I learned from many international authors with more than 20 years' experience writing for books, magazines, newspapers & online as well as top gurus teaching at several Graduate School of Business that sales & marketing are the lifeblood of most businesses. They educate me how to get up close with the customers. The aim is to make our business stand out from the crowd. They share some of the newest marketing opportunities and how we can use it to convert interest into sales. What makes our customers and potential customers, tick? What do they really want when it comes to our product or service offering? How can we reach them in the cheapest but most effective way? Understand this, and we'll be setting our business up for even greater success.

As a management educator, I realized that ‘A product is something that is made in a factory: a brand is something that is brought by customers. A product can be copied by a competitor: a brand is unique. A product quickly outdated: a successful brand is timeless’. So said advertising guru Stephen King in the late 1960s. His words still ring true when it comes to developing a brand that can stand the test of time. What is it about our brand that makes it unique?

During walkabout with my wife, Zarina along the busy Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman (TAR) in the heart of KL City, we found our favorite Insaf Restaurant has been renamed as Insaf Signature. We ordered our favorite briyani rice with fried chicken and mutton curries and tasted just the same dishes. We were curious why the need to rename the restaurant and rebrand their authentic traditional dishes? We thought renaming is simply not opportunistic enough!

We talked to the hands-on restaurant owner and the friendly chef. They said, “The renaming of our restaurant to positioning it as the House of high class Indian Muslim food specializing in handcrafted dishes through a blend of spices and modern culinary artistry standards since 1984! In a highly competitive F&B business, we want to stand up an entirely new brand - a more customer-centric, more modern, more differentiating & to gain more growth in return."

Zulkifly Baharom (hajizul50@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!