Defined: Branding, Marketing, Advertising

Business Week's '08 practical guide to branding is filled with delicious tidbits to motivate you to start developing your company brand. Or at the very least, it will help you convince the person controlling the purse strings that it's time to get your marketing agenda in order.

This is an absolute MUST READ! Here are a few quick nuggets:

Rob Frankel, a branding expert and author in Los Angeles, calls branding the most misunderstood concept in all of marketing, even among professionals. Branding, he says, "is not advertising and it's not marketing or PR. Branding happens before all of those: First you create the brand, then you raise awareness of it."

Think of marketing like a toolbox containing branding, advertising, direct mail, market research, public relations, and other tools. "Marketing represents the combination of methods organizations use to persuade their target audience toward some specified behavior such as sales," says Stephen Rapier, of Glendale (Calif.)-based The Artime Group.

If you have not specified your company's brand, don't spend another dime on marketing until you do. While everyone's familiar with megabrands such as Apple (AAPL), Nike (NKE), and Virgin, small companies can also develop potent brands and market them successfully, says Steve Manning, managing director at Igor, a branding and naming firm based in San Francisco.

Friends and loyal readers, this is the tip of the iceberg...click and read...
http://businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2008/sb2008069_694225.htm?chan=smallbiz_special+report+--+branding_branding