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The recent story of the opportunity that Motorola (MOT) missed out on when it's Razr lost its edge in the marketplace, shows the importance of branding.

One comment that Al Ries writing for Ad Age makes is that the mistake that Motorola made was that it concentrated too much on "building better products, not building better brands."

At first this sounds counterintuitive, as it seems to contradict what we've heard so long. When you think of it though, it makes great sense. The point of this isn't that you make create great brands and then build poor products around it. The point is that you build a great brand, and then you can build anything around it.

Think of Virgin and Richard Branson. The Virgin name is branded so well, that he has literally built over 100 businesses, let alone all the products connected with it, around the Virgin brand.

What's the problem with building great products alone? There is always someone coming up behind you and building one better. While a huge amount of products are commodities, the same can never be said for a great brand. It is not reproducible. That's why so many companies that try to outwardly copy what other successful, branded companies do, they meet with failure.

A brand isn't about products and services, it's about heart and soul. And heart and soul is organic to a specific business, it just can't be looked at and copied. It's something that can't be seen with the eye.

When you're branded properly, every product that comes out has the thought with it that it's superior. It also protects you from competitors as well. When they offer similar products or services, the immediate thought is that it can't be as good as what your branded product is.

The huge mistake that Motorola made with the Razr, was positioning it as a product in the minds of consumers, rather than the brand that it in reality was. What did the company do after its initial success? They introduced a host of other products and called them "...Krzr, Slvr, Pebl and Rokr. To add to the confusion, the company has changed those names to MotoRazr, MotoKrzr, MotoSlvr, MotoPebl and MotoRokr. There's also MotoSlim, MotoMing and Motorola Q."

It would be the same as if every MP3 player that Apple (AAPL) introduced was called something different than the iPod. No matter what type of model Apple brings out, it's still called an iPod. And when you ask someone what type of MP3 player they use, they don't say the model, they say "it's an iPod."

That's the power of branding. Sure we create great products, but those great products will succeed based upon the brand that it represents within a consumers heart and mind. Anything else and you'll cannabilize that which shouldn't have been destroyed. Motorola has learned that the hard way more than once.