Beyond beyonce, branding makes map to marketplace.

R&B singer Beyonce Knowles, who recently took home five Grammy wards, is the byproduct of nearly a decade of image building. She started off as the most prominent member of the group Destiny's Child, moved on to an acting career, and then went solo as a singer.

Beyonce's big win would not have been possible were it not for her and her publicists' skill at branding.

There is no concept as vital or as discussed as branding. There are countless self-proclaimed experts on the subject. Executives want it and account managers plan it. But most people who "get" branding as a concept don't really understand what it means to create a brand and build it into a dominant market position.

Before defining branding, it's important to define what it is not. Branding is not simply a matter of creating the name for a company or a product and repeating it ad nauseam to the public until it becomes a household word. There have been plenty of brand names that have come and gone--and advertising and marketing executives who have come and gone just as quickly, who can attest to that.

Branding is not just taking the name of a successful product and slapping it on the box of a new product to "expand the brand." Branding is not an advertising campaign, a marketing slogan, or a logo. It doesn't have to apply to a product, a company, or a title.

Michael Jordan is a brand. Coca-Cola is a brand. Bill Clinton is a brand, as are George W. Bush, Kobe Bryant, and Beyonce Knowles.

Until now, it has seemed that huge corporations could only do branding with budgets in the million of dollars. But that's not true. Given the proper information, anyone trying to make an impression on consumers can create a brand. That means smaller companies will be competing on the branding level, and also means that even larger companies are going to have to do more to maintain their existing brands, and especially to launch new ones.

It's important, for example, for a brand to be consistent, and that is true of both Walt Disney Co. and the drugstore down the street. It's important to tell the truth, and that is as much the case for Microsoft as it is for a local supplier of jams and preserves.

Karen Benezra, editor of Brandweek, notes, "Consumers need a road map; they need to find a way to get from their need to a product purchase that's simple, easy, not full of a lot of noise, and most brands get lost somewhere between the shelf and the consumer mindset."

Attempts to create an image can backfire. It remains to be seen whether, for example, Janet Jackson's recent breast-baring stunt at the Super Bowl will lead successfully into the release of her upcoming album. The incident may have whetted the public's appetites for an extremely sexualized Janet, or else the outrage it caused among so many may translate into low sales, if not boycotts.

Successful brands can suffer from too much differentiation in the form of negative publicity. Basketball star Kobe Bryant was dropped from his endorsement contract with McDonald's after the sexual assault charges were filed against him. The incidents in Kobe's life corrupted the brand to the extent that many people no longer wanted a part of it.

As with any form of success, Branding requires hard work to achieve and maintain. Bryant and Jackson, perhaps, face the consequences of not keeping up their public image in the way that the public wants. Those who apply these qualities, like Beyonce Knowles, richly reap the rewards.

Michael Levine is the founder of Levine Communications. He is the author of "A Branded World."