Campaigning for clear, consistent, and significant understandings with key markets in support of clearly defined marketing objectives begins with a brand plan. 

Every company, product, and service has an identity, image, language, and personality that positions it best among competitors. What folks think about you is either there by design or by default. Branding is the critical thinking process that investigates and defines a market's needs as well as the marketing goals, objectives, and strategies necessary to fulfill those needs. It is a process of establishing the metrics for optimizing and measuring marketing success. 

The need for branding is centered in a growing understanding of how communications work. Brands are critical to how people remember what they've been exposed to. It is as applicable to B2B as it is to B2C marketing. 

Much more than the design of trademarks, trade names and logos, your brand needs to be a mnemonic matrix of values and benefits that best identifies and positions you for markets. Before a brand works its way into design, it’s a process of research and discovery that ultimately identifies, defines, and positions you for strategic significance among markets and competitors.

Your markets, stake holders, peers, and other constituencies – i.e., strategic partners, stockholders, opinion leaders in media, government, lobbyists, vendors, employees, competitors, etc. – perceive you from different vantage points. And, these perspectives often influence each other. There is always an acculturation process among and between you, your constituencies, and your competitors. Good branding ensures a marketing campaign stays on message often giving it the "legs" it needs to stand and defend itself on a range of levels and applications on its own.

A good brand is also essential to cost-effective campaigning. It centers the campaign, minimizes risks, and optimizes opportunities in support of your communications investment.

So, while “brand speak” has created an aura and mystique for the concept in recent years, the concept behind branding is actually pretty simple:  As perception is reality, your brand is you. It is the mnemonic trigger that recalls from the subconscious a matrix of facts, impressions, experiences, values, and feelings people have about you. It's the single idea that best positions you for significance among the competition with your markets and constituencies.

Strategic significance is where all good campaigns begin.