Marketing Article
What exactly is a brand? It a question that has confounded the academics for decades and eluded the most erudite of scholars. So, coming from the trenches of the real world of branding, we defined the term and given it a comprehensive meaning.
What is a Brand? A Definition:
"A brand is a product or service with a unique mark, symbol or logo that has a defined set of attributes and characteristics which create a unique experience for the consumer/user."(c)
Let break this definition down into pieces that you can use to create and further develop your own brand.
A brand consists of eight basic building blocks:
The Name
The Logo (brand icon)
The Brand Colors
The Slogan and Brand Messaging
The Sound of the Brand
The Overall Look and Feel = The Brand Position
Packaging the Brand
The Brand Experience
Is a product the brand? No.
Is a symbol the brand? No.
Does the brand really exist in the slogan? No.
If I don remember the Brand, but I remember the color; is that the Brand? No.
Is the brand mostly represented by its packaging? No.
Does every Brand have a unique sound? No.
So, we are left with the real question? What then, is a brand?
"A brand is a product or service with a unique mark, symbol or logo that has a defined set of attributes and characteristics which create a unique experience for the consumer/user."
A Brand is the greater sum of its parts. It is always more than just the nuts and bolts, the pieces; great brands are always the result of the whole equaling more than the sum Nike Free Run Herre of its parts.
Take Nike, for example. As a consumer, I been a user of their Brand for a long time. As a marketer, I been an observer for a long time. I studied long and hard to determine why "Just do it" has worked for consumers for Nike Free Run Dame over 20 years. As an academic marketer I couldn get it. But as a consumer, the visceral message of getting up in the morning, rain or shine, want to or not want to, and going out and running no matter what "Just do it" is a slogan that works. I not a runner, but I walk every day and just getting out there or on the treadmill and "just doing it" is an important part of my lifestyle.
But would Nike be what it is today without Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods?And that where the Brand Experience comes in.
A Brand is beyond the product; it beyond shoes or clothing or sports equipment it all about being a "member of the club." It about belonging. It about the coolness factor. Tiger made golf cool. He took it from being an "old white man sport" to being the coolest, hottest sport any kid could image.
Branding is about making me, the consumer or buyer, more hip, more in the "know," more cool than anybody else. We are a generation and a nation wanting to be special. We want to be richer, more beautiful, better dressed and more effortlessly gorgeous than any other generation that we know. (But then, we are a bit narcissist and would discount any other generation!)
At a time in our economy when everything comes from Wal Mart, via China, it seems as though the low price wins. But, Nike Free Dame au contraire. Branding is at an all time high and it precisely because we don want to be just low price buyers. How pedestrian, after all. We want the world to mean more than price. More than money. We want everything to mean more. We want everything to have meaning.