People buy stories and magic! Period.

It’s not name, logo, website or product, Brand is a promise that you make, communicate and align it with your product strategy… It is a faith that is instilled in the consumer's mind when he watches, listens or experiences the brand communication. This faith brings down the monetary, social and psychological risk when he chooses to go with a branded entity as compared to the generic one.

What separates great brands from the good ones is the level of clarity to which the brand promise is communicated. 

The reason why branding works is, Consumer Behaviour is an irrational process, devoid of any logical thinking. Critical analysis or meticulous detailing is thrown out of window when the buyer compares one product with another. We are emotional beings driven by biases and prejudices, thus it becomes imperative to paint a perception through effective communication that drives the customers towards faster and simpler decision making. They just want someone to make that decision for them, so they are not held culpable of making a bad choice. 

The process of carefully crafting out visual and textual elements resonating with deep ingrained aspirations or desires does just that, and we even have a name for it: Strategic Brand Management. Keeping aside the jargon, simply said, it’s a way towards clarity in a labyrinth of chaos. The key here is resonance or reverberation: it is this what makes one brand different from other. 

Branding is not about understanding the target audience with respect to their needs or problems. It is more about understanding them as people which in turn is a function of their experiences and journeys. Their journey as a person is what will make them choose your brand over another. It’s like falling in love or a first date, that has more to do with the personality traits of who falls in love than of the one who he falls in love with. 

Understanding someone as a person without putting them into predefined silos is easier said than done. Decades of companionship or even marriage is not enough to fathom someone’s choices let alone his mind. That’s because humankind is predisposed to learn, grow, unlearn and regrow. The complexities that go into making a decision of choosing certain brand over other is not only personal but also extremely situational. Subtle interplay of micro-environment and macro-environment variables makes sure that we cannot even get to the tip of the iceberg known as Consumer Behavior.