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Branding Strategies Applied to ColombianArtisanEntrepreneurship: Toward a Productive Model
When traveling across Colombia and closely observing the work of its artisans, it becomes inevitable to question why products with such cultural and human richness still struggle to find their place in the market. This article emerges precisely from that concern: it seeks to understand how branding strategies can contribute to strengthening Colombian artisanal enterprises, supporting their progression toward a more sustainable productive model without losing what makes them unique. To this end, an integrative documentary review was conducted, analyzing 25 academic and literary sources published between 1996 and 2025. The findings indicate that artisanal enterprises, despite facing challenges such as informality, limited value addition, and unequal commercial intermediation, possess assets that many global brands would recognize as competitive: authenticity, cultural heritage, ancestral techniques, and narratives deeply rooted in their territories. Contemporary branding trends—particularly emotional branding, storytelling, content marketing, and brand co-creation—offer concrete pathways to enhance these assets. However, the analysis also makes one fundamental point clear: applying branding to the artisanal sector does not mean replicating the same strategic models developed by large corporations; rather, it involves building, together with communities, a brand identity that honestly reflects the craft, its stories, its principles, its origins, the value of territories, and the human work behind each product. A human-centered branding approach grounded in cultural roots can make the difference between mere survival and genuine competitiveness for these enterprises.
