We are spoiled for choice, just about everything we need is offered with an abundance of options ranging from price to quality to capabilities to warranty to technology to delivery to place of purchase and more. What then makes our decision making easier? What helps us choose which offer best serves our needs?

 

Yes, referrals are convenient, a friend's recommendation based on their experience, so too are reviews trusted websites or in a favourite magazine all helping to point us towards the right decision. Helpful store assistants and advertising promises too, inform and guide us. However, with the convergence of technologies and manufacturing, both consumer and business to business products and services are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate themselves in competitive markets with many claiming superlatives such as the best, the most, the first, the greenest and of course the cheapest!

 

And that is why brands have become an important part of our decision making process. Brand  a state of awareness that we each individually hold  whether consciously or unconsciously about products and services.

 

A brand is the collection of facts, feelings and experiences that we gather over time about the things we like (and need) whether they are products and services we use at home or at work, or our choice of holiday destination, school and even religion, all of us whether we know it or not, like (and need) brands.

 

From humble beginnings in the 1800s as a branding iron that marked out livestock ownership, brand has become the universally recognised term for describing and defining all that we hold dear about our preferred product and service choices. This state of awareness is also an essential contribution to our decision making process, brand is our gut feeling, our loyalty, our emotional attachment, our brand choice is our first preference.

 

Brand = recognition and association - on the one hand we recognise the brand by a physical attribute such as a familiar colour, shape, taste or smell while on the other hand we associate it with feelings and ideas that we identify with such as relaxation, fun, traditional or modern, that are often linked to how we view ourselves as people - our own identity.

 

It is people who create brands and it is people who will always like (and need) their brands.