Branding is the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol, or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. A brand puts a face and a name to a product, something that customers can identify with. Put simply, a brand is a company or product promise to its customers. It tells them what to expect from their products or services, and it differentiates what the company is doing from that of its competitors.

Brand loyalty is a result of a customer's behaviour and is affected by a person’s preferences. Loyal customers will consistently purchase products from their preferred brands, regardless of convenience or price. Many people become truly committed to certain brands. Companies will often use different marketing strategies to cultivate loyal customers, be it through loyalty programmes (reward programmes) or trials or incentives (samples or free gifts). Customers commitment can be defined into four patterns of behaviour:

• Hard-core loyalists - Who buy the brand all the time.

• Split Loyalist - Loyal to two or three brands.

• Shifting Loyalists - Will move from one brand to another.

• Switchers - No loyalty, generally looking for the best deal.

Branding forms a product’s identity that is extremely valuable to a product and can help promote sales; therefore, brand image becomes a commodity that needs to be protected as intellectual property. Infringements of trademarks and registered designs is quite commonplace for a wide range of products and some designers use their creativity to attempt to subtly disguise the infringement. 

Trademarks are legally registered components of a company or product to allow the owner to distinctively differentiate their product from others. Trademarks are often used as a form of brand association and are responsible for the image and presentation of the brand. Trademarking is a useful tool for products that are extremely similar. With different trademarks, competitors can market similar products with different brand identities for different target markets - Think of Coke and Pepsi.

A registered trademark is represented by the symbol ®. An unregistered trademark is represented by the ™ symbol. A registered trademark possesses a statutory right of infringement. Hence, it is advisable to get trademark registration owing to its evidential value and the incentives provided. Trademark registration is governed by individual countries, but those rights can also cover large parts of the world. SM - service mark is only used for services and not products.

A registered design is an intellectual property mark and is used by designers and product developers to distinguish a product's appearance from its competitors. When a new technology or style is developed, marking the product as a registered design prevents competitors from adopting the same styling or technologies to their products for a set period of time. This time period is specific to different countries but normally lasts for 25 years.

Trademarks are often used to register symbols, logos, or words of a company, whilst registered designs are used for the identity of the products. Trademarks are often more defined and legally defensible than registered designs, as the imagery and guidelines are strictly characterised by the legal owners. Whereas registered design specifications are often ambiguous and have a risk of infringement through open interpretations of those specifications.

Publicity is the gaining of awareness of a product, service or company through media. There can be many ways of gaining positive and negative publicity - this can come down to branding, endorsement, and customer reviews of your product, service or company. 

Positive publicity can help sales and increase the use of your product, services or company. Successful branding will portray your product as ‘useful’ or ‘desirable’ and encourages people to use or access your product. Celebrities are commonly used to endorse products in the hope of creating positive publicity.

Negative publicity is just the opposite of positive publicity. It shows the products, services or brands in a negative light and discourages their use. They can come from bad user reviews, unexpected news, or a connection to a scandal or law-breaking.

The Volkswagen emissions scandal, also known as ‘dieselgate’, found that Volkswagen had intentionally programmed its diesel engines to fool the emissions testing system. The scandal knocked 30% off the value of the VW brand. As Volkswagen is a multi-billion dollar company, this is a significant amount of money. 

A way for companies to avoid bad publicity would be by diversification of their brand. This is when multiple brands are created under one parent company. If one brand gained bad publicity, it would not affect the rest of the brands in the group. Companies can move marketing and publicity money between the brands to avoid loss in sales for the group.

It is important for companies to communicate their brand identity strongly and clearly on products and at the point of sale. This is mainly done through packaging. Packaging design for a product may be an integral part of the work of the company design team or it may be outsourced to specialist packaging designers once the product has reached the end of the design cycle. 

Packaging is one of the first things your customers see when purchasing anything. Designers and manufacturers must ensure there is a visible difference between their product and their competitor's. It should be easy for customers to quickly identify and select your product. Packaging should enhance and alight with the brands identity. 

Branding has become a fundamental part of almost every business, irrespective of its size and field. Without branding, not one company can survive under the pressure of the market. Branding conveys your ideas and views to the world and helps you connect with potential customers. A strong brand can affect more and more people, and that can convert your efforts into greater success and growth. Branding as a whole affects the business as well as the consumers and their purchasing behaviour.

• A clear branding strategy makes it easy for you to convey the brand message and image to your prospective customers, and create a better perception of your brand in their minds.

• A differentiating and appropriate brand for your business can improve response rates, boost sales, market share and revenue.

• When done right, branding will make your brand more recognizable by making it stand out from its competitors.

• A branding strategy can be called successful if it increases customer loyalty towards the product or service.

• A strong and ideally positioned brand can help extend the life of your business.

• Advertising, packaging and media presence of a brand contributes to creating brand image and identity. Consumers are more likely to make their purchasing decisions based on the brand image and not based on the product itself.

Market research on a global scale may be a time-consuming and expensive exercise, which is a major problem for innovative new companies, especially those reliant upon the internet for selling their product(s). Suitable strategies for market research are important in gaining appropriate information for redesigning products. When designing a brand it is important to identify the needs and wants of the market segment the product is aiming towards. A product may require a different brand identity depending on the market segment they are targeting. On occasion, products will be rebranded for different segments based on for instance geographic location, age, gender or culture.