I've spoken to Gardner, he's a good guy. But he and I have some fundamental differences in opinion. Admittedly, some of it is semantics, but when you're talking about branding, I think semantics are critical.
-To me, a brand is the emotional associations a customer has with a product/organization. Branding is our attempt to influence the customer into that desired emotional state. Hence, not really a relationship. (Adrian's point about a brand not being a logo, etc., is critical and something many people don't understand.)
-I hesitate to call a brand a relationship, because that's not how a customer thinks, or ever will think. It's our job to build that emotional association. Also, ultimately, the customer gets to decide what the brand is (if we drop the ball).
-To your point that started this thread, traditional branding processes don't work for lean orgs. Take too much time, too much money, don't provide any strategy or flexibility when encountering change (!), contain too many rules, limit your teams' ability to creatively solve problems in real-time. Loved adrian's point about the golf course.
Happy to chat offline (or a hangout, or whatever) about this. Also, I'm working on a short summary of my interpretation of Lean Branding, will share when it's done.