Over the years, brands have come to hold the center stage in the marketing mix. In fact, the value of successful brands is more than the cumulative turnover of the companies. However, brands still remain complex entities with no sure-fire ways of building them. The ephemeral quality of brands and the time taken to build them makes branding a complex art. However, once built, successful brands have the power of weaving their way into the daily lives of the customers.

Brands have become ever more popular in the last two decades. Prior to that, it was the product which got sold with little understanding about how the brand worked. An analysis of the customer choices and the research by the marketers brought to the fore the importance and effectiveness of brands built by organizations. Over a period of time, managements of organizations have realized the advantage of brand building rather than just selling products. With the advent of technology, the basic intrinsic product is not very differentiated. The organizations have realized this and are aware of the fact that any new entrant to the market will inevitably get copied or bettered in a relatively short span of time. Creating brands has thus become the only way out for organizations.

Branding decisions are qualitative in nature and hence are quite tricky sometimes to handle. Nor is building brands an exercise to be completed in a short span of time. Brands take years to build up. Sometimes, it takes decades. Most of the world famous brands have taken decades to be where they are today. It is often seen through brand evaluation methods that the brand values are much higher than their turnover. However, brands do not exist in the physical world. They exist in the minds of the people and more specifically in the minds of the consumers. It is this elusive nature of the brands that makes it more difficult to understand and then develop.

Advertising Express Magazine, Branding the Unbranded, Ephemeral Quality, Branding Decisions, Marketing Fraternity, FMCG Companies, Multinational Brands, Brand Equity, Economic Pyramid, Indian Brands, Bausch & Lomb, Ray-Ban Sunglasses.