The Value of a Brand

There seem to be 2 school of thoughts when it comes to branding.

1 suggests that the branding of any organisation or business should be of the utmost priority.  The brand would set out guidelines and actually define the business and its operations.

The other believes that your brand starts with the value of your services or products.  By focusing on, and thus increasing this value to customers, your brand builds itself.

For a small setup like ourselves, we need to brand ourselves properly to establish credibility with our clients and gain exposure/build recall.  A common notion is that branding activities can be very costly, which to a certain extent is pretty true.  Fortunately, the Internet came and changed all the way businesses communicated to each other and to the public and consumers.  It allowed brands to grow without taking a big hit on the current account.  And now the widespread use of social media has created even more channels with which businesses can engage their target audience.

Larry Light, former global CMO for McDonald’s shares his 6 rules for revitalizing brands (he applied these to McDonald’s apparently), even if you’re building a brand from scratch they would be applicable.  Read his piece here.