What Is A Brand And How It Can Help Your Business

What exactly is a Brand?

There are numerous definitions of a brand; some of them are practical and others poetic. Marketers and advertisement professionals define brand in their own words. But they all mean the same thing.

A brand is a trademark or a distinctive name identifying or representing a product or a service. It is a symbolic embodiment of every aspect of a product or service. Also, it creates associations and expectations around it. Brands instantly remind consumers about the products' usefulness or the lack of it.

A brand according to The Dictionary of Business and Management is:

"A name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors."

The guru of advertisement David Ogilvy defines a brand as:

"The intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised."

Typically, on the surface a brand may be a logo, a font, a color combination, a slogan, or a symbol. But the real meaning of a brand goes much deeper beyond a logo or a font design. The relationship of the consumer with a product or a service defines a brand. In simple terms a brand of a company is: how consumers view the company's product or services. Because consumers don't say: "Hey! The logo of this company looks great. So let's buy their car." Rather people are more likely to say: "This is a great place to eat. The food is good, rates are economical, and the service is great."

The relationship of the consumer with a particular company's brand is based on the consumers' experiences and opinions of its products, its services, values, business practices, passions, and visions. All these factors go on to form a brand image in the minds of the consumers. "Perceptions" of consumers based on these factors around a company's creatively designed logo and name designed with selected fonts form its brand.

A brand image is developed by associating an 'image' with a product or service. A personality also may be attributed to a product or service. This way the product or service gets branded in the collective consciousness of the consumers.

In economic terms a 'brand' is a device that creates a monopoly for an organization or personality offering a unique product/service to consumers. It creates a type of imperfect competition among companies offering competing products or services. Brands are registered and protected under copyright laws. Copying of brands is considered an offense.

Building a brand is different from designing a brand. When building your brand you will be factoring in aspects such as: your product, its pricing, your skills, values, passions, and vision. The design of your brand may be done by a group of designing professionals from the advertising world according to your specifications to create a logo and a tag line.

Designing and creating a brand involves a lot of hours of painstaking work. It's the job of advertisement professionals to design and promote your brand. But this need not necessarily be true in all cases. Even you can design your own brand or give valuable inputs for the design of your brand.

Designing, creating and maintaining a brand is known as brand management. Building a brand covers the entire gamut of tangible and intangible factors related to the product and service, including the aspect of designing a brand, which is
just one aspect of brand building. Building a brand includes other important factors like focusing on the product/service, pricing, availability, and customer service.