In response to Suxanne Koval's post

When it comes to self marketing today it is easy to fall into traps due to social media.  Although it is true there are many pros to social media sites and that they can help you network yourself to people across the world you can find yourself in trouble when you are applying for a job.   You can give a great interview and come off as a perfect employee but if there is even one scathing photo of you or an offensive post on Facebook or Twitter you will be cut from the list of candidates.  So when you want to self market you really need to comb through your personal things to make sure you can properly network yourself.  

Importance of Branding

The positives of branding include both the buyers and the sellers.  For buyers it helps speed consumer purchases and for the sellers it helps introduce new products or promote all same brand products. When it comes to a branding there are many factors that go into it being a successful one.  You need a brand name and logo that can be easily recognizable.  It will have to avoid linguistic traps, easy to remember, suggests a more positive image, and says something to the user.  For the consumer brands are a status symbol that they like to show off.  A shirt with the Lacoste logo is more expensive than the exact same shirt that has the Old Navy logo on it.  This is because people have an idea in their head that the clothes they wear should look higher end.  That is the brilliance of branding.  It molds psychology and science into one.  Products have a life cycle.  There is a time and an end to them, but brands live on.  The original Macintosh computers came and went but the brand is making billions.  That is because even though their laptops are more expensive than Windows but people like the feel it gives them to own one of them.

What do you feel about the effects of branding? Do you feel it can manipulate people into buying more than they should?