brands. Research has
progressed with inspiration from attitude theory and, later, socio-cultural theories, but a
perspective introduced in the early 1990s offered new opportunities and insights. The new
paradigm focused on the relationships that formed between brands and consumers: an idea that
had gained traction in business-to-business marketing scholarship where physical relationships
formed between buyers and sellers.

It used to be that companies would develop their brand positionings largely through
introspection—by identifying what they saw as the defining attributes and benefits of their brand,
then pushing that version on to the market. They operated as though they were in complete
control.

Now, the idea of building brands in such an insular manner feels archaic. Today, brands need to
look more actively and purposefully at the culture buzzing around them—in entertainment, in
fashion, in news, on social media—and use that awareness to inform how they should best
position and integrate themselves into the world.

This is a more powerful form of branding, because by engaging with culture more directly,
brands in effect can become a part of that culture, thereby deepening their relevance and
connection with customers. And that has never been more prescient or necessary.

Brands that changed the world

1. Microsoft
 2. Apple
3. Coca-Cola

MICROSOFT

History

Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business utilizing their shared
skills in computer programming. In 1972 they founded their first company, named Traf-O-Data,
which sold a rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. While Gates
enrolled at Harvard, Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University,
though he later dropped out of school to work at Honeywell. The January 1975 issue of Popular
Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems's (MITS) Altair
8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program a BASIC
interpreter for the device. After a call from Gates claiming to have a working interpreter, MITS
requested a demonstration. Since they didn't yet have one, Allen worked on a simulator for the
Altair while Gates developed the interpreter. Although they developed the interpreter on a
simulator and not the actual device, it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated the interpreter
in March 1975 to MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico. MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it
as Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen officially established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates
as the CEO. The original name of "Micro-Soft" (short for microcomputer software) was
suggested by Allen. In August 1977 the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in
Japan, resulting in its first international office, "ASCII Microsoft". Microsoft moved its
headquarters to Bellevue, Washington in January 1979.

Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix,
called Xenix. However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. After
negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November
1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM
Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-
DOS from Seattle Computer Products, which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it
to IBM PC DOS. Following the release of the IBM PC in August 1981, Microsoft retained
ownership of MS-DOS. Since IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS, other companies had
to reverse engineer it in order for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles, but no such
restriction applied to the operating systems. Due to various factors, such as the software selection
available for MS-DOS, Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor.
The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as
well as with a publishing division named Microsoft Press. Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in
1983 after developing Hodgkin's disease. Allen claimed, in his book Idea Man: A Memoir by the
Co-founder of Microsoft, that Gates wanted to dilute his share in the company when he was
diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he didn't think he was working hard enough. Allen
later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private
spaceflight and more.

Marketing

In 2004, Microsoft commissioned

research firms to do independent studies comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO)
of Windows Server 2003 to Linux; the firms concluded that companies found Windows easier to
administrate than Linux, thus those using Windows would administrate faster resulting in lower
costs for their company (i.e. lower TCO). This spurred a wave of related studies; a study by
the Yankee Group concluded that upgrading from one version of Windows Server to another
costs a fraction of the switching costs from Windows Server to Linux, although companies
surveyed noted the increased security and reliability of Linux servers and concern about being
locked into using Microsoft products. Another study, released by the Open Source Development
Labs, claimed that the Microsoft studies were "simply outdated and one-sided" and their survey
concluded that the TCO of Linux was lower due to Linux administrators managing more servers
on average and other reasons.

As part of the "Get the Facts" campaign, Microsoft highlighted the .NET Framework trading
platform that it had developed in partnership with Accenture for the London Stock Exchange,
claiming that it provided "five nines" reliability. After suffering extended downtime and
unreliability the London Stock Exchange announced in 2009 that it was planning to drop its
Microsoft solution and switch to a Linux-based one in 2010.
 In 2012, Microsoft hired a political pollster named Mark Penn, whom The New York
Times called "famous for bulldozing" his political opponents as Executive Vice-President,
Advertising and Strategy. Penn created a series of negative advertisements targeting one of
Microsoft's chief competitors, Google. The advertisements, called "Scroogled", attempt to make
the case that Google is "screwing" consumers with search results rigged to favor Google's paid
advertisers, that Gmail violates the privacy of its users to place ad results related to the content of
their emails and shopping results, which favor Google products. Tech publications like Tech
Crunch have been highly critical of the advertising campaign, while Google employees have
embraced it.

