News
What is a Brand?
October 30, 2009
A brand is defined by Wikipedia as “a name or trademark connected with a product or producer.”
True, but brands are so much more. Brands have been around as long as human civilization and despite a little stumble during the height of the no name products craze, rumours of the death of branding have been greatly exaggerated. Some large companies (i.e. Kodak) place more value on their brand than on all their other assets combined.
Brands matter now more than ever. From Starbucks to Wal-mart, we are bombarded every day by brands that attract or repel us and guide our buying patterns while helping us define ourselves. Remember the old Marlboro Man? Today, consumers of all ages still identify themselves consciously and unconsciously with hundreds of brands.
To get an idea of how steeped we are in branding, tomorrow try to go a day without making any decisions based on brand loyalty but instead, only using logic and lowest price as your deciding factors. I’ll bet you won’t get far before being seduced back into the magic spell of brandland.
Al Ries defines it this way: “What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.” The strongest brands are a value statement that is permanently etched in our minds. They stand for something that we will sacrifice for: to be them, live them, own them and represent them.
"Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind."
Walter Landor