Brand

What is a Brand?
A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services,
or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. A brand name is the name of
the distinctive product, service, or concept. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the
brand name. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product
and service names.
Brands are usually protected from use by others by securing a trademark or service mark from an
authorized agency, usually a government agency. Before applying for a trademark or service mark,
you need to establish that someone else hasn't already obtained one for your name. Although you can
do the searching yourself, it is common to hire a law firm that specializes in doing trademark searches
and managing the application process, which, in the United States, takes about a year. Once you've
learned that no one else is using it, you can begin to use your brand name as a trademark simply by
stating it is a trademark (using the " TM " where it first appears in a publication or Web site). After you
receive the trademark, you can use the registered (?) symbol after your trademark.

Brands are often expressed in the form of logos , graphic representations of the brand. In
computers, a recent example of widespread brand application was the "Intel Inside" label
provided to manufacturers that use Intel's microchips.
A company's brands and the public's awareness of them is often used as a factor in evaluating
a company. Corporations sometimes hire market research firms to study public recognition of
brand names as well as attitudes toward the brands.
Factors which define a Brand ?

1. The Brand Promise

At its core, a brand is a promise to consumers. What will consumers get when they purchase a
product or service under your brand umbrella? The brand promise incorporates more than just
those tangible products and services. It also includes the feelings that consumers get when
they use your products and services.
Example: Think about your favorite brand and what that brand promises to you. If youre a
Nike fan, the brand might represent athleticism, performance, strength, good health, and fun.
Your brand promises something to consumers. What is it?

2. The Brand Perceptions

Brands are built by consumers, not companies. Ultimately, its the way consumers perceive a
brand that defines it. It doesnt matter what you think your brand promises. The only thing
that matters is how consumers perceive your brand. You need to work to develop consumer
perceptions that accurately reflect your brand, or your brand is doomed to limited growth
potential.
Example: What are consumers perceptions of Lady Gaga? You can bet everything she does
is meant to create specific consumer perceptions.

3. The Brand Expectations

Based on your brand promise, consumers develop expectations for your brand. When they
pull their hard-earned money out of their pockets and purchase your products or services,
they assume their expectations for your brand will be met. If your brand doesnt meet
consumer expectations in every interaction, consumers will become confused by your brand
and turn away from it in search of another brand that does meet their expectations in every
interaction.
Example: Imagine Rolls Royce launched a $10,000 car. To say the least, consumers would be
extremely confused because such a product doesnt meet their expectations for a luxury
brand.

4. The Brand Persona

Rather than asking, What is a brand? a better question might be, Who is a brand? Every
brand has a persona. Think of your brand as a person. What is that person like? What can you
expect when you interact with that person? From appearance to personality and everything in
between, your brand persona is one that consumers will evaluate and judge before they do
business with you.
Example: Think of it this way. Who would you rather spend time with Apple or Microsoft?
These two brands have very different brand personas. Your brand should have one, too.

5. The Brand Elements

Your brand is represented by the intangible elements described above as well as tangible
elements such as your brand logo, messaging, packaging, and so on. All of these elements

must work together to consistently communicate your brand promise, shape brand
perceptions, meet brand expectations, and define your brand persona. If one element is awry,
your entire brand can suffer. Remember what happened with the new Gap logo last year?
Dont make the same mistakes!
Example: There is a reason why that blue Tiffanys box has been around for so long. It means
something to consumers.

Reasons for Brand Failure:

Brands fail, sometimes in pretty spectacular fashion, and more often then we think. Think Kodak, which became
so self absorbed they didnt enter the digital market until the early 2000s, or Blackberry, which was ahead in the
smart phone market for the longest time, but then forgot to improve the user experience.
To quote Scott Bedbury, the person responsible for branding Starbucks: Consumers dont truly believe there is
a huge difference between products. Experience has taught me this is valid in both BtoC and BtoB: what
customers do care about, and what they will remember, is how your brand makes them feel while they
experience it, which is at the core of any branding effort.
This raises an interesting question: why do customers lose that loving feeling for a brand? Why do loyal
customers leave? Here are my 6 different reasons feel free to add any in the comments section below:
1.

