Everyone is becoming a brand. The world is changing and so are our relationships to business in general. More and more people are becoming their own bosses by starting a freelance career or their own business with everyone looking to differentiate themselves. This brings a new-found awareness of the art of brand identity in the mainstream consciousness.

Creating and maintaining a brand is exactly the same as creating and maintaining relationships in our personal lives. It comes down to the same timeless truths such as our missions, goals, values and character. You need to clearly know what these are and also how to communicate them effectively to others in order to A: create the right first impression and B: keep the relationship alive over time.

The word 'brand' has got to be one of the most overused and unfortunately, incorrectly used words in modern English today. It's frequently used to describe anything business-related from marketing, design, communication, advertising, logos, identities, delivery, vision and much more. Designers, marketers and business owners naturally tend to refer to the word 'brand' from their own perspective, and this has caused massive confusion about what it's real meaning actually is. The word has become near-meaningless from overuse.

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Choosing a great name is one of the most important things for a new business. A name can say so much and is a critical element of a brand's success. The name is one of the more tangible components of the brand and something consumers will connect with the most. Everything about your brand will be anchored to its name and while the logo may be seen a lot, the name is heard a lot more. People speak about it. It's heard on the radio and often the visual logo is accompanied by a voiceover on television. It's also seen in its written form in articles on the web and in print over and over again.

Many older brands come to a point in their life cycle where they risk becoming irrelevant, especially in the minds of the younger generation. The brand simply doesn't have the same emotional connection with them as the previous generation.

Everyone agrees that times are tough. In times like these, brands are tested to their maximum with companies' profits directly related to how much value the consumer places in their brand. Since a company's perceived value as well as their market value is so dependant on it's branding, it should be used as a tool to foster growth in a good economy and prevent losses in a down one.

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A brand is a living, breathing thing that needs constant care and attention. Managing a brand properly requires time, energy and of course money. So it makes sense that brand management needs a real budget that goes beyond simple marketing communications.

There is only so much information that the brain can fully absorb. Since we are bombarded with so much information every day, a brand acts as a simple representation of a rich and complex message. Our brains are great pattern detectors and each time we experience a brand, our emotional connection to it grows. We are becoming more and more receptive to brands and more relevance is placed on them now than ever before. Once a person has become accustomed to a product or service from a certain brand, there is usually a feeling of fear and risk associated with trying a competing brands' product.

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Few will argue the case that branding isn't important. Mercedes' logo is universally recognizable and conjures up all kinds of emotions in every single one of us. It stands for something, and this brand value is everything to them. However, Mercedes have the luxury of maintaining what they've already built. Their brand took hundreds of millions of dollars and decades of testing and refinement to get it to where it is today.

“The importance of brand for global business success is becoming increasingly significant” David Roth, WPP.

If you know a trend is coming it's much easier to take advantage of it. You can ride the wave of what people are expecting and build your brand exponentially. It's no secret that the world is changing faster every year but how we approach these changes is the important thing. Here are 5 trends that we will (probably) see this year: