• Brand is the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers. " Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising. Initially, livestock branding was adopted to differentiate one person's cattle from another's by means of a distinctive symbol burned into the animal's skin with a hot branding iron. A modern example of a brand is Coca Cola which belongs to the Coca-Cola Company.
• The word "brand" is often used as a metonym referring to the company that is strongly identified with a brand. • Marque or make are often used to denote a brand of motor vehicle, which may be distinguished from a car model. A concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept, like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service, or business. A commodity brand is a brand associated with a commodity.
Brand history • The word "brand" derives from the Old Norse "brandr" meaning "to burn" - recalling the practice of producers burning their mark (or brand) onto their products. • The oldest generic brand, in continuous use in India since the Vedic period (ca. 1100 B. C. E to 500 B. C. E), is the herbal paste known as Chyawanprash, consumed for its purported health benefits and attributed to a revered rishi (or seer) named Chyawan. This product was developed at Dhosi Hill, an extinct volcano in northern India. • The Italians used brands in the form of watermarks on paper in the 13 th century. Blind Stamps, hallmarks and silver-makers' marks are all types of brand. • Although connected with the history of trademarks and including earlier examples which could be deemed "protobrands" (such as the marketing puns of the "Vesuvinum" wine jars found at Pompeii), brands in the field of mass-marketing originated in the 19 th century with the advent of packaged goods. Industrialization moved the production of many household items, such as soap, from local communities to centralized factories. When shipping their items, the factories would literally brand their logo or insignia on the barrels used, extending the meaning of "brand" to that of a trademark
Relationship between trade marks and brand
Brand elements • Brands typically are made up of various elements, such as: • Name: The word or words used to identify a company, product, service, or concept. • Logo: The visual trademark that identifies the brand. • Tagline or Catchphrase: "The Quicker Picker Upper" is associated with Bounty paper towels. • Graphics: The dynamic ribbon is a trademarked part of Coca-Cola's brand. • Shapes: The distinctive shapes of the Coca-Cola bottle and of the Volkswagen Beetle are trademarked elements of those brands. • Colors: Owens-Corning is the only brand of fiberglass insulation that can be pink. • Sounds: A unique tune or set of notes can denote a brand. NBC's chimes are a famous example. • Scents: The rose-jasmine-musk scent of Chanel No. 5 is trademarked. • Tastes: Kentucky Fried Chicken has trademarked its special recipe of eleven herbs and spices for fried chicken. • Movements: Lamborghini has trademarked the upward motion of its car doors. • Customer relationship management
5 Steps to Brand Building
• 1. Identify your reasons-to-believe. • Your brand promise is irrelevant if your customers do not believe it. Therefore, your promise must be supported by reasons-to-believe. This will automatically add substance to the promise and define specific expectations for the customer. • For example, an automobile manufacturer promises potential customers that Car XYZ is an "intelligent choice for serious drivers. " What makes it an intelligent choice? Why should the customer believe this promise? • To address this question effectively, the manufacturer could frame its promise with two reasons-to-believe. . . sporty performance and safety. These two reasons in essence define "intelligent choice" and clearly set customer expectations. They also give the company specific direction for designing the customer experience through tangible customer touchpoints like vehicle design features, advertising campaigns, dealer sales approaches, and customer service activities.
• 2. Identify customer touchpoints. • Each individual step in your business process contains a number of touchpoints when the customer comes in contact with your brand. Your ultimate goal is to have each touchpoint reinforce and fulfill your marketplace promise. • Walk through your commercial processes. How do you generate customer demand? How are products sold? How do your customers use your products? How do you provide after-sales support? • This comprehensive trace of your marketing, selling, and servicing processes allows you to create a simple touchpoint map that defines your customers' experiences with your brand.
• 3. Determine the most influential touchpoints. • All touchpoints are not created equal. Some will naturally play a larger role in determining your company's overall customer experience. For example, if your product is ice cream, taste is typically more important than package design. Both are touchpoints, but each has a different effect on our customers’ experiences as a whole. • To determine the touchpoints driving your customers' overall experience, your organization can use a wide array of techniques ranging from quantitative research to institutional knowledge. The methods you use will depend on the complexity of your products, commercial processes, and your existing knowledge base.
• 4. Design the optimal experience. • Once you have completed the above three steps to building a brand, you should be able to design your optimal customer experience. • Here's how: • Determine how to express each reason-to-believe at each key touchpoint. For example, how can you reinforce sporty performance (a reason-to-believe) in product design, at the dealership, and in marketing campaigns (the influential touchpoints)?
• 5. Align the organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience. • A holistic approach to aligning your organization to consistently deliver the optimal experience is essential. Identify the people, processes, and tools that drive each key touchpoint. • Look beyond employees that have direct contact with your customers. The impacts of behind-the-scenes employees are less obvious but no less important. Similarly, the impact of workflow processes and tools (i. e. technology systems) on the customer experience may be less intuitive but crucial to consistent delivery. • Identify which activities don't align with your envisioned customer experience. Determine how to address them so that these components can be brought into alignment.
The Final Word • Every product or service you bring to market yields a customer experience. Is it the experience you intend? Does that experience fulfill the promise you've made to the marketplace? • By identifying the people, processes, and tools that drive your customer experience, you can actively design and control your own, unique, optimized experience. The brand promise you make to the marketplace will be kept day in and day out across every key customer touchpoint, building a strong brand.
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