What’s your brand identity? If you’re a cabbie in New York City, it might be your Lexus. Just six Big-Apple drivers have one. According to the cabbies, this doesn’t change the fare or necessarily affect their tips, but it definitely helps them stand apart.

If your brand is a bookstore for architects, your identity might be your staircase. It is at Van Alen Books, whose bright-yellow suspension stairs leads nowhere, except perhaps in the fertile minds of its customers.

If you are Eric Clapton (could anyone be so lucky?) your identity might be a particular black Stratocaster. If you are B.B. King, it could be any old guitar … as long as it is named Lucille.

We tend to think of brand identities in terms of logos. A bulls-eye, a star, a swoosh, an arch or a swirl: need I say more? No, because a simple, powerful image says it all.

It is reassuring that, in an era of such complexity, that a brand’s identity can be — indeed should be — that simple. Just one thing: that’s all it is, and it’s all yours. An apple. A twin-tailed siren. Snap, Crackle and Pop (yes, that’s three things, but still).

We do understand it’s really not that simple. Every great brand surely is known for at least one great thing, and somehow manages to refresh that certain something without losing its way.

But this is so much easier said than done. Ours is a world in which fractured media conspire against hard-earned brand identities, while relentless scrutiny breaks them faster than you can say Governator.

But that’s exactly why we love this crazy business so much. And it’s why this issue of The Hub is all about building and sustaining winning brand identities.