What is a Brand?

2008-08-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

Branding.
When I come into contact with a client for the first time one word will usually be dropped casually into the conversation, almost immediately, regarding their business or company: ‘The Brand’. To understand any subject I personally believe you need to understand where its purpose originates from and how it is a relevant tool for today before you can use it to your advantage. This entry is all about “the brand”.

Where does it originate from and how can this concept be used to drive sales upwards?
The term actually originates in the ‘Wicky wild wild west’ as they say in America, to keep track of live stock mainly cattle and to stop “Cowboys” from trading stolen goods to unsuspecting farmers. Ranch names were often burned onto the cattle to distinguish who they belong to and it was certainly not an advertising concept at this time.

A famous word or term was actually coined from this period. According to history books a ranch farmer from Texas in the 19th century decided to go against the grain, ‘to think outside the box’ and opted not to brand his live stock and that his cattle would be instantly recognized for having no markings at all. Believe it or not disputes were still common due to unclear brand marking and forgery (now there’s a lesson in itself in designing a logo, legibility)! That ranchers name was Samuel Augustus Maverick and we have all come to associate the word ‘ Mavrick’ with a Bird of Pray, Top-Gun or unorthodox thinking.

So we have established that originally The Brand’ was developed not to increase sales but to identify. Fast forward over 130 year’s ( ‘Back to the Future’ style ) we use this term in a completely different context today. The core principal is the same to identify, but is used to less or more effect to infiltrate and influence our sub-conscious and conscious behaviour. This concept is titled branding and involves placing ‘the brand’ in as many locations as possible. But it doesn’t stop there; inspirational and modern tribal associations are linked closely with the logo to seduce and familiarise your senses closer to buying into ‘The Brand’.

How is branding used to convert you from an observer into a sale?
The theory behind this practise ‘Branding’ is psychological but simple, the more times you are presented with ‘the brand’ the more likely you will accept the new face into your community. It’s more of an animal behaviour pattern. For example I have a cat and if I was to introduce a new object into the house his first reaction would be to cautiously approach and sniff the object (risk assessment, basically!). The more times my cat comes into contact the more he will accept the object into his environment. The key objective behind Branding is to remove the perception of risk towards a brand through familiarisation.

Now your guard has been lowered we are likely to have more success in selling you products or services. Important to the success or failure of a ‘Brand’ is consistency, making sure anything and I mean anything, signs, packaging, advertising, uniform, language, imagery, smells anything that comes into contact with the external world , is in-line with the guidelines usually dictated by a creative design agency.

From my experience working with large and small businesses this technique, branding, should only be adopted by those with huge budgets and firepower to paint the town red as they say. There are of course small businesses that buck this trend, most notably Starbucks, but the same principle of familiarity in your local community underpins this success of one local coffee shop turning into a multi-national organisation.

How do I know it works?
I have experience working in partnership with a global sporting event. Core to the high profile project was gathering 80,000 figures of data from T.V media corporations around the world and inputting into a database to make specific calculations. This was jazzed up into a nice looking interface of course, but the objective of the brief was to allow multi-national companies, to calculate where to place their identifier ‘The Brand’ at a particular sporting event in various countries. It was so detailed that each individual camera coverage time down to the split second, per event, was included from every single TV station in the world.

Big corporations’ use this advanced data to decide their advertising budgets annually and they want to know who they will be reaching and for how long, before they will buy the space and fill it with the ‘The Brand’. By doing this they are achieving two aims:

1) To increase awareness / familiarity of the Business Name and Logo

2) Associating with popular often a highly competitive sport - Having your brand next to a winner is even better.

My final comment for those who have read this far is for smaller businesses who may have limited knowledge of using Branding to sell. Branding is a design tool used to create awareness, not necessarily a sale. Use aspects such as identity, consistency, colours, typography, imagery to re-enforce professionalism but resist the temptation to place one-off arty adverts in the hope you will have customers knocking your door down!

In my next blog entry I will be discussing marketing, where it originates from, marketing tools and the difference between branding and marketing. Subscribe to my blog if you are interested.

The illustrations featured in this article have been produced by Olivia Douglas a 14 year old work experience student currently working with us. I have to say even though Olivia has never used the software before she has delivered some great concepts and demonstrated a brilliant style for such a young age. I'm sure Olivia will have a bright career ahead of here if she keeps this up!

Phil Mckeith

What is a Brand?