What Is a Brand?
As we start our exploration of brand and its role in marketing, take a few minutes to watch the following video about Coca-Cola, which is perhaps one of the most iconic brands of all time. As you watch this video, look and listen for the all the different elements that contribute to the thing we call a “brand.”
Click here to read a transcript of the video.
Brands are interesting, powerful concoctions of the marketplace that create tremendous value for organizations and for individuals. Because brands serve several functions, we can define the term “brand” in the following ways:
- A brand is an identifier: a name, sign, symbol, design, term, or some combination of these things that identifies an offering and helps simplify choice for the consumer.
- A brand is a promise: the promise of what a company or offering will provide to the people who interact with it.
- A brand is an asset: a reputation in the marketplace that can drive price premiums and customer preference for goods from a particular provider.
- A brand is a set of perceptions: the sum total of everything individuals believe, think, see, know, feel, hear, and experience about a product, service, or organization.
- A brand is “mind share”: the unique position a company or offering holds in the customer’s mind, based on their past experiences and what they expect in the future.
A brand consists of all the features that distinguish the goods and services of one seller from another: name, term, design, style, symbols, customer touch points, etc. Together, all elements of the brand work as a psychological trigger or stimulus that causes an association to all other thoughts one has had about this brand.
Brands are a combination of tangible and intangible elements, such as the following:
- Visual design elements (i.e., logo, color, typography, images, tagline, packaging, etc.)
- Distinctive product features (i.e. quality, design sensibility, personality, etc.)
- Intangible aspects of customers’ experience with a product or company (i.e. reputation, customer experience, etc.)
Branding–the act of creating or building a brand–may take place at multiple levels: company brands, individual product brands, or branded product lines. Any entity that works to build consumer loyalty can also be considered a brand, such as celebrities (Lady Gaga, e.g.), events (Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, e.g.), and places (Las Vegas, e.g.).