Great brands have wonderful things to convey compared to lousy brands. When lousy brands say “great service,” it means something very different than when a great brand utters the same words.

There are numerous other tools companies don’t know how to use or haven’t mastered. And I am not talking about “social media” as a tool. Social media is a distribution tool. I’m talking about design, color, imagery, typography, style and form (as in packaging).

Remember how shocked I was to discover Amazon had over 8,000 branding books? Well this I know: when a specific discipline has that many opinions on one subject, something fundamental is always missing. Always. The omitted fundamental? A definition and a universal reason for branding. And it came down to four words:

Fact: there are three phases every customer goes through with your brand. Most companies use only the first two of these (66%), when in fact there are actually three: the phase that starts before they buy, the phase that occurs during the sale (or during the use of your product or service) and the last (most overlooked) phase occurring after the sale.

Your competitors have the same idea of how unique, special, vital, and relevant they are with everyone spending a lot of money using the same words, messages, and promises to convince prospects how unique they each are.