Branding


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A brand is not a name. A brand is not a positioning statement. It is not a marketing message. It is a promise made by a company to its customers and supported by that company. If that promise is kept, it creates a consumer preference. A brand is more than just an icon, a logo, a mission statement, an advertisement.

Branding is a system of visuals and words that combine to represent a product, service, or organization in the mind of a consumer. A brand is something like a flag, you see the flag of a familiar nation and you immediately associate it with that nation. The same happens with brand markings; every time you see the familiar symbols and words that make up the brand identities of Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Apple, Sony, IBM, etc., they trigger responses based on all the experiences you have had with the products and companies that display these marks.

A company may be armed with all the statistics and facts as to why their product or service is superior – but if it doesn’t have an image, a personality for the audience to connect with – their message falls flat. What you are selling is always more than the product/service. It’s a personality, a face with which your target customers want to do business. Thus, the success of branding lies in truly understanding who you are and who your target audience is.

The word “brand”, when used as a noun, can refer to a company name, a product name, or a unique identifier such as a logo or trademark. Brands are often expressed in the form of logos, graphic representations of the brand.

In computers, a recent example of widespread brand application was the “Intel Inside” label provided to manufacturers that use Intel’s microchips.

Today’s modern concept of branding grew out of the consumer packaged goods industry and the process of branding has come to include much, much more than just creating a way to identify a product or company. Branding today is used to create emotional attachment to products and companies. Branding efforts create a feeling of involvement, a sense of higher quality, and an aura of intangible qualities that surround the brand name, mark, or symbol.

 

“A brand is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value.”

 

“ A brand is a symbol, a word, an object, and a concept – all at one and the same time.” A brand is a symbol. What is a symbol? A symbol is a sign that stands for something in a prospects mind. It carries a meaning behind it. Symbols work by stimulating the cognitive process. The consumer’s perceptual process is nothing but making sense out of those symbols present all around. A brand’s figurative aspects like packaging, colours, logos; designs etc are signs that the marketers use to communicate their intensions to the customers. Symbolism is, infact, the practice of conveying notions, ideas and concepts with the help of symbols. Why do brands have different colour schemes? It’s because the marketers try to communicate different messages to their target customers.

 

The cigarette brand Charms’ pack has a unique indigo blue print, like faded jeans fabric. The package design was intended to strike a cord with young customers who identified with ‘freedom’, because jeans symbolized freedom. Marketers use “slender tall” bottles to communicate feminine qualities. What is an athletic shoe with a ‘swoosh’ logo on it? ‘Swoosh’ is a concept- it is all about winning and action.

 

Brands create a perception in the mind of the customer that there is no other product or service on the market that is quite like yours. A brand promises to deliver value upon which consumers and prospective purchasers can rely to be consistent over long periods of time.

 

Thus we can say that,

 

“A brand is a proprietary visual, emotional and cultural image surrounding a company or its products”.

 

Branding is a process of creating and spreading the brand name. It can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and services. Company’s brand awareness in public is often used in evaluating a company. Brands are usually protected by companies as their trademarks.

 

The name Coca-Cola is the main asset of the firm. They have built their brand on this name. Any product or service associated with this particular name has immediate recognition. It gives the people a sense of familiarity and trust.

 

A chocolate associated with the name Cadbury’s would gain much acceptance in the market alone because of its name. It has been a recognized and accepted brand for the chocolates. Often, when people ask for a chocolate, they don’t say “can I have a chocolate”, they say “can I have a Cadbury.” The same applies for Bisleri. How often do we actually ask for Bottled water?

 

McDonalds has a certain symbol associated with it. The golden arches are synonymous with the McDonalds outlet. The kids recognize McDonalds is a km away with one look at the arches. Even if it doesn’t have a McDonalds sign attached. Or for that matter Nike. It no longer needs to write Nike under the swoosh for people to realize it’s a Nike product. The logo is the brand.

 

Here are a few of the many definitions of the word “BRAND”:

 

David Ogilvy defines brands as “ the intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.”

 

Kotler defines brands as “ A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competitor.”

 

The Dictionary of Business and Management defines a brand as:

 

“A name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors.”

 

Jared Spool, an web site usability expert, says,

 

“Branding means creating an emotional association (such as the feeling of success, happiness, or relief) that customers form with the product, service, or company.”

 

Walter Landor, one of the greats of the advertising industry, said:

 

“Simply put, a brand is a promise. By identifying and authenticating a product or service it delivers a pledge of satisfaction and quality.”

From the above definitions one can interpret that-

A brand is:

 

  • The proprietary visual, emotional, and cultural images surrounding a company or its products.
  • A promise of quality, making product selection worry free.
  • Company’s one of the most important asset.
  • A significant source of competitive advantage and future earnings.
  • A space in consumer’s brain that reminds and persuades him to use the product of “XYZ” brand.

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