brand as seal of approval
A lot of my friends have been talking about my recent post on the iPhone app, Ocarina. Over the course of our conversations, I realized that I’d given the Apple 
brand all the credit for delivering such creativity and joy.
And I’d begun to feel guilty about bestowing such positive praise on Apple for a piece software it didn’t create. After all, the company that developed and distributes the program, Smule, 
deserves the credit, right? Shouldn’t the Ocarina build Smule’s brand equity? As a brand person, shouldn’t I be more careful about where brand attribution is placed?
But then a friend of mine set me straight. He explained by saying something like, “There’s an important difference between Google’s Android 
and Windows-based phones which are becoming more open source. Being open-source means you get a lot of different people developing programs for these phones and that means the quality of the applications can vary — you never know what you’re going to get. However with the iPhone, Apple has set it up so that all programs must adhere to their standards and so you know that all the iPhone apps are going to be good.”
So what he is saying is the Apple brand is really serving as editor and quality control here — by endorsing another company’s product, it is building its own brand as an arbitor of what is good. I found this insight profound — it speaks to the role of a brand as a seal of approval, not just for its own products, but also for all related products.
And this uncovers an important opportunity in today’s marketplace, where we’re seeing more and more companies partner with others to provide add-ons, services, experiences, etc. to supplement their core products. How can you position your brand so that you get your fair share — if not more — of the credit for the new offerings that arise out of these partnerships?
To take a page out of Apple’s book, it’s about maintaining the same high standards for everything you do, never compromising, never making exceptions — that might make it harder to work with you, but in the end, your brand will benefit.