This morning I walked past a local coffee shop. Directly across the street was a Starbucks. The Starbucks was packed, but only a handful of people were in the local store. I didn’t feel like waiting in line for my morning cup of fresh brewed caffeine so I decided to try the local store.

The medium cup of coffee I ordered cost 40 cents less than it would have at Starbucks, the store was cleaner, and the coffee tasted better. I enjoy Starbucks coffee so that’s saying a lot. The owner of the local store was working the counter himself and the service was great. I could tell he was frustrated though. He kept peering out of the window at the Starbucks across the street. I decided to ask him how he felt about his corporate neighbor.

The man told me that he thought he should be able to beat Starbucks on price and quality. He thought it was outrageous that the Seattle coffee giant charged such obscene prices. He couldn’t understand why he had such a hard time competing.

So what exactly is going on here? How can a store that has an inferior product that costs more have greater sales than a superior competitor that’s right across the street?

Welcome to the wacky world of marketing. Branding is king.

If you are looking to grow your small or medium sized business, it should be one of your top priorities.

It’s difficult and costly to create the powerful brand recognition that multinational corporations have, but even a small sense of brand identity can help.

Human beings are programmed in such a way that we really dislike surprises. We want to know what we are going to get. Your brand is your identity. The strength of your brand is how much people trust that your product is what you say it is. Your brand recognition is how well you are known.

In the next few posts I’m going to look at some of the strongest brands that we have today, and how they were single handedly able to turn companies into multinational powerhouses. I will talk about how individual products were able to contribute to the overall quality of the brands.