I was once asked by a company in central Poland — a producer of fruit and vegetable preserves, mainly manufacturing for Biedronka — to run a workshop for their management team on brand building. The company wanted to create its own brand. After two days of workshops, I met with the owner, who asked me: “What’s next?”
I outlined two essential stages.
The first: market analysis, development of the brand strategy, name and logo, product development, packaging design and consumer research.
The second: building distribution and promotion.
He asked about the costs.
I gave him rough estimates: around 30,000 EUR for the first stage, and at least 250,000 EUR per year for the second. We never had a follow-up meeting. From the conversation, it became clear he thought this was only about creating a logo and packaging for products already rolling off the production line.
About three months later, I was told the owner had travelled to Austria and bought a used packaging line for one million euros.
This story reflects many similar situations I’ve observed over the years — perhaps not always as explicit, but with the same outcome. Business owners prefer investing in production capacity rather than in the actual strategy behind building a brand, despite how often they talk about it.
So what is a brand, and how does it differ from a logo?
A logo is a physical identifier of a product’s origin. Just like livestock branding once used on cattle in the Wild West — which is, in fact, where the term “branding” comes from. You can have products with a professionally designed logo, but that does not automatically make them a brand.
The concept of a “brand” exists entirely in the consumer’s mind.
In other words, it is the consumer who has the right to say whether a product is a real brand for them.
When is a brand born?
A brand is born at the moment when a consumer first encounters a name or logo that stays in their memory because of something meaningful to them. What matters is that this association should be, in some way, unique — meaning no other brand they already know occupies that same mental space.
It’s a bit like seeing an extraordinary person on the street — someone who catches your eye so strongly that their face stays with you afterwards.
Now let’s move from the individual consumer to the entire market.
A strong brand differs from a weak one primarily by the level of spontaneous awareness among consumers in a given product category. It is measured very simply — by asking a representative sample of, say, 1000 people: “What chocolate brands do you know?”
If 20% of respondents spontaneously name “Milka”, then Milka’s spontaneous brand awareness is 20%.
Research shows that strong brands typically have between a dozen and several dozen percent spontaneous awareness — and in most categories, only 2–3 brands reach that level (with some exceptions).
What’s important is that the ranking of brands by spontaneous awareness corresponds, in 99% of cases, to their ranking in market share. This relationship is typical for FMCG.
It is the only simple metric that directly links advertising investment to market position.
Spontaneous brand awareness is driven by two factors:
- The reach and frequency of consumer exposure to any branding element
(e.g., products, packaging, advertising, logo) - The associations the consumer attaches to the name and logo — the more meaningful the value they represent, the more memorable the brand becomes. This directly affects both spontaneous awareness and purchase preference.
To sum up:
A brand does not exist if no one knows about it — even if its products sit on shelves but lack noticeable branding elements.
A brand is weak if only a small group of consumers recognize its name and logo but cannot associate them with any specific value that would guide their choice.
Unfortunately, this describes the vast majority of brands.
