Why A Brand Matters. The article in Forbes about why brand is important is simple and clear text that conveys branding is important because:

• Carries message that a firm is trying to tell the consumers
• To attract consumer (logos, colours, size, images, fonts)
• Create brand positioning in consumers mind and thus capture the consumers loyalty
• To sell their product (the more appealing it seems, the more consumer will buy)

Positioning: A Battle of the Mind This link is one of the reading materials in our lecture, Positioning: The Battle of Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I found this extremely interesting. It talked about how different brand names were positioned in human mind and how we tend to relate or remember these names.

• Companies should capture the consumers mind by positioning their brand and be a brand leader. This is easier to sell more of the product and create a brand loyalty.
• Companies that enter a market with competition and dominant leaders should be a follower but differentiate the product from that of the leaders.
• Descriptive brand names tend to do better than coined ones. Example: Head n Shoulders for shampoo, People for gossip magazine, Close Up for toothpaste, Diehard for batteries rather than general names like Kodak or Xerox.
• The no-name trap. Using general names like IBM instead of International Business Machines or GM for General Electric could be confusing and is not encouraged unless the brand is already well established like GM for General Motors.
• The free-ride trap. Many companies are tempted to use the existing brand for a new product line being introduced which ends up being unpopular as the first already captured and being positioned in different part of the consumer minds. For example, Alka-Seltzer and Alka-Seltzer Plus are two different product lines but are looked at as the same but just a better version.