How Does A small Business do Branding?

(Clipped from http://community2.business.gov/bsng/board/message?board.id=GeneralBusiness&message.id=661&jump=true)

Branding is all about product differentiation. In a world where competition is so great between multiple products trying to occupying the same niche space in a given "market-position", it has become essential literally to invent ways to attribute, highlight, and emphasize characteristics, and attributes of a product, which would otherwise be absolutely similar to any other product occupying that very space. So why would you think a consumer would pick your product over somebody else's? You tell them it's different, give them a name to remember it by.

For example FCUK T-Shirts are crappy, run-off-the-mill, ordinary T-Shirts. It's just that particular brand name made it stand out - especially among the vocabularly challenged teenagers (that was meant to be a joke).

Here's what Steve Manning, managing director at Igor, a branding and naming firm based in San Francisco, had to say about branding

"A brand creates an image in the mind of the consumer. It says something is different at your firm, something worth more than business as usual. If your firm is a commodity, your customers will choose you solely on the basis of price or getting something for free. If you've got a brand, you're selling a lifestyle and you can sell anything you want,"
Here's a link to the rest of the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2008/sb2008069_694225.htm

How do you achieve branding?? There is no formula, or a set way. You just have to think up something that will stick in people's minds.

Examples are:

- 2 syllable names
- bright colors
- eye-catching, crazy shapes
- names of icons Obama or Paris Hilton (though the two can never be mentioned in the same sentence

- provide value addition - like a freebie, if you get this or something