I had the good fortune to be able to do some international traveling this summer, during which I noticed an interesting trend. Every time I walked into a grocery store I found I had no criteria with which to make product decisions because these brands were all new to me.

Take chips, for example. Were these thin chips, the kind of chips that could break a tooth or the super healthy chips that aren’t made out of potatoes at all? I had no idea what to expect. This meant that nine times out of ten, I purchased based on price, the look of the design, or whether I thought the package would endure a few days in my backpack. Because I didn’t know what the brands promised, I ended up seeing them as virtually identical.

This is a good lesson in what branding is all about. It’s a process designed to lift your product/company out of the land of price decisions and zero differentiation into one of clearly stated and delivered expectations so that customers know why they should buy it and why they should continue to buy it. In this case, $3 worth of chips isn’t a crucial decision, but what about my healthcare insurance, a business critical IT system or my financial consultant? The principles of branding work, regardless of the industry.

I wonder why I didn’t seem to have the same problem selecting among brands of wine?

Ciao,
Briana Marrah
Parker LePla