Branding

What is Branding?

Branding is the process of building and shaping a brand in the minds of consumers to give a meaning to a specific organization, company, products, or services.

What is a Brand?

A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, used to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from chose of competitors.

Four levels of Branding

attributes

A brand first brings to mind certain product attributes. For example, Mercedes suggests such attributes as ‘well engineered’, ‘well built’, ‘durable’, ‘high prestige’, ‘fast’, ‘expensive’ and ‘high resale value’.

Benefits

Customers do not buy attributes, they buy benefits. Therefore, attributes must be translated into functional and emotional benefits. For example, the attribute ‘durable’ could translate into the functional benefit, ‘I won’t have to buy a new car every few years.’ The attribute ‘expensive’ might translate into the emotional benefit, ‘The car makes me feel important and admired.’

values

A brand also says something about the buyers’ values. Thus Mercedes buyers value high performance, safety and prestige. A brand marketer must identify the specific groups of car buyers whose values coincide with the delivered benefit package.

personality

A brand also projects a personality. Motivation researchers sometimes ask, ‘If this brand were a person, what kind of person would it be?’ Consumers might visualize a Mercedes automobile as being a wealthy, middle-aged business executive. The brand will attract people whose actual or desired self-images match the brand’s image.

Brand Equity

The value of a brand, based on the extent to which it has high brand loyalty, name awareness, perceived quality, strong brand associations, and other assets such as patents, trademarks and channel relationships.