Tagged: Advertising

We spend our lives in a branded environment. We buy branded products and services. We work for companies that are trying to build their brands. Some of us work in a brand-building role.

At the very least, we spend our money with a keen awareness of brands.

Why? What is it about a brand that influences us so? What makes a brand worth billions? What makes one bar of soap worth twice as much as another?

The brand.

What is a brand, anyway? One word: trust. The definition of a brand is trust.

The effects of the Internet continue to astound me. As simple an asset as a killer web site name – and knowing what to do with it - can turn a nothing business into eight-figures in no time.

Serial entrepreneur Jesse Stein bought the name SportsMemorabilia-dot-com in 2006 for twelve-thousand-five-hundred dollars. At the time, the site was doing business of a few hundred dollars a month.

Toy-maker Fisher-Price is, in my opinion, the classic example of a company that develops new products the right way. Its customers, young kids, are said to be the most finicky of all consumers.

Fisher-Price sends its people into homes and playrooms. They want to see what play areas look like. What’s in them. How existing toys are being used. They look particularly for things that moms have adapted for children’s play. Necessity is the mother of invention, they agree, and moms are very inventive.