Business 2000: Your school shares some of the key characteristics of a brand, you know.Think about it. When your parents were trying to decide where to send you to school, they probably weighed up a number of factors.

Considerations such as its location, facilities, the quality of its teaching,and its overall reputation all served to differentiate it from the other schools to which you might have been sent.

Through parents' evenings, word-of-mouth and/or leaflets, the school you are sitting in today managed to convey what it was about to your parents.

They then chose your school's brand over that of the other schools.

In the marketing world, of course, branding is a much more complicated affair.

Ms Mary Doherty is managing director of Red Dog Design, a graphic design company based in Dublin.

Working for clients as diverse as Aer Rianta, Concern, the Government, Co-operation Ireland and RTÉ, she is only too aware what it takes to create or refresh a brand identity.

There are a number of approaches to the logos used in branding, she says.

With a symbol, for example, the idea is ultimately to arrive at something which is so recognisable that it does not need a name (the Nike swoosh is a good example). Typographical branding, on the other hand, involves playing about with a particular name in order to make it stand out.

But how does she, along with her co-workers, come up with the finished product?

Well, the starting-point is always what the client is trying to reflect and communicate, she says.

"Then we'd brainstorm as a team," she says. "There could be crazy ideas and then we'd narrow down these ideas. We would review them again, perhaps make them bigger or hone them down. When we had three to five we were happy with, we would put them forward to the client.

"We'd usually recommend one, but ultimately it is up to the client to decide," she says.

"Sometimes, for example, it might be a mix of one or the other. But we also need to be confident and prove it will work on a banner - and a business card."

Once you have a brand or logo you are happy with, there is another vital step: how to market that same brand to its intended audience.

"Brand is one of those 'fat' words," says Mr Mark Mortell, head of corporate and financial practice at communications consultants Fleishman Hilliard Saunders.

"Everybody has their own view of what a brand is. I like to define it as a collection of perceptions in the mind of a consumer."

When you own a brand, says Mr Mortell, the challenge is to influence how it is perceived by the consumer. Much depends on the type of brand in question, however.

With a new brand, for example, you are creating an entirely new perception; by comparison, with a brand that is already in the marketplace, you are trying to reinvent or change the image it has previously established.

There are a number of key considerations when creating or altering a brand, according to Mr Mortell.

First, you need to develop a brand proposition: who is your target audience?

Second, it is necessary to be very clear what your competitive set is - who are you competing against in the marketplace?

Finally, it is important to identify what differentiates you and your product in the marketplace.

It is also essential to consider how you wish to position your brand in the market - is it a luxury product or is it at the lower end of the market?

All these considerations then translate into the values you want to transmit to your market.

"You decide and then you build your imagery, associations and attributes around the brand to determine where it is going to sit," explains Mr Mortell.

Once this has been decided, the next step is to promote your brand. This can be done through advertising, such as newspapers, radio, television and/or various other types of sales and promotional activity. The packaging of the product, and its price, can also play a key role.

Mr Mortell stresses, however, that even when you have successfully launched (or relaunched) your brand, it is still necessary to monitor your brand's image in the marketplace, including any change in its competitive set.

"When the market starts to react, things start to happen," he says. "Expectations [from a brand\] have to be set out, but they also have to be met. You can't control the way people are going to interpret the expectations you are setting. So there is a tension between expectation and response."