Branding

Since the early days of marketing, brands have always been important.

Branding, like marketing, is as old as the concepts of ownership and selling. In former times, people branded an item simply to show who the owner was and, of course, this is still one reason behind branding.

In the 21^st century, brands are more likely to signal the availability of a product, but their role has changed quite a lot. Nowadays brands are powerful instruments of strategic marketing and important vehicles on the road to long-term profitability.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as ‘a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those of a competitor’. A brand name is that part of a brand that can be spoken, including letters, words and numbers, like BMW, Danone or Citibank. A brand mark is the element of a brand that cannot be spoken, often a symbol, design or specific packaging, like the Mercedes logo or the Absolut Vodka bottle. A trademark is the legal designation indicating that the owner has exclusive use of the brand.

Brand names, as well as other brand elements such as logos, URLs, symbols, characters, spokespeople, jingles, packages and signages, should be memorable, meaningful, likable, adaptable, transferable and protectable. A good brand name is easy for customers to say, spell and recall. Excellent examples are Dell, Bic, Nokia and Ford. Besides being memorable, it is an advantage that brand elements are meaningful; for example, Mr Clean (cleaning product), Vanish (stain remover), Head & Shoulders (shampoo) and Newsweek (magazine) reinforce an attribute or benefit association related to the brand.

Preferably a brand is transferable both across product categories and geographic boundaries. The more specific the brand name, the more difficult it may be to extend the brand to other product categories. Nivea could easily extend its brand to the shampoo, skin care and other markets, but it will be difficult for Head & Shoulders to extend its shampoo brand into skin care. To build a successful global brand, the brand name should be easy to pronounce in different languages. Global brand names also have to be culture- or language-neutral in the sense that they do not evoke strange or undesirable connotations in foreign languages. Kodak, Mars and IBM are good examples of this linguistic neutrality. Finally, a brand should be available and easy to protect through registration. Therefore, no generic words should be used.

Three categories of brands can be distinguished:

Manufacturer brands are developed by producers. They are supported by integrated marketing, including pricing, distribution and communications. Levi’s, Danone and BMW are examples of manufacturer brands.

Own-label brands (also called private labels, store or dealer brands) are developed and owned by wholesalers or retailers. There is no link between the manufacturer and the brand. St Michael (Marks & Spencer), Albert Heijn (The Netherlands) and Derby (Delhaize, Belgium) are examples of store brands.

Generic brands indicate the product category. Generics are in fact brandless products. They are usually sold at the lowest prices. Did you know that aspirin and linoleum were once brand names? So were nylon, escalator, kerosene and zipper. All of those names became so popular, so identified with the product, that they lost their brand status and became generic (the name of the product class). The producers then had to come up with new names. The original Aspirin, for example, became Bayer aspirin. Some companies that are working hard to protect their brand names today include Xerox (don’t say ‘Xerox it’, say ‘Copy it’) and Styrofoam.

Exercise 11 Answer the following questions:

1. Why did people brand an item in former times? 2. What do brands signal in the 21^st century? 3. What are brands nowadays? 4. How does American Marketing Association define a brand? 5. Give the definitions of a brand name, a brand mark and a trademark. 6. What brand elements do you know? 7. What should brand names as well as other brand elements be? 8. Why do logos, symbols, characters and even brand names have to be updated? 9. What characteristic make a successful global brand? 10. Name and characterize brand categories.

Exercise 12 How many expressions with brand do you know? Match the terms in the box with their definitions.

brand awareness • brand equity • brand extension • brand identity • brand image • brand loyalty • brand name • branding • derived brand • off-brand

1. What a brand is called. 2. How much people are aware of a brand. 3. What a company wants people to think about a brand. 4. What people actually think about a brand? 5. When a product doesn’t fit the company’s brand. 6. The value (either monetary or not) that a brand adds to a product or service. 7. When people like a brand and buy it again and again. 8. When a product or service is associated with a brand. 9. When an existing brand is used to support a new range of products. 10. When a component of a product becomes a brand in its own right (e.g. Intel in PCs).

Exercise 13 a) Read a talk on counterfeiting and fake goods and discuss these questions before reading.

1. How often do you see pirated imitations of well-known brands for sale in your country? 2. Have you ever bought something that you knew was an illegal copy?