Loss of Focus: this can happen for a few reasons:

1.

Defining a target market too broadly: There are a lot of different reasons why things werent
that great for the GAP in the recent past, but the most glaring one for me was leveraging the
same brand across different target markets. Originally, the GAP offered cool, affordable
clothing to teenagers, to then introduce GAP Maternity (not so cool, hopefully not for
teenagers), and baby GAP (equally uncool). Brand extension is great, if it is achievable. In this
case, I would have probably recommended creating different brands for different target
audiences.

2.

Creating too many different marketing messages. When JCPenney eliminated coupons, it
frustrated a lot of consumers, so the retailer started creating new messaging such as on sale,
month long value and best deal. This was then followed an elimination of all pricing
ending with .99 (so $29.99 became $30), and an every day low price message. It got really
confusing after that, and none of the moves resonated with customers. It ended with a CEO
without a job, and an almost complete reversal of all initiatives.

3.

Launching products or services that have nothing to do with the core set of values: This is an
old one, but its a really good example: Colgate Kitchen Entrees. Need I say more?

2.

Deception: intentional or not, being untruthful can be a very expensive mistake. Sketchers found this
out when they had to settle to the tune of $45 million over claims that their line of Shape ups, Tone-ups,
Resistance Runners were positioned as helping people lose weight and tone specific muscles. They
couldnt prove their claims, which is why it is always a good idea to make sure that whatever your
message is, you can prove it.

3.

Fatigue: sometimes, senior management stops being excited about the brand and what it stands for. A
prime example is Tropicana, where its executives had to find out that although they were tired of the
brand, their consumers werent. The new look coincided with a decrease in sales of 20% ($33 million),
and after 7 weeks, parent company PepsiCo pulled the new packaging. A very expensive mistake, that
could have been avoided with some thorough focus group testing.

4.

Loss of confidence: there are two options for a brand that faces increasing competition: losing
confidence, which means going defensive, or develop a strategy to out-innovate the competition. There
is a fine balance to be walked between protecting a brand, and re-directing resources away from
innovation to litigation. A nice example would be Porsche suing Crocs for brand infringement over the
use of the name Cayman for a Croc product line. A huge waste of time and effort (we all know the
difference between a $50,000 car and a $30 pair of rubber shoes), which has resulted in a lot of online
speculation and not a positive perception of the Porsche brand.

5.

Loss of relevance: maintaining brand equity means staying current, fresh and ahead of your
competitors. If your brand fails to do so, it loses brand equity and becomes very quickly stale and
irrelevant. Kodak would be a fine example in this category, due to its complete failure to adopt digital
photography. They got stuck believing that developing digital would threaten their traditional film
business, and when they finally realized change was coming, it was too late. The sad thing? Kodak was
ahead of everyone else when Kodak engineers developed digital photography technology in 1975.
Kodak emerged from bankruptcy in September of 2013 as a technology leader serving large and
growing commercial imaging markets.

6.

Overconfidence: happens when a brand thinks they can dictate customer expectations and continue to
dominate a market without much innovation. Blackberry would be a prime example, believing itself to
be invincible, and refusing to map out the customer experience. The market has been speculating about
a Chapter 11 filing since the summer of 2012.

How to Revive a Brand:

brand/product that doesnt command the value that it needs to, or once did:
1. Think of the product in new ways when you redefine what something is or could be, you reframe its context
and its much easier to redefine what it can be used for. When you stop thinking of milk as a drink, for example,

