Branding itself has no value for neither customer or product. A logo, a slogan, a promise do not have any value for nobody without the customer satisfaction, without a promise kept, without a great product using experience.

Branding is destined to help remember, to get the customer closer to your already excellent product, not to replace or complete the experience. Your business need a good branding strategy, but if someone imagine that a good branding strategy will replace some missing promises of your product, or an incomplete experience then is in a deep mistake.

The logo or the packaging  will definitely help customers recognize your brand, but considerig these as branding is kind of shallow. Branding is way more than the visual part of it, usually associated with the branding process. Brading consist in a more strategic thinking that should be focused on the customer experience, promises made and kept.

A good branding cannot save a crappy product or service, but will amplify  the message of a good product for sure.

A article in inc Magazine debates controversially on the subject. But, if you keep in mind the „disclaimer” in the start of the article,

By “branding”, I mean the panoply of marketing activities like brand-focused advertising, packaging, marketing materials, logos, taglines, and so forth. In almost every case, money spent on these activities is money wasted.

and read it with that key in mind, it kind of makes sense.

Once customers start thinking your product is garbage, there’s no amount of “branding” that can change the perception.  In fact, attempting to use “branding” to fix a product problem always backfires. All it does is call attention to the difference between the brand message and what the customer knows is true.

By contrast, if customers love your product, then the brand will reflect that love.  Of course, you can use the some of the tools of “branding” to help spread the word, but the keystone is always the customer’s experience

Link