WHAT’S IN A NAME • Brands have been around for centuries and allow firms to distinguish the goods of one producer from those of another. The word “brand” is derived from the Old Norse brandr, which means “to burn.” And, to this day, brands are still the means by which some ranchers mark their livestock to identify them.
THE BASICS • A brand is much more than a word or a symbol. It is a collection of elements (names, logos, symbols, pack- age design, and more) that has created a certain amount of awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on. In the marketplace, we see a wide variety of brand names. Some firms, like Google, use their company name. Others, such as Procter & Gamble, use brand names unrelated to the company name, like Tide or Crest.
PRICELESS • For many firms, their most valuable asset is the brand name associated with their products or services.
HOW IT WORKS • Within a product category, consumers perceive differences among brands based on one or more at- tributes. Therefore, marketers benefit from branding whenever consumers need to choose among competing offerings.
JAMES STEINBERG Branding and you By JOAN M. PHILLIPS, MBA, PhD
As consumers, we are surrounded by brand images. They’re on our coffee cups, our electronics, our cars, and our favorite websites. They’re on our clothes, our toothpaste, and our business cards. They’re everywhere. But how do you define a brand? How do companies use
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them? And how do they affect our consumer attitudes and behavior? Here are a few things you might not know about branding.
Joan Phillips is Director of the MS in Integrated Marketing Communications program and an Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Business Administration.
OUR BRANDS, OURSELVES • We live in a complex world with competing demands on our time, and, as mentioned above, a strong brand can save us time. It can also come to signify quality and positive (or negative) experiences we have with the product it represents. This explains why we might become loyal to or even develop a strong personal identity with a brand.
Further reading: Keller, Kevin Lane (2008), Strategic Brand Management, Third edition, Pearson Education, Inc.
MENTAL SHORTCUTS • As consumers, a strong brand can aid in our decision-mak- ing, reduce our risk, and set expectations for our desired experience for the product or service. When you’re in the store looking for a product you need, you don’t have the time or resources to research a product’s effectiveness, survey other shoppers about their experiences with it, or exhaustively examine the packaging of each item. You look for the colors or shapes that you know, you recognize a brand, and you go with it.
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