No, our process can be applied to any business, organization or product. The techniques of branding have been kept secret for many years because they provided a competitive advantage to those companies that used them. Our process takes the proven principles of branding used by companies like P&G, Disney, and Coca Cola and puts them into a simple, understandable and easy to use process. Retailers, service businesses, manufacturers and businesses of all types and sizes can use this process.

How do we determine our brand identity?

• Brand has been called the most powerful idea in the commercial world, yet few companies consciously create a brand identity.

Do you want your company’s brand identity created for you by competitors and unhappy customers?

• Of course not, my advice to executives is to research their customers and find the top ranked reasons that customers buy their products rather than their competitors. Then, pound that message home in every ad, in every news release, in communications with employees and in every sales call and media interview. By consistent repetition of the most persuasive selling messages, customers will think of you and buy from you when they are deciding on whether to buy from you or your competitor.

Practically this involves managing the tangible and intangible aspects of the brand. For product brands the tangibles are the product itself, the packaging, the price, etc. For service brands (see Service Brands), the tangibles are to do with the customer experience – the retail environment, interface with salespeople, overall satisfaction, etc. For product, service and corporate brands, the intangibles are the same and refer to the emotional connections derived as a result of experience, identity, communication and people. Intangibles are therefore managed via the manipulation of identity, communication and people skills.

So you must understand that branding is all about making individual products distinctive. Branding can add value to a product and is therefore an intrinsic aspect of product strategy. Pharmaceutical companies were the first ones to brand their products. Now the scene is such that even salt and sugar is branded.

Branding essentially involves the cost where packaging, labeling and legal protection is concerned. Branding it is opined brings about loyalty. This is so because people associate with your product due to some benefits that you might be offering. That connection which the product has made with the target market is what branding is all about. In regards to segmentation brands carry out a specific task of catering to a certain segment, and the message design is made keeping in mind that segment. Distributors prefer to handle branded products, which represents a particular quality and preferred by the buyers. Different brands represent different quality levels. In fact the growth in advertising is due to the presence of brands. Competitive advertising has come to age due to the emergence of brands.