5 Rules of Branding That Will Make You a Sought-After Superstar
By Han-Gwon Lung
Co-founder of Tailored Ink
Marketing is the technique you use to acquire customers, but branding is what draws them
to you in the first place and keeps them coming back for more. The following is an
elaboration of five rules of branding that have held true for nearly 100 years:
Do not have a generic name.
It becomes probably easy for consumers to remember big technology companies like
Yahoo!, AOL and eBay, because they were quirky proper nouns. What consumers probably
don’t remember are the countless generically named startups that went bust. Companies
such as Pets.com Mortage.com, iMotors.com and eToys.com. Choosing a common word
for you company is losing strategy.
The less you offer, the more you’re remembered.
It is absolutely crucial to not confuse consumers. Offering too many products or services
weakens your brand name, which customers will always associate with the product or
service that first put you on their radar.
If you want to expand, launch a separate brand.
Offering too much is not necessarily a problem if you can keep up with the demand. But
offering too much under the same brand name is a mistake every single time. An example
of brand-extension failure is Microsoft. Microsoft is still an industry leader in some key
markets but at one point the company completely dominated the tech market. Then it
decided to release tons of new products and services under the Microsoft name. That is
