A brand is the identity of a specific product, service, or business.

A
brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color
combination or slogan. The word brand began simply as a way to
tell one person's cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp.
A legally protected brand name is called a trademark

Brand name

A N A M E T H AT R E Q U I R E S N O I N T R O D U C T I O N , N O E X P L A N AT I O N A N D V E R Y L I T T L E A D V E R T I S I N G T O G I V E I T C L O U T .

A great brand name is one of the most powerful forces in branding, marketing and advertising. It is at once the
story about what makes you different from your competitors and the emotional tug that connects you with your
audience—all in one or a few words.
A brand name that wields that much power can only come through a powerful positioning strategy—one that keys
in on the kind of appeal that can touch the hearts and minds of your market in a way the world may have never
seen. A great brand name can do this and own the talk of an industry. As you can see, there’s quite bit in a brand
name.
Brand names have so much riding on them—way too much to leave to already overworked brains of a few
employees, tossing around ideas at lunch or entering a contest, as many companies like to approach naming.
Those people simply don’t have enough time to take into account the many things that must be considered when
developing a brand name, such as: comprehension, memorability, ease of pronunciation, negative and positive
associations, competitors, trademarks and domain name possibilities. These are just a few reasons smart
companies that need a brand name turn to naming professionals, like Brand Identity Guru Inc., for guidance.
Communicating brand strategy is key to a great brand name.
Words project both meaning and feeling. Your brand name should communicate in a way that fits your overall
brand strategy, whether that’s straightforward functionality (PowerBook) or more emotional (Carnival Cruise lines
and their “FunShips”). If it does, every time somebody mentions the name, it’s an advertisement—one you didn’t
have to pay for.
Great brand names roll off the tongue.
The sound of the spoken name, regardless of what it means, is a big consideration for brand names. An easy-to-
understand pronunciation translates across languages and is more likely to be remembered.
Like the last puzzle piece, a good brand name fits right in.
Most established companies (not start-ups) have a set roster of corporate nomenclature for products, processes
and services. Any good brand name is going to build on that “naming culture.” Not to do so would squander an
opportunity to bring even more value and strength to that “culture” and the overall brand.

A great brand name is the ambassador of your company.

It introduces and characterizes a company to its customers and to the public at large. It also helps differentiate a
company’s offerings from the competition’s. As a registered trademark, a great brand name will make these kinds
of impressions an official part of a company with actual value on a balance sheet.
How to pinpoint a good brand naming firm.
The most mission-critical aspect of naming a company, product or brand is not the name itself. It is the strategic
positioning behind that name. Any professional brand naming company worth its salt knows this and practices it.
A good naming firm can tug heartstrings with their work.
A company name is, in essence, a promise—a testament to what a customer can expect from the product or
service behind the name. Isn’t the point of any promise to establish a connection of trust and loyalty from one
entity to another? A great brand name can do just that.
Listening for quality and quality.
There are two kinds of qualities a great brand name must have. It must be both strategically sound and
linguistically appealing in all the right ways. In other words, the market must gravitate to how the name said and
what it says.
Creativity is not just important…it’s a necessity.
Creativity, unfortunately, gives way to practicality and feasibility. Consider this: over 260,000 trademark
applications were filed in the United States in 2003 and over 98 percent of the dictionary is registered as a “dot
com.” What does that tell you? That all the obvious names are taken, and that it’s going to take some real
creative muscle to come up with something no one else has thought of.
A great naming firm should challenge a client.
What the target market thinks of a name is way more important than the opinion of any marketing, branding,
advertising or naming guru (even us). That’s why good naming firms utilize cutting-edge research methodologies
that give the market the final say on a name choice. We’ve developed such research called the Brand-Aid?.The
Brand-Aid?is dedicated to developing proper positioning in the marketplace; click here for the Brand-Aid?
research.
No naming project is ever identical. There’s no set formula to arrive at a winner. The only thing you can really
control is the kind of work you do to come up with a name. If you do the right kind of work, you’ll likely come up
that one special word or phrase. Brand Identity Guru Inc. knows what “the right kind of work” is and has the skills
necessary to follow through on that work. Hence, our motto, “Pump Up Your Brand.”
What’s in a brand name? Everything.
When it comes to developing winning brand names, Brand Identity Guru Inc. has no equal. We’re well versed in
both the poetic and scientific side of the process. We start by listening closely to our clients and analyzing every
detail of their businesses, markets and competition. Then, we create a numerous list of candidates and take from
that a small handful of possibilities we, and our clients, think have the “it” factor. The result has consistently been
a hard-hitting, brand-driving solution that moves the hearts and minds of a company’s target audience.
To give you an idea of how we’d likely approach your brand name need—whether it be for a company, product or
service—here’s an outline of what’s in our arsenal:
• Analytical survey of the competition. We will completely comb through the entire range of your
competitors to determine which brand names and product names are a hit with your market. This
information will help the naming team determine the positioning strategy of your brand name.
• Positioning. Here’s where a great deal of the heavy lifting will happen. We’ll help you hone in on your
brand’s core values and create a foundation of understanding and ideas from which a winning brand
name will come.
• Name conceptualization. Proper name development begins by taking the positioning strategy and
exploring it from multiple angles and analyzing how you intend to use it in your marketing, advertising
and branding efforts. Then, we’ll start creating name options.
• Trademark. If you’d like we’ll screen promising name possibilities through our trademark law firm to
determine the feasibility of using them as brand names. This step is to help you by preventing costly lost
time that might occur if your company warms up to a certain name only to find it can’t be used when you
try to register it.
• Creative mockups. A standard component of our naming service is creating conceptual marketing
materials that feature promising name ideas. This could include ad treatments, graphical layouts and
stories to give you an idea of your future with this brand name.
• Final deliverable. You’ll get a short list of final, legally feasible names along with an in-depth positioning
strategy for each.
As you can see, developing a brand name isn’t a process suited for lunchtime brainstorming or employee naming
contests. It’s real work, and should be handled by real experts, like Brand Identity Guru Inc. Give us a call today
at 617.504.2305 to discuss your need for a brand name.
Since brands are less protected on the Internet, we can also help you develop a stronger presence in Web
search engines such as Google and Yahoo, to minimize the opportunity of competitors to diminish your brand
identity or capitalize on it.
Eg

