Creating a Brand

1. What is a Brand?

Brands can be defined in two ways. Firstly, a brand can be an identification or a mark that differentiates one business from another (through a name or a logo, for example). Secondly, a brand symbolises how people think about your business. Building a brand helps customers in their decision-making by creating a perceived knowledge of what they are going to buy - before they buy it.

Brands are based on three related criteria.

1.1 Confidence in a business, product or service doing exactly what the customer already believes it will do.

1.2 The emotional response of the customer to purchasing a product or service.

For example, a clothing retailer can create a brand based on making its customers feel good about what they wear, how they feel about buying clothes from that shop and what it says about them to their peers.

A brand builds a unique personality for a business, and therefore attracts a defined type of customer.

1.3 Most importantly, branding is based on consistently rewarding the confidence and delivering the expected emotional response.

For example, a domestic cleaning company can build its brand successfully if its customers' homes are always thoroughly cleaned, the owners believe that they are using the best cleaning company and they feel good about returning to their newly cleaned homes.