Thanks a lot for your very detailed reply, especially digging into the semantics debate of you and Beard vs. Gardner.

Since I began this thread, after I invited Ries to weigh in, I wrote this on Medium to expand further on where Beard's ideals lead me, as I think through The Lean Brand. I'd really appreciate it if you could weigh in on that also ( here or there is fine ) when you have another moment:

https://medium.com/@DonovanKeme/brand-as-relationship-vs-inf...

In the meantime, since you and Gardner both obviously spent a small eternity each on thinking through a definition or contemporary usage of the word Brand, it seems like that comes through most of all in your reply. As someone who appreciates etymology deeply, which I always keep in mind -- I'll continue searching for a framework and language for Brand, thinking out loud about your definition, for you to respond on also. I feel very fortunate to have an author of one of the two books who seem to be vying for the term itself here!

http://etymonline.com/index.php?search=brand

Circa 1400, the word, used as a verb, included the meaning of 'to stigmatize' and by 1600 included the meaning of 'mark property' and 'mark criminals' both as verbs; then as a noun, before the 1550's its meaning included being a piece of burning word, then 'mark made by hot iron' which expanded to 'a particular make of goods' ( which coincides to what I read in The Lean Brand, taking about the Golden Spike in 1869, where Gardner claimed the current use of the word Brand is still at that point, which you seem to sustain? ). Only in 1992 did it include the meaning "brand name" which is itself a sustainer of the 1869 usage also.

My point is, words change dramatically in meaning, especially considering circa 1400 the verb usage was the exact opposite of what we mean now, like many other English words have done over time. So in searching for a language and framework as a standard, the existing definition, or the loudest shouted definition doesn't necessarily answer what I need. If this were 1868 and we had never seen a train traveling across the continent, we wouldn't even need the existing definitions you listed -- so as we stand at 2014 at the threshold of Alibaba vs. Amazon, and The United States Digital Services, plenty of totally free services such as this one, Hacker News and Twitter where you joined from, there is quite possibly an entirely different context for the word now.

I didn't anticipate so much depth coming to my question so fast, otherwise I'd have mentioned that my personal situation as an innovator is the development of transmedia technologies, meaning that ( for perspective ) I come from a world where hackers in high school at the same time with me, are now 10 years later creating global organizations whose brands involve literal billions of individuals, and are valued at literal billions, whether created in their garage or in a skyscraper or bunker underground. There is another context for the word brand now, and if one or a few people began from the premise of influence as Beard seems to say, and as you seem to sustain, there would be a problem I feel, in my approach to the question: why would I need to persuade the entire world of something? Why would I want to? Wouldn't I want to work within a sub-set of that world, and invite that sub-set into my offering? I cannot and would not want to scale to the size of accommodating the planet, unless my brand itself is to provide something intangible or automatic. Even then, the relationship rather than the influence would be my focus, because as we see over and over with the Google complaints and a litany of others regarding privacy, influence is the exact thing being purged from the groundswell definition and usage of Brand. For me, until I read The Lean Brand, the word Brand was heading back to 'to stigmatize' in my feelings about it.

So with all that said, I am very curious to hear your reply to my musing on Medium linked above.

And from what I gather, Gardner is out of the country, and from what I've heard, his book is being released October 8th, so he probably will be hard to get, but Brant Cooper seems to be in the United States and might be available. I hope one or both of them can come address your thoughts and mine. Like Beard and Wilkins said, this is an extremely important topic, and I am so glad for your time.