A brand is a concept representing something, in this case, we are talking about the commercial based brand, strongly related to business, company, product or service.
In a simple definition, it can be some objects refer to visually defined icons or symbols such as name, logo, slogan, and design concept. Though it is actually not as simple as that, this is the easiest way to understand what brand is.
Brand has increasingly become part of our daily life. For instance, you might prefer to shop for a certain branded clothes, going to a certain coffee shop or preference in mobile device brand.
Brand Image
Brand image is about how a consumer feels or think about the brand. It is the impression a consumer has when hearing or holding a product.
A good brand image should be visually and verbally positive, unique among competitors and easy to be remembered. Brand image can be pushed outward by marketing and communication tools, such as promotion, advertising, packaging, public relations and word-of-mouth.
When the visual appearances associated with the brand are easily recognized, you’ve created a good brand image.
Brand Personality
In daily life, you’ll find that every person has their own personality. Good, fun, kind, easy going, bad, etc. are some of the human personalities.
Brand personality works as a valuable emotional factor of brand image in developing its relation to the consumer. It’s much the same as how a human communicates and bind with other humans.
In developing a brand personality, you need to know how it can be connected to your customer. You must clearly understand them, such as their habits, desires, preferences, motivations, insecurities, and prejudices. You must do a good research on how your brand fits in their lifestyle and how they might respond to the brand message.
Brand Mapping
Brand mapping makes vast quantities of numerical information into an easy visual appealing format. It can help drawing the results and their impacts from different angles. This way, we can build a good strategy for each of the area.
Imagine you are traveling around a city with many stopovers to make, if there’s a map in hand, it will be much easier to travel around, save time and money. The same rule applies to branding strategy as well.
To start developing your brand, you need to write down all things related for that purposes including, but not limited to, target market, the local economy, and market behavior in order to arrange price adjustment, advertising cost, the frequency of advertisement, etc.
These are the basis of what you need to draw before starting on.
By doing brand mapping, you will also understand where is the brand direction in the future.

Brand Recognition
Brand Recognition is the extent to which a brand is known by the experiences felt by consumers.
All huge companies have their brand recognized very well, Nike with its swoosh, Ferrari with its fast car or KFC with the Colonel Sanders.
So, what will you do to try achieving your brand recognition? There are two ways I’d like to share here.
Firstly, build a good and easy to remember identity standard. One of the factors, which is related to the visual design is color. Forget about putting too many colors in your logo. 2 to 3 colors will do well.
Secondly, be consistent! Your branding consistency has to go along the way. For instance, your advertisement should have a standard of how it should be laid out. It is a fact that it takes five to seven exposures to an advertisement before someone may look further. If your advertisement is not consistent with the standard, the consumer won’t identify it.
Why Brand Matters
A mature brand matters a lot in business. It makes the business more lively and emotionally intelligent. It creates a unique impression to the brand itself and adds value to business, company, products, and services.
Branding is more than just your company logo or name. It is the whole set of experience a company can offer. It is something people feel when they are connected to it.
Simply said, your coffee can’t just taste good. But it has to feel good, too.
Building a brand is not easy though, It is not a one day work. It needs lots of hard work, correct strategy, and relatively big budgets, but the result is huge.
Good branding can increase your business revenues, lower customer acquisition cost and raise profit. Successful brand doesn’t really sell its products or services anymore, but the brand itself.
Wahidin Wong is a digital marketer at Adkomu.com and an editor at Tobeeko.com. He is also a jazz and bossa lover.
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