This is the part one of what we hope will be an ongoing series about some practical branding issues. The series will address complications that arise from the fact that branding happens in a place you don't own-other people's heads.

Among the "spaces" we will explore as we start to look into the issue of Branding in space are:

- Head Space-where brands actually live and breath and claim their gray matter
- Visual Space-the space from which brands enter the brand community's brain
- Sensory Space-the portals to the brain that allow you to deepen your brand's impact
- Physical Space-the place where your product features and benefits are actually experienced-you can either leverage this space (which you should) or treat it as irrelevant (which you should do if you want to lose!)
- Media Space-the space where you pay resources to talk about and show off your brand
- Digital space-where a growing percentage of your customers shop for information (and other stuff) and where more and more people receive their brand impressions
- Your own space-which is the space you carve (differentiate) out that is unique to your brand

The world is full of brands. Some of them are well conceived. Some are not. Some are long-standing institutions in the branding universe. Others are pop-ups, either by design or by default. They will be gone tomorrow afternoon. As we think about branding with you, we'd like to hear what you are doing to differentiate yourself. And we'd like to remind you that branding is an investment. It pays off over time. And the more you do right as you develop your brand, and the more you build into your brand in the way of care and feeding, the higher return you'll realize from your brand.