Criticism of Microsoft has followed various aspects of its products and business practices.
Issues with ease of use, robustness, and security of the company's software are common targets
for critics. In the 2000s, a number of malware mishaps targeted security flaws in Windows and
other products. Microsoft was also accused of locking vendors and consumers in to their
products, and of not following or complying with existing standards in its software. Total cost of
ownership comparisons between Linux and Microsoft Windows are a continuous point of debate.
The company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, brought by several governments and by
other companies, for unlawful monopolistic practices. In 2004, the European union found
Microsoft guilty in the European Union Microsoft competition case, and it received a 899
million euro fine.
Microsoft has recently reported that Windows 10 is now running on over 75 million
computers around the world, which signals a great jump start for the new operating system that
will be part of our life for years to come.Previously, I have share with you a number of good
reasons to why you should upgrade to Windows 10, which included new technologies under the
hood, the return the Start menu, Cortana, Action Center, Settings app, and many new features
and changes. However, with the good there is always the bad. Today we're going to go through
fourteen reasons you should consider to halt the upgrade until a later feature packed update gets
released. Let's look at some of the reasons why you should stay on your current version of the
operating system.

Here are 8 reasons why you should not to upgrade to Windows 10

1. Upgrade problems

While the software giant has managed to fix many of the issues that cause the upgrade process to
fail, many users have been reporting failures to upgrade to Windows 10 due to different number
of reasons. Some people are finding compatibility issues with hardware and software, and there
are situations where the operating system can't complete the upgrade process. One of the most
common issues has been the problem activating Windows 10.

2. It's not a finished product

Microsoft is changing the way it builds Windows, with the release of Windows 10, the company
will no longer release major upgrades. Instead, Microsoft is now offering "Windows as a
Service." Technically, Windows will never be considered complete, which means that the
operating system will continue to be a work in progress. As a result, we are likely to see more
bugs and other issues in the regular basis. Additionally, because we're in the early days, you will
see some missing features and inconsistency. In my personal experience, I've seen some issues
including bugs in the Start menu where parts of the menu will just randomly disappear. Some
Live Tiles also won't change accent color automatically, and the Start menu will suddenly lose
its color scheme. The file picker doesn't render its background color correctly and picking one or
more files won't highlight what you're selecting. Sometimes hovering over an app in the taskbar
will display an empty preview, even though the app is running. Windows apps will suddenly
crash or freeze more often than in Windows 8.1. If you perform a clean install your email
accounts won't migrate automatically to the new Mail app, you'll have to set all your emails
manually. However, the good thing about the new update model is that the company will be
releasing new patches, fixes, and features as soon as they are ready.

3. The user interface still a work in progress

While the new operating system offers an updated user interface, it fails short to be a complete
design. For example, there is a big inconsistency around the context menus. Right-clicking on
the desktop, using Start menu, taskbar, Mail app, and Microsoft Edge, just to name a few
scenarios, you will be presented with a different context menu style.

4. The automatic update dilemma

In the new operating system, Microsoft is also introducing a new way to update. Moving forward
out-of-the-box users are required to install every update the company pushes out. On the good
side of things, automatic updates are a good thing because it ensures that all users (technical and
non-technical) are always running the most up to date version of Windows 10 with the latest
security patches.
5. No more Windows Media Center or DVD playback

Microsoft is trying to build an operating system that is ready for the future. This also involves
retiring features it believes are not necessary. This is the case of Windows Media Center and
DVD playback features as the company continues to push its Xbox One as the Windows
entertainment hub for the biggest screen in the house. As such, if you upgrade to Windows 10,
you'll soon find out that Windows Media Center and the ability to play DVDs are no longer
available. However, the removal of Windows Media Center shouldn't come to a surprise. The
company has not updated the feature in years, but there still many fans out there that feel the pain
of seeing WMC go away. The removal of DVD playback was a decision Microsoft made
because we're consuming more online content than ever before. Also, adding the codecs to play
DVDs adds extra cost to licensing. The company now offers Windows DVD Player in the Store,
but you probably don't want to spend $14.99 on something that you can get for free when using
other applications such as VLC.

6. Privacy concerns

Since the operating system launched on July 29th, there has been a lot controversy of what
information Microsoft collects to improve its services and functionality in Windows 10. If you
agree to install Window 10 on your computer, you will be giving Microsoft consent to collect, by
default, information about you, devices, application, search queries, application usage, and even
when you use voice input such as speech-to-text.

7. Shutdown and reboot take a long time

Perhaps is not a big deal for many users, but it's to me. One of many things I liked from
Windows 8.1 was the ability to reboot or shutdown in just a few seconds. I have a fairly new
Intel Core i7 and 16GB of RAM machine, and I don't know what's going on with Windows 10,
but now it can take minutes to reboot or shutdown. Obviously, it's a problem that Microsoft have
to address.

8. OneDrive selective sync problem

In Windows 8, the software maker began integrating OneDrive in the operating system, which
also included the concept of placeholders. It's a feature that allowed users to browse OneDrive
files locally on the computer, but without downloading the file entirely. The placeholder
included some metadata information and a thumbnail, then if you needed to open the file, you
simply double-click the file to download and open with the default application. One of the
biggest advantages was the ability to have hundreds of gigabytes of files at your fingertips
without using much of your local storage. However, this brought the issue where many people
didn't know which files were available offline. As a result, Microsoft introduced selective sync,
which allows users to select which files are available in Windows 10. However, the new sync
functionality isn't very effective for users with many gigabytes of documents in OneDrive and
limited local storage.