Hi, this is Greg. Look for my book The Agile Brand on Amazon or on my website at the

agile. World.

Welcome back to the Agile World Podcast. Over the next couple of episodes I'm going to talk about why we brand.

In my book The Agile Brand I talk about four different purposes of branding.

First it's differentiation and competitive advantage.

Second, value creation for the organization.

Third, expectation setting for customers.

And finally, attracting the right employees.

In this episode I'm going to talk about the first topic, differentiation.

The most obvious and visible reason for a unique brand is to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

When you're driving down the highway and you see a McDonald's sign, you clearly

know if you've ever been there before what you're going to get. You have clear

expectations of the menu of the level of service, the price, all of those types of things.

Against a sea of logos, it becomes very easy to pick and choose amongst those things based on a clear

and graphic representation. As I mentioned a few episodes ago, while that graphic representation goes a long way, there has to be a lot more to it.

As I mentioned, it's not just about recognizing something, it's about having the expectation of what am I going to get when I get there.

So it's so important as I use the McDonald's example that that brand has a clear set of expectations.

I know when I'm going there it's not going to be a

five-star meal but I know it's going to be quick. I know it's going to be cheap and I

know about the level the time it's going to take to order from ordering the food to getting the food all of those types of things.

If those characteristics meet what I want, McDonald's has been successful. The challenge becomes when there is a Burger King right next to it or when when there's a little differentiation between some of those brands. So it becomes even more and more

important that you clearly articulate, okay this is why you choose us. We may be

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