What is a successful Brand and importance of branding?

Branding is very important part of marketing and it is very hard for any marketing strategy to succeed if it fails to create a successful brand. Every year, millions of companies from across the world spend billions of dollar on creating successful brands because people around the world believes in buying a branded product rather then just buying an ordinary and unbranded product. Generally, a branded product has more value and trust associated with it than a non branded product. Therefore, every company works in direction to make their product a successful brand. To do this, they get help of branding which helps in promoting brand name and creating a good image for brand. Now here you may ask this question what is a brand? Below, I will discuss and try to define a brand so that you can understand what is a brand?

A Brand- A brand gives an identity to product or service or anything unique. A product, a service, a company, a person, a place or anything which has unique properties associated with it and it is popular for these properties comes under the category of brands. For example, Coca Cola is a brand name of Coca Cola Company which deals in soft drinks and beverage products. Now if anybody says Coca Cola then it remind us about Coca Cola Company and its products. ICICI is brand name of ICICI bank and its associated services. When we hear ICICI then we know that someone is talking about ICICI bank or its related services. Other examples of brands are Honda, Maruti, Parachute, CNN, NDTV, Cadbury, Nirma, Surf, Reebok etc. People also become a successful brand when they become very successful like Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin Tendulkar is a brand because he is very popular and also has many strong values associated with him. Sachin is known for his consistency, good performance and dependability. Therefore, many companies take him in their advertisements because they want that people should also start considering their product a good product. A place can also become a brand when it represents something unique and it is popular for this uniqueness. For example, Shimla is a brand name in itself because it represents a popular hill station, now when we think about Shimla then an image of beautiful Hill Station comes in our mind.

Branding- Branding is technique and methods used to establish an unknown product as successful brand. Through branding any product, service, company, place or person can be associated with certain properties and made popular across the world for them. A good advertising and promotional strategy is required for making a successful brand. When people read or see a product many times then they start associating with it. Sometimes, they become so indulged in particular brand that they start calling particular service or item with this brand name. For many people still call washing powder as surf because of strong branding of Surf as washing powder in India by Unilever. Similarly many people still call coconut oil parachute oil and they trust parachute as best coconut oil because of strong branding by MARICO. Therefore, with strong branding any product can be associated with particular properties, services or unique things. Branding is very important for making any product a successful brand which people remember for years and love to associate with it again and again.