Brands and Branding

A brand is a name a company gives to its product so they can be recognized. This may be the name of the company itself: the make of the product. For products like cars, you refer to the make and model, the particular type of the car, for example, the Ford (make) Ka (model).

Brand awareness or brand recognition is how many people recognize a brand. The ideas people have about a brand is its brand image. Many companies have a brand manager.

Branding is creating brands and keeping them in a customer’s minds through advertising, packaging etc. A brand should have a clear brand identity so that people think of it in a particular way in relation to other brands.

A product with the retailer’s own name on it is an own-brand product or own-label product.

Products that are not branded, those that do not leave a brand name, are generic products or generics.

Branding can be viewed as a way of controlling markets. Big brand owners such as Nike do not make anything – all the actual manufacture is subcontracted to cheap labour factories in the Far East. Nike merely manages the brand, and does so in such a way that it seeks to exclude other companies such as Adidas from its markets. It also concentrates wealth and power in already-rich countries.

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Microsoft and many others actually offer products which are no better (and may be worse) than their rivals, but have established their brands in people’s minds. To test this, try taking a child to Burger King instead of McDonald’s and see what happens!

There is a question over whether branding is manipulative of consumers and therefore unethical. Certainly some consumers appear entirely brand driven, whereas others are brand switchers, buying the one with the best offer on at present, or the one which comes readily to hand. Furthermore, some consumers are brand driven for some products and not for others.

Obviously consumers are exercising choice, and are being seen to do so.

Changing a brand name requires careful planning and equally careful implementation. In some cases, the process takes place over a number of years so that customers have time to get used to the transition.

How do customers actually recognise the brand? It is unlikely to be solely from the name – design and colour of the packaging is a more immediate cue, since people scan supermarket shelves too quickly to read the name on the package. This is another issue in customer centrality– we look at what people actually do!

II. Discuss the following questions:

1. What does a company give to its product?

2. What is brand awareness?

3. What is branding?

4. Why brand should have a clear identity?

5. What is an own-brand product?

6. What is generic product?

7. What can be viewed as a way of controlling markets?

8. What big brands owners do you know?

9. Are famous brand products better than their rivals? If yes, explain.

10. What does brand changing demand?

III. Match the adjectives with the nouns they are most likely to be associated with:

1. generic	a) manufacture
2. big	b) cue
3. actual	c) products
4. immediate	d) brand owners
5. branded	e) product

IV. Look at the adjectives below and write down a company or product you associate with each one. Then compare your results with your partner. Did you write down any of the same companies/products?