THE COKE B R A ND N A M E

A good example of a continuing competitive advantage of this kind is Coca Cola. The customer generally asks for
a Coke by name; they do not buy a ‘cola’. Coca Cola is a long time investment of Berkshire Hathaway and one
that Warren Buffet has constantly said is never for sale.
Some companies can obtain a continuing competitive advantage by having a monopoly, or being part of a
marketing structure that operates as a monopoly. A good example of this is Freddie Mac, The Federal Home
Loan Mortgage Corporation, established by Congress to buy and securitize mortgages, reselling them to
investors as guaranteed mortgage pass-through certificates. This was an earlier investment of Warren Buffett.

BRAND NAME COMPANIES

There are also some companies that market commodity products so well that they distinguish their commodity
product from that of their competitors and so put their own special ‘brand’ upon their product. They can achieve
this by marketing, continuous improvement, by quality production and service, or in many other ways.
McDonalds sells hamburgers and, if truth be known, their hamburgers are no better than those of their
competitors. McDonalds has made itself a brand name primarily through marketing, uniformity of product, and
accessibility.
Gillette sells razor blades, not a unique product. It has become dominant in the market, and a brand name,
because it markets itself well, continually improves its product – track the progress of the shaving tool) – and its
products are reliable

THE COKE BRAND NAME

A good example of a continuing competitive advantage of this kind is Coca Cola. The customer generally asks for
a Coke by name; they do not buy a ‘cola’. Coca Cola is a long time investment of Berkshire Hathaway and one
that Warren Buffet has constantly said is never for sale.
Some companies can obtain a continuing competitive advantage by having a monopoly, or being part of a
marketing structure that operates as a monopoly. A good example of this is Freddie Mac, The Federal Home
Loan Mortgage Corporation, established by Congress to buy and securitize mortgages, reselling them to
investors as guaranteed mortgage pass-through certificates. This was an earlier investment of Warren Buffett.

BRAND NAME COMPANIES

There are also some companies that market commodity products so well that they distinguish their commodity
product from that of their competitors and so put their own special ‘brand’ upon their product. They can achieve
this by marketing, continuous improvement, by quality production and service, or in many other ways.
McDonalds sells hamburgers and, if truth be known, their hamburgers are no better than those of their
competitors. McDonalds has made itself a brand name primarily through marketing, uniformity of product, and
accessibility.
Gillette sells razor blades, not a unique product. It has become dominant in the market, and a brand name,
because it markets itself well, continually improves its product – track the progress of the shaving tool) – and its
products are reliable
Brand awareness, In general, means the extent to which a brand associated with a particular
product is documented by potential and existing customers either positively or negatively.
Creation of brand awareness is the primary goal of advertising at the beginning of any
product's life cycle in target markets. In fact, brand awareness has influence on buying
behaviour of a buyer. All of these calculations are, at best, approximations. A more complete
understanding of the brand can occur if multiple measures are used.
A brand equity is the positive effect of the brand on the difference between the prices that the
consumer accepts to pay when the brand known compared to the value of the benefit
received.
There are two schools of thought regarding the existence of negative brand equity. One
perspective states brand equity cannot be negative, hypothesizing only positive brand equity
is created by marketing activities such as advertising, PR, and promotion. A second
perspective is that negative equity can exist, due to catastrophic events to the brand, such as a
wide product recall or continued negative press attention (Blackwater or Halliburton, for
example).
Colloquially, the term "negative brand equity" may be used to describe a product or service
where a brand has a negligible effect on a product level when compared to a no-name or
private label product. The brand-related negative intangible assets are called “brand liability”,
compared with “brand equity

Brand association is anything which is deep seated in customer’s mind about the brand. Brand should be
associated with something positive so that the customers relate your brand to being positive. Brand associations
are the attributes of brand which come into consumers mind when the brand is talked about. It is related with the
implicit and explicit meanings which a consumer relates/associates with a specific brand name. Brand association
can also be defined as the degree to which a specific product/service is recognized within it’s
product/service class/category. While choosing a brand name, it is essential that the
name chosen should reinforce an important attribute or benefit association that forms
it’s product positioning. For instance - Power book.

