In today's fiercely competitive marketplace, you have only two choices: sell on price or sell on brand. Selling on price is a sure way to go out of business; selling on brand works. Brand identity has become critically important to sales optimization and market positioning.

The reason is that all markets have become oversupplied and all product and services sooner or later become commoditized - except for those that have differentiated themselves by brand identity.

Your brand is at once the central organizing principle of your company and the emotional connection to your target customer. It becomes your marketplace persona. It also helps guide and inspire the company team with a sense of purpose. Without having defined their brands, companies know what they do but not who they are.

Brands can be powerful strategic weapons, quintessential differentiators in the customer's mind. But that's the rub: Branding happens in their minds. Every experience with the company defines the brand for the customer. Consequently, people assess the value of the company and its products or services - even its performance reliability - based on their sense of the brand.

Brand value lies in the trust built up over time that the brand will deliver the same value again and again. As a result, brands can have enormous influence in the marketplace, affecting which stocks, products, and services people buy.

A Yankelovich survey finds that corporate reputation has a measurable effect on people's willingness to make purchase decisions, on companies' acceptance of potential buyers, and on people's willingness to recommend companies for employment.

Branding also affects equity value. As proof of the pudding, J and J's stock price remained steady during one of the most serious consumer product or service crises in history - the Tylenol scare in 1982-1983. The company's market share fell from 30% to 10% and then rose back to 30% over a nine-month period. But public trust in the brand held firm, and, as a result, the stock price barely wavered.

Defining the brand essence, and then seeing that the company and its product or services live that essence, are fundamental to the success of any marketing program and to related sales and communication strategies.

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