Developing a brand is much more than defining your logo or company identity. At its best, a brand is a belief system, a system that makes those who support it / buy it / use it feel as though they belong. Branding helps us understand why some products mean something to us while others – with essentially the same features – do not.

I probably have close to 25 books on branding on my shelf, but the one I’d recommend you read first is Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon. Here’s an excerpt: “What we call primal branding is the ability to make people feel better about your brand than another. In today’s parity world, who your customer feels better about is called preference. And it is well understood that preference creates sales. As Hal Riney, the creative mind behind Bartles & James and Saturn advertising, once remarked, ‘In a parity world, my best friend wins.’”