What is a Brand?

Before I get into this project I just want to research what branding is and how a brand is successfully created. I think it is so easy to just presume that a brand is it's logo and that is that, whereas in fact a brand can be the entire identity, style and ethos of a company spreading over all of it's products and carried through all its employees. Here is some information that I gathered and have found very helpful...

"A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business. A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign,symbol, color combination or slogan. The word brand began simply as a way to tell one person's cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. A legally protected brand name is called a trademark. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity - it affects the personality of a product, company or service.

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. Got milk? is an example of a commodity brand.

In the automotive industry, brands were originally called marques, and marque is still often used as a synonym for brand in reference to motor vehicles."

Brand awareness

Brand awareness refers to customers' ability to recall and recognize the brand under different conditions and link to the brand name, logo, jingles and so on to certain associations in memory. It helps the customers to understand to which product or service category the particular brand belongs and what products and services are sold under the brand name. It also ensures that customers know which of their needs are satisfied by the brand through its products (Keller). Brand awareness is of critical importance since customers will not consider your brand if they are not aware of it.

'Brand love', or love of a brand, is an emerging term encompassing the perceived value of the brand image. Brand love levels are measured through social media posts about a brand, or tweets on sites such as Twitter. Becoming a Facebook fan of a particular brand is also a measurement of the level of 'brand love'.

Global brand variables

The following elements may differ from country to country:

• Corporate slogan
• Products and services
• Product names
• Product features
• Positionings
• Marketing mixes (including pricing, distribution, media and advertising execution)

These differences will depend upon:

• Language differences
• Different styles of communication
• Other cultural differences
• Differences in category and brand development
• Different consumption patterns
• Different competitive sets and marketplace conditions
• Different legal and regulatory environments
• Different national approaches to marketing (media, pricing, distribution, etc.)

Brand identity

The outward expression of a brand, including its name, trademark, communications, and visual appearance. Because the identity is assembled by the brand owner, it reflects how the owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand - and by extension the branded company, organization, product or service. This is in contrast to the brand image, which is a customer's mental picture of a brand. The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and the brand identity.

All of this information about brands and identities will really set me in the right frame of mind before I embark on this project, and will hopefully be reflected in my outcomes.