All about Brand
Definition of Brand
Brand is the "name, term,
design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product
distinct from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing,
and advertising. Initially, livestock branding was adopted to differentiate one
person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the
animal's skin with a hot branding iron. A modern example of a brand is
Coca-Cola which belongs to the Coca-Cola Company.
In accounting, a brand defined
as an intangible asset is often the most valuable asset on a corporation's
balance sheet.
Brand owners manage their brands carefully to create shareholder
value, and brand valuation is an important management technique that ascribes a
money value to a brand, and allows marketing investment to be managed (e.g.:
prioritized across a portfolio of brands) to maximize shareholder value.
Although only acquired brands appear on a company's balance sheet, the notion
of putting a value on a brand forces marketing leaders to be focused on long
term stewardship of the brand and managing for value.
Interesting Topics:
The word "brand" is
often used as a metonym referring to the company that is strongly identified
with a brand.
Marque or make are often used
to denote a brand of motor vehicle, which may be distinguished from a car
model. A concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept,
like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific
product, service, or business. A commodity brand is a brand associated with a commodity.
A logo often represents a
specific brand.
History of Brand
The word "brand"
derives from the Old Norse "brandr" meaning "to burn" -
recalling the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their
products.
The oldest generic brand, in
continuous use in India since the Vedic period (ca. 1100 B.C.E to 500 B.C.E),
is the herbal paste known as Chyawanprash, consumed for its purported health
benefits and attributed to a revered rishi (or seer) named Chyawan. This
product was developed at Dhosi Hill, an extinct volcano in northern India.
The Italians used brands in
the form of watermarks on paper in the 13th century. Blind Stamps, hallmarks
and silver-makers' marks are all types of brand.
Although connected with the
history of trademarks and including earlier examples which could be deemed
"protobrands" (such as the marketing puns of the
"Vesuvinum" wine jars found at Pompeii), brands in the field of
mass-marketing originated in the 19th century with the advent of packaged
goods. Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as
soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their
items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the
barrels used, extending the meaning of "brand" to that of a
trademark.
Bass & Company, the
British brewery, claims their red-triangle brand as the world's first
trademark. Tate & Lyle of Lyle's Golden Syrup makes a similar claim, having
been recognized by Guinness World Records as Britain's oldest brand, with its
green-and-gold packaging having remained almost unchanged since 1885. Another
example comes from Antiche Fornaci Giorgi in Italy, which has stamped or carved
its bricks (as found in Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City) with the same
proto-logo since 1731.
Cattle were branded long
before this. The term "maverick", originally meaning an unbranded
calf, comes from Texas rancher Samuel Augustus Maverick whose neglected cattle
often got loose and were rounded up by his neighbors. The word spread among
cowboys and came to apply to unbranded calves found wandering alone.
Factories established during
the Industrial Revolution introduced mass-produced goods and needed to sell
their products to a wider market - to customers previously familiar only with
locally-produced goods. It quickly became apparent that a generic package of
soap had difficulty competing with familiar, local products. The packaged-goods
manufacturers needed to convince the market that the public could place just as
much trust in the non-local product. Pears Soap, Campbell soup, Coca-Cola,
Juicy Fruit gum, Aunt Jemima, and Quaker Oats were among the first products to
be "branded" in an effort to increase the consumer's familiarity with
their merits. Many brands of that era, such as Uncle Ben's rice and Kellogg's
breakfast cereal furnish illustrations of the problem.
Around 1900, James Walter
Thompson published a house ad explaining trademark advertising. This was an
early commercial explanation of what we now know as branding. Companies soon
adopted slogans, mascots, and jingles that began to appear on radio and early
television. By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize the way in which
consumers were developing relationships with their brands in a
social/psychological/anthropological sense.
Manufacturers quickly learned
to build their brands' identity and personality such as youthfulness, fun or
luxury. This began the practice we now know as "branding" today,
where the consumers buy "the brand" instead of the product. This
trend continued to the 1980s, and is now quantified in concepts such as brand
value and brand equity. Naomi Klein has described this development as
"brand equity mania". In 1988, for example, Philip Morris purchased
Kraft for six times what the company was worth on paper; it was felt[by whom?]
that what they really purchased was its brand name.
