If it's true that he who pays the piper calls the tune, then perhaps it's equally true that they who buy the product own the brand.

When branding was originally practised it was done with a red-hot iron, and was a method by which the owner of livestock could mark possessions as their own. The owner of the brand then was clearly the person who did the branding. Today the equivalent is the brand manager who carefully develops a brand, nurturing it and growing it through craft and skill. In the complex world of marketing though, the brand manager reports to their marketing manager who reports to their marketing director, etc.

An appreciation of corporate structure makes the quest to identify the owner of the brand much simpler. Any corporation-literate fool can trace the lines of responsibility in a company from a brand manager upwards.

Except of course that it isn't simply a matter of tracing lines upwards on a chart. The true owners of a brand are those who pay for it, and those who pay for it aren't those who agree the budgets that the brand manager can spend, they are the people who actually provide the money that goes into the budgets. The reality for brand managers is that they are no longer autonomous shepherds of their brands. They are conduits for the desires, hopes and aspirations of their consumers.

Marketers have themselves created this state of affairs. They have proved so adroit at associating brand and personal values in the minds and hearts of consumers, that they have achieved the ultimate in brand management - consumers feel so close to a brand that they feel that it is at one with them.

This is illustrated perfectly by the recent appearance of a piece of Graffiti on a wall on my walk home each night. Graffiti is so much a part of everyday life that most of what I see fails to register. People's names and declarations of teenage love are so numerous they don't warrant attention, but when the logo of a major international sporting company has been lovingly reproduced, an examination of the motivation behind the act is required. That someone should prefer to reproduce the logo of a company or product rather than something more obviously personal says a lot about how they articulate and express their values.

Such emotional ownership of a brand from a consumer must translate into actual ownership - if people feel strongly enough about a brand to reproduce its logo they are almost certain to be consumers of it. Unless of course they can't afford to purchase the products in question. Perhaps those responsible for this graffiti are too young to have the money to buy the product themselves. If that is the case, what does it say? Not only have marketers managed to include their consumers in a sense of belonging, they've also included those who aspire to be their consumers. In this particular instance that is an incredible achievement. A reasonably accessible brand has been shaped to have such positive brand values that it is both easily available and aspirational. People believe, and more importantly believe in, the brand's proposition.

It is surely those people - the believers - who truly own the brand. We increasingly see customer power determining product ranges - a sign that marketers have fully grasped the principle of being customer- rather than product-led. The brand is of course a different proposition from the product. Products are more flexible than brands because their features can be tailored to people's needs. The features of a brand cannot be changed from one season to the next - they rely on values that come to be an inherent part of their make-up. Brands evolve over a longer term.

Brand managers may plan the development of their charges in intricate detail looking forward over several years, but all their planning can be swept away by market research. While it would be overstating the case to say that one negative focus group could completely re-orient a brand's planned direction, to argue that such an occurrence would have no influence would be equally inaccurate. The real issue here is whether they whose opinions cause change own the brand, or whether they who control the mechanism through which opinions are collected own the brand. Marketers facilitate and control the market research process, but the outcomes provided by the participating consumers shape the consequent development of the brand.

Brand managers may be responsible for the writing and distribution of the songbook, but the piper is most definitely in the pay of the consumer.