BRAND ASSOCIATIONS ARE FORMED ON THE FOLLOWING BASIS:

• Customers contact with the organization and it’s employees;

• Advertisements;
• Word of mouth publicity;
• Price at which the brand is sold;
• Celebrity/big entity association;
• Quality of the product;
• Products and schemes offered by competitors;
• Product class/category to which the brand belongs;
• POP ( Point of purchase) displays; etc
Positive brand associations are developed if the product which the brand depicts is durable, marketable and
desirable. The customers must be persuaded that the brand possess the features and attributes satisfying their
needs. This will lead to customers having a positive impression about the product. Positive brand association helps
an organization to gain goodwill, and obstructs the competitor’s entry into the market.

Bookmark this page

 Search Management Study Guide

Top of Form
partner-pub-6609 FORID:10 ISO-8859-1

Search

Bottom of Form

Custom Search

© 1998 - 2009
Management Study Guide

This research investigated direct and indirect relationship between

brand equity constructs which includes brand awareness, brand
association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. We implement
Structural Equation Modelling with LISRELto examinethe hypothesis.
The finding showed that there is a significant and positive direct
effect between brand awareness toward brand associations, and
brand association toward perceived quality and brand loyalty. We
argue that brand association plays as a suppressor in our model
that leads to inverse relation between brand awareness and
perceived quality. With respects to the mediating effect of
perceived quality to the relationship between brand awareness
towards brand loyalty and brand association towards brand loyalty,
our finding showed that perceived quality does not play as a
mediator role in this study. On the other hand, we find that brand
association is a very important variable which mediate the
relationship between brand awareness toward brand loyalty.

Keywords: Brand Equity, Brand awareness, Brand Association, Perceived Quality, Brand
Loyalty.

Here are seven strategies to build your business brand:

Define the vision. Before moving ahead with the web site, create a brand positioning
statement. “This isn’t just, ‘What kind of web site do we want to be?’ This is ‘Who are we?’”
says Harley Manning, vice president at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., a
technology and market research firm that advises on the effects technology has on
consumers and businesses. Good brand statements typically include the company’s
mission, vision and values. “It’s succinct. It’s typically something that will fit on a page
easily,” he says.
Build a brand worth believing in. “Do you so believe in what you’re creating that you would
trademark it?” says Andrea Fitch, president and CEO of RedCarpet Creations, Inc., and
national president of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, both based out of
Alexandria, Va. Really consider what kind of brand could represent the business through the
next decade. “Don’t have a logo that in five years you’re going to be tired of and discard for
another,” she says.

Remember, the web site is the brand. “A web site is not just a communication medium,”
Manning says. “It is actually a channel that must deliver on the promise.” Essentially, a web
site should embody the promise that it makes to customers. If, for instance, a business
claims to be innovative, the web site should look fresh and modern.

Create a cohesive experience between all mediums. Before she launched her company’s
new web site, Fitch made sure it would be an event that her potential clients would never
forget. RedCarpet Creations mailed 4,000 silver tubes containing scrolls that looked like
rolled-up carpet. Inside the scrolls was an announcement about the web site’s launch. Once
online, the web site was an extension of the invitations because it followed through on the
themes of red carpet imagery and references to visitors being treated like a VIP. Customers
should easily be able to recognize the company’s brand, whether it is print, online or some
other form of media, Manning says.

Don’t sacrifice creativity. Once the brand’s guidelines are established, creative choices
must bring those attributes to life, Manning says. Don’t let the company’s brand become so
dominating that there is no room for new thoughts and ideas. Brand should be the jumping-
off point for interesting ideas, not the place where every new idea dead-ends. Fitch stresses
that a sense of fun and whimsy will only enhance the likelihood that people will take an
interest in the web site.

Don’t communicate brand at the expense of delivering. While a web site can be a
significant tool for building brand awareness, clarity and functionality are paramount. “Just be
careful not to let the communication about your brand get in the way of delivering your
message,” Manning says. People should be able to understand how to navigate the site
without knowing a thing about the company’s catch phrases. “You can’t frustrate and annoy
people into liking your brand,” he says.

Listen to the customers: They determine a brand’s true value. Pay attention to customer
feedback about the site because, ultimately, it’s the customers’ opinion that counts. When it
comes to building a brand, a company can incorporate everything from signature colors to
catch phrases, but at the end of the day, it’s the consumer who decides what a brand is
really worth. “It’s not what you say [about] yourself, it’s what others say of you,” Fitch says.