Branding Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Branding - Essay Example In this context, brand name will become the trademark of the company as it exclusively identifies the brand owner as the commercial origin of products or services associated to the brand. Once a brand become very familiar in a marketplace, it gets brand recognition. When a brand becomes so popular that it enjoys a great deal of positive sentiment in the marketplace, it is said to have achieved brand franchise. This means that the brand is recognized, without the name of the company associated to it. The total value of the brand to the brand owner is termed as brand equity. It reflects the power of the brand's recognition. This concept is brought out in the book 'Brand harmony' by Steve Yastrow in which he states" The strength of a brand impression in the mind of a customer is not a function of how many times the customer has seen an ad for a product, or how powerful the message in that ad is, but by how well all experiences the customer has with the product blend to tell one cumulative, sensible story." Looking back in time to what the term brand just means, in those days, brand was a term used to denote a mark burned on the skin with a hot iron. In today's world what this term has been transformed into is a tool, which is used to create a lasting impression in the minds of consumers and to create an enduring emotional association in the consumer with a particular company or product. The phrase "brand image" gained popularity when sales patterns began to show that feelings and visuals associated with brands were powerful motivators to for consumers to purchase a particular product. So what is to be understood from the use of brands as an effective marketing tool is that people don't just buy products, they associate a product with certain values which they believe and so they buy products whose brands represent things they value and like. These values could be something like money, intelligence and so on. A brand is also seen to gain importance when it is associated with an actual person who has the same type of attributes with which a company is trying to brand a product. Let's take Chunky Soup and Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb as an example. Both of them represent the qualities hearty, strong and reliable and brining them together in this way is a very useful way of sending this message to the public. When such ideas are used to build a brand's image, the brand equity turns into a source of competitive advantage and future earnings according to David Aaker1., who is a national authority on branding A look at the concept of brand extension and multi-brands There is a profusion of products in the market today, and many of them are no different from the rest of the group to which they belong. If you go into a local sandwich shop because you want to have some bottled iced tea, you will be seeing a lot of different brands such as SoBe (hip, lizard cult), Tazo (Zen and the art of tea), or Snapple (down-home, New Jersey attitude). All these brands are selling the same thing, which is sweetened flavored tea. The only way that any one of these products can appeal to you over the other is through their brand appeal, and with this we come back to the point that a brand is a very effective marketing tool. According to David A. Weinstein2, in a consumer economy which is highly competitive