and start thinking of it as a food, as Fonterra did, you change the scope of the product youre working with in so
many ways.
2. Redefine who you want to be a brand to if the current audience places a declining level of value on it, think
about who might be able to use it in ways that enable you to regain value. Starbucks redefined the value of
coffee globally by making coffee hip, urbane and tailored to individual taste. Now theyre looking to do the
same thing with tea. In a world that really does believe its seen or searched it all, discovery is a powerful
consumer motive.
3. Change what it looks like sometimes changing the value of a commodity can be as simple as changing how
it appears to others. Think about the difference in pricing and perception between bottled beer and beer on tap.
However, new packaging alone wont make up for a product that doesnt add value. What it can do is signal the
unrealized value that you want consumers to take up on.
4. Formulate your offer in different ways the water industry changed how we think of water by adding
vitamins and/or carbon dioxide and then segmenting those offers to specific audiences. Today, the world spends
more than $100 billion a year on bottled water. What could you do to what you have to make it more than it is
right now?
5. Name it in different ways the deer industry in New Zealand renamed its venison offering cervena to
differentiate it from deer meat sourced from elsewhere and to make a strong country-of-origin play. If youre
selling copper and everyone else is selling copper, what can you call your copper to distinguish it from what
people can source anywhere. Again renaming alone wont be enough. In the case of cervena, the change in
name spoke to an idea that consumers were interested in, and eliminated the concern, amongst American
consumers, that they were eating Bambi.
6. Package it in different ways the red meat industry is now starting to segment its offer and to assign different
perceptions of value to cuts and breeds that not too long ago would all have just been beef. Angus is a classic
example. Others are packaging along ethical lines to put daylight between themselves and others and to appeal
to consumers who are prepared to pay more for feel good foods. Cage-free and free-range eggs are part of this
trend. (Whats interesting for those interested in moral labeling, however, is how those terms and others can be
defined in some jurisdictions. It doesnt necessarily mean what it appears to mean.)
7. Distribute it in different ways changing the distribution channel can be a highly effective way to transform
your white label product into something valued by a more specific audience. iTunes rebuilt the value of music
by reinventing the concept of the single into a single digital track and allowing people to buy the music they
wanted in a new way, at a new price. Tablets are having the same effect on books and magazines redefining
how consumers access content and buy it. Its a very different value equation than it used to be but at least its
a value equation.
8. Price point it in different ways This is a particularly effective approach when combined with segmentation.
Go after various parts of the market with products that demonstrate various levels of value add and are price
pointed accordingly e.g. a bulk product at a bulk price, a high end or specialized product priced at a top-end
price, and a consumer focused product that may even operate at flexible price points. Forced into what was close
to a death-spiral for many, the airline industry repriced to find new ways of achieving yield. First, they cemented
the front-end profit by giving business and first class passengers more space and more comfort to protect
margins. Then they debundled their economy offering, adding new categories like Premium Economy,
cramming in more seats in cattle class and instigating fees for service that have kept the asking price low whilst
charging at every point for things that were once considered included. This evolution hasnt exactly been a
success from the travelers point of view, but it has certainly forced a rethink on what is paid for, and how.
9. Wrap a different story around it New storylines can change how people perceive a product. Water, beer and
wine have all used stories to engage consumers and to deliver a new sense of worth. Increasingly, there are
opportunities to link undifferentiated products to differentiating stories around environment, supply chain,
conduct, purpose and cause. Psychologist Dr. Norman Holland, in an interview with Stephen Denny, explains

why: When we adopt a brand for our own use, we integrate it into the stories of our daily lives. Once
integrated of course, that storied brand has new value for buyers because now its personal.
A note of caution. While, as outlined above, there are a number of ways to stave off deterioration and even to
restore value to goods whose value has decayed, there is also no denying that the product or brand you make has
a best-before date in terms of margin. Unless you assume commoditization, and continually look for ways to
slow its advance or reverse its influence, it will get your brand in the end.
The key to successfully staging a resurgence in the value of your brand is to think of each of the nine tactics
outlined above as a multiplier. To an extent, the more multipliers you can employ simultaneously, the greater the
chances that you can relift your brand. Focus them specifically on the key needs and unmet desires of your
(new) target market. So, for example:
In a market, where your brand has been painted into a corner I might look to use these three approaches:
Think of the product in new ways X Change what it looks like X Distribute it in different ways
Or if the market youve traditionally targeted is treating your brand like a commodity and threatening to start a
price war, I might combine these four:
Redefine who you want to be a brand to X Package it in different ways X Price point it in different ways X Wrap
a different story around it
When you change how a product is viewed and accessed, you open the door to changing how it can be
marketed.