There’s no one-size-fits-all method of creating a brand because good brands are based on a deep understanding of your company and the unique value of your products or services. Outside experts can’t create your brand for you or impose one from the outside. If it isn’t authentic, representing the essence of the company, it’s doomed.

Start the process by examining and refining your message. What’s unique about your offerings? What can you do better, faster or more cheaply than your competitors? In what ways is your offering more valuable, more entertaining, more reliable, more environmentally friendly, more prestigious? What’s the most important single thing you want customers to think of when they see or hear your brand name? What’s the essence of your business?

Domino’s, Little Caesar’s and Papa John’s all sell pizza, but the companies realized their brands in completely different ways. Domino’s was the first to offer a delivery-only pizza business and became the leader in that category. Little Caesar’s came along and created lower-cost takeout-only pizza. Papa John’s wasn’t the first in its category, so it focused on quality, with the slogan “Better ingredients. Better pizza.”

Decide what overriding message or concept you want to communicate, and let it drive the presentation of your brand. Invite employees and creative friends and associates to help you brainstorm about what name, logo, and perhaps slogan can best communicate the concept.

If the ideas aren’t flowing freely, turn the brainstorming process into a game. If your company were an animal, what would it be? How about a foreign country, a color, a car, a rock band, a dance step, an opera, a sandwich?

It helps to have a memorable name, and the less generic it is, the better. Would you rather shop at Home Depot or General Hardware? Blockbuster or The Video Store?

Keep in mind that people won’t always see your product—sometimes they’ll hear the name in conversation or on the radio or TV. Is it distinctive enough that they’ll be able to tell the brand name from descriptive words? Advertising for a restaurant named Best Pizza would be doomed from the start: Casual listeners couldn’t tell the difference between an advertising claim (“Is that ‘Best Pizza’ or ‘best pizza’?) and the name of the brand.