A brand is a group of images and ideas which represents an economic producer; specifically, it means concrete symbols including name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information associated with an organization, service or product. A brand helps to create associations and expectations among goods produced by a manufacturer.
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.
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”
Video on What is Branding ?
A well-known brand is usually perceived as one which consumers will recognize, even if they have no idea about the business or its products/services. These are typically the businesses name or the name of the product or service, even though it may also include the name of a attribute or style of a product or service. For example, people see a Nirulas Restaurant, and they know they can get food quickly there.
Brands came about as a means to identity a companies’ products and solutions from comparable products and solutions of competing businesses, but branding could also be utilized to conceal a substandard product as one of good quality; in medieval China, vendors occasionally made use of branding to falsely pass off low quality garden tea as high quality hill tea, through the use of names like “Misty Mountain Tea”, or “Garden in the Sky Tea”.
A brand that is well known in the industry develops brand recognition. When brand recognition grows to a degree where a brand enjoys a critical mass of favourable sentiment in the industry, it is known to have attained brand franchise. A goal in brand recognition is the identification of a brand without the presense of company name. This requires many years of marketing and large amounts of investment; businesses which have attained this include Nike (with its “swoosh”), McDonald’s (with its Golden Arches), Playboy (with the Playboy Bunny) and many auto producers like Mercedes, Maruti and Mitsubishi. For instance, Disney has been effective at branding using their specific script font, which it employed in the logo for go.com.
Nowadays, businesses invest thousands of dollar developing and promoting their brands, keeping up on the newest media news and advancements. A company’s brand is critical to its success and for that reason it’s essential that a company monitors its brand image to make sure that it’s being perceived in a way it wants to be.
What is branding? It is a very vague concept and everyone has a different way of defining it. It seems that branding professionals even dance around the subject, since it is hard to put into words. Hopefully, my explanation will help clear it up. When you think of branding, what is the first thing that comes to mind? If you live or work on a farm, a brand is what you burn into a cowhide to identify the animal, but a brand for a company is much more. A brand is many components together that form an identity or trademark for a company or product. Much like the cow, a brand for a company solidifies the company’s identity and sets their services or products apart from the competition.
Creating a successful business requires building consumer awareness of your products and services and developing a base of loyal customers. Many businesses use words, symbols and phrases in conjunction with their products and services to build brand recognition and loyalty. Trademarks are the words and symbols companies use to distinguished their products.
From small businesses to large corporations, brand recognition is important. Brand recognition refers to how people, preferably in your market niche, are aware of your company’s name and the products and services you offer. A company brand, however, isn’t just about the company name. A company brand can be represented as a logo or design that identifies with your company’s products or services, and differentiates it from competitive brands. Additionally, a brand must exemplify what your company stands for, and resonate in the minds of consumers. Your brand also has to communicate the value of your products or services, and do so in a way that consumers can remember – despite the thousands of marketing and adverting campaigns that consumers are bombarded with on a daily basis.
Twenty years ago it was only the international companies such as Nike, Coca Cola and McDonalds that could afford (and had the foresight) to develop their brand alongside their business. Nowadays brand building is a fairly inexpensive and invaluable addition to the marketing campaigns of most small businesses; afterall, what SME doesn’t want the recognition that the ‘Swoosh’ or ‘Golden Arches’ conjures up?
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