fplanque: IT world

Tonight we came to the conclusion that there are actually five stages to mastering the art of marketing:

• Level 1: You don't know about marketing.
  You are a happy marketing target.
• Level 2: You understand marketing.
  You're starting to think you'd better be marketing than being marketed at.
• Level 3: You master marketing.
  You realize you now have the power to manipulate people and they don't even complain about it (cf #1).
• Level 4: Steve Jobs.
• Level 5: Jesus.

My take on the topic…

Why should a legitimate business need to worry about branding?

Well, if you wait long enough, any type of business is bound to be commoditized at some point. Actually, they even managed to commoditize artistic creation! They have reality TV shows to dig up disposable singers, don’t they?

How fast your business is going to be commoditized depends on how easy it is to replicate. But eventually, you’ll end up with serious and strong competitors. At that point, the only thing that will distinguish you from the competition is your brand!

Your brand is the ultimate point of differentiation that will allow you to charge a non commodity price for a commodity product or service.

Of course, the competition will work on their branding too. So, if you’re in the market for the long run, if you are a legitimate business, then you definitely need to worry about branding from day 1. The earlier you start, the more time you have to become the “number 1″ brand in your customers’ subconscious mind.

No matter how hard you try, your customers/clients will not remember a dozen facts about you. Maybe they’ll remember 1, or 2… or 3 if they are really paying attention! However, a catchy brand is one easy thing for them to remember. “Google” or “Yahoo” are perfect examples of this. (By the way: “Ask"… is probably not so good… since it doesn’t really differentiate from the surronding noise — in the search area, everyone is “asking” the engines…

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Link: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i07_pfeiffer.html