Branding and Conceptual branding

Branding is an idea that you create a known identity for yourself or your company. Your brand can be characterised in many ways for example if your brand has an iconic logo or a certain look or feel about it. Branding usually develops expectations of the brand as it becomes known for certain things. An example of this would be say your brand is known for using warm colours throughout all of its products then the consumer will grow to expect these colours throughout all products in the future. Branding is mainly done to sell more products to the consumer as the company and its products will be more attractive if they have a well rounded brand. 

A great example of a company that does branding well is Benefit Cosmetics. Their target audience is young women that want to spend a bit of money on beauty products. When the company began its ethos was 'Who says make-up has to be serious to be good?' and they have definitely stuck with their non-serious concept throughout their brand.  the packaging is a huge part of their branding strategy as they all follow the same cute, quirky retro style. their products are so uniquely packaged to any other makeup company that it makes the consumer want to buy their products over a other less visually pleasing brand. They also give their products fun names such as 'stay don't stray' and 'Oh la lift' this adds a more exiting aspect to the products making their consumers exited about their products. I suppose their brand is aiming to re create the feeling of excitement that a child might feel in a toy shop as everything is bright and visually pleasing. 
It is highly visible when looking through their ranges that their branding is consistent throughout the whole of the company. 

As Social media has grown so much in recent years that is the companies main focus for branding they use platforms such as instagram, facebook and youtube to promote their products and extend their brand. 

"The growth of social media is doing amazing things to help us spread and receive the news faster. But our fundamental belief in business still hasn't changed. Our ultimate goal is to make our customers happy and that's it. Benefit's success began with word of mouth. Now the word of mouth just spreads faster and without borders. We have an amazing digital marketing team helping us but nevertheless, nothing can replace engaging our customers in person. Our brand has to be consistent in the digital world and real world."- Jane and Jean Ford, Benefit Cosmetics founders. [1]

They have no in-consistencies anywhere within the company from the social media promotions to the stands in department stores. Branding makes the consumer more comfortable with a company or product as all of their products have a familiar friendly feel. It could be said that the branding has built this company from the ground up, good branding can make any company succeed. Without branding then your company doesn't really have an image or 'face'

[1] From Social to Mockumentary: The Marketing Journey of Benefit Cosmetics,

 http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2282245/from-social-to-mockumentary-the-marketing-journey-of-benefit-cosmetics, accessed 14/10/14