Marlboro Friday: April 2, 1993
– marked by some as the death of the brand – the day Philip Morris declared
that they were cutting the price of Marlboro cigarettes by 20% in order to
compete with bargain cigarettes. Marlboro cigarettes were noted[by whom?] at
the time for their heavy advertising campaigns and well-nuanced brand image. In
response to the announcement Wall Street stocks nose-dived for a large number
of branded companies: Heinz, Coca Cola, Quaker Oats, PepsiCo, Tide, Lysol. Many
thought the event signalled the beginning of a trend towards "brand
blindness" (Klein 13), questioning the power of "brand value".
Concepts of Brand
Effective branding can result
in higher sales of not only one product, but of other products associated with
that brand.[citation needed] For example, if a customer loves Pillsbury
biscuits and trusts the brand, he or she is more likely to try other products
offered by the company - such as chocolate-chip cookies, for example. Brand is
the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term,
sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key
constituencies: customers, staff, partners, investors etc.
Some people[who?] distinguish
the psychological aspect (brand associations like thoughts, feelings,
perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become
linked to the brand) of a brand from the experiential aspect. The experiential
aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is
known[by whom?] as the brand experience. The brand experience is a brand's
action perceived by a person. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to
as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people,
consisting of all the information and expectations associated with a product,
service or the company(ies) providing them.
People engaged in branding
seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating
the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain
qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand can
therefore become one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as
it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. The
art of creating and maintaining a brand is called brand management. Orientation
of an entire organization towards its brand is called brand orientation. Brand
orientation develops in response to market intelligence.
Careful brand management seeks
to make the product or services relevant to the target audience. Brands should
be seen as more than the difference between the actual cost of a product and
its selling price – they represent the sum of all valuable qualities of a
product to the consumer.
A widely known brand is said
to have "brand recognition". When brand recognition builds up to a
point where a brand enjoys a critical mass of positive sentiment in the
marketplace, it is said to have achieved brand franchise. Brand recognition is
most successful when people can state a brand without being explicitly exposed
to the company's name, but rather through visual signifiers like logos,
slogans, and colors. For example, Disney successfully branded its particular
script font (originally created for Walt Disney's "signature" logo),
which it used in the logo for go.com.
Consumers may look on branding
as an aspect of products or services, as it often serves to denote a certain
attractive quality or characteristic. From the perspective of brand owners,
branded products or services can command higher prices. Where two products
resemble each other, but one of the products has no associated branding (such
as a generic, store-branded product), people may often select the more
expensive branded product on the basis of the perceived quality of the brand or
on the basis of the reputation of the brand owner.
Brand awareness
Brand awareness refers to
customers' ability to recall and recognize the brand under different conditions
and to link to the brand name, logo, jingles and so on to certain associations
in memory. It consists of both brand recognition and brand recall. It helps the
customers to understand to which product or service category the particular
brand belongs and what products and services sell under the brand name. It also
ensures that customers know which of their needs are satisfied by the brand
through its products. Brand awareness is of critical importance in competitive
situations, since customers will not consider a brand if they are not aware of
it.
Various levels of brand
awareness require different levels and combinations of brand recognition and
recall:
- Most companies aim for
"Top-of-Mind". Top-of-mind awareness occurs when a brand pops into a
consumer's mind when asked to name brands in a product category. For example,
when someone is asked to name a type of facial tissue, the common answer is
"Kleenex", represents a top-of-mind brand.
- Aided awareness occurs when
consumers see or read a list of brands, and express familiarity with a
particular brand only after they hear or see it as a type of memory aide.
- Strategic awareness occurs
when a brand is not only top-of-mind to consumers, but also has distinctive
qualities which consumers perceive as making it better than other brands in the
particular market. The distinction(s) that set a product apart from the
competition is/are also known as the Unique Selling Point or USP.
Brand elements
Brands typically comprise
various elements, such as:
Name: The word or words used to identify a company, product,
service, or concept
Logo: The visual trademark that identifies a brand
Tagline or Catchphrase: "The Quicker Picker Upper" is
associated with Bounty paper towels
Graphics: The "dynamic ribbon" is a trademarked part of
Coca-Cola's brand
Shapes: The distinctive shapes of the Coca-Cola bottle and of the
Volkswagen Beetle are trademarked elements of those brands
Colors: Owens-Corning is the only brand of fiberglass insulation
that can be pink.
Sounds: A unique tune or set of notes can denote a brand. NBC's
chimes provide a famous example.
Scents: The rose-jasmine-musk scent of Chanel No. 5 is trademarked
Tastes: Kentucky Fried Chicken has trademarked its special recipe
of eleven herbs and spices for fried chicken
Movements: Lamborghini has trademarked the upward motion of its car
doors
Customer: Relationship management
