Hi everyone. I said in my last post that I will try to pass on some nuggets of wisdom I picked up at the Create Your Own Economy (CYOE) workshop. One of them was branding. One of the reasons I started blogging was that since I am in the healthcare field, I wanted to give health information to people such that it is easy to understand. The other reason I started doing that was to monetize my blog. I am also interested in wealth and so I thought I would write a post about that once in a while and finally, I read a lot of books on self improvement and if I find something useful, I pass it on to you via the blog. So I decided that I would concentrate on health, wealth and wisdom related topics. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said “Early to bed, early to rise, make a man healthy wealthy and wise”.

Anyway, back to branding. At the workshop we learned that branding makes you different, especially if you are not. Think about the most popular brands: Nike is well known for shoes. Ferrari is well known for making fast cars. Also when you build a brand, you can then expand it into similar areas. For example Coke wanted to get into bottled water. But if they would have come up with Coke Water it would have been confusing. So instead they created a brand called Dasani. Now Coors beer company also wanted to get into bottled water. They created Coors Water but no one bought the water. They should have done what Coke did. So your brand needs to be strong and positive. There was a comedy serial on American TV called Seinfeld. In one episode, one of the characters is a proctologist. So his boat is called Assman. He orders a personalized license plate called Assman. Also based on the example of Coors, you need to realize where it would make sense to extend your brand and where it would make sense to create a different brand. For example, in the US we get disposable razors and pens made by a company called Bic. Now these items are cheap, but they don’t last long. What if Bic decided they want to make pacemakers? Would you buy them? No, because you associate Bic with disposable, short lived items. Another example is Heinz ketchup. Their commercials show that the ketchup comes out of the bottle slowly because it is thick and not watery. But if Heinz decided to build a sports car, would you buy it. Probably not because you associate Heinz with slow ketchup. Branding also gives you the ability to charge higher prices for your services. Think of Starbucks. They sell coffee, but it costs almost $3.00 for a small cup. I can buy a cheap cup of coffee which will probably taste the same and give you the same amount of energy boost at some other store for less than $1.00, but because of the brand Starbucks is able to charge more. So if you want to differentiate yourself, then branding is the way to go.