The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.
A brand is particular name or trademark that is associated with a particular product. It may refer to more than one product made by the same company than just one individual product. Branding is all about creating an image that consumers like that people can link to a particular line of products.
Over the years brands have become increasingly more important, as culture and economy has advanced and as a result of mass production the need for distinct brands has increased. They are now considered ‘cultural accessories’.
Consumers come across so many similar products that it is practically impossible to choose a product without its branding. Once people are engaged to a certain brand they begin to have set expectations that is an impression created by all the associated products. It is the brand special qualities and characteristics that make it unique. Hence the reason branding is one of the most important factors in advertising. It shows what the brand is able to offer in the market and what is it that makes it so different compared to other rivaling products.
‘’Advertising any given product Is only one part of branding grand plan.’’ (Naomi Klein, No Logos)
By carefully managing a brand and maintaining the image by cleverly designed advertising campaigns helps lead to a highly successful product that enable consumers to purchase products that are of extremely high prices. This manipulates the image that has been created and causes the consumer to see value and potential in the product. Consumers purchase products of brands that they expect to fulfill their desires. Modern branding campaigns have the ability to induce consumers into paying a lot more for what they are getting. For example £40 for a t-shirt that costs a mere £4 to make.
One of the key elements of creating a successful brand is consistency across the range of products promoted at any one time across the world. Over time the image that is created has to create loyalty so that consumers continue to buy the products establishing a unchangeable routine. Very rarely are products rebranded and the main reason of this would be that the current brand name/image has not been successful.
If a brand image is widely known in the market it is easily recognized to an extent that if this image is built up over the years the brand no longer has to be specific to what they are advertising. For example ‘Coca-Cola’ is known all over the world. Consumers can identify what the product is by just seeing its logo. If we look at ‘Cadburys Dairy Milk’ commercials, when the product first came on the market, the visuals of the commercials often showed the chocolate and people enjoying the taste of the chocolate etc.
However recent commercials by Cadburys show nothing in link to the chocolate apart from its logo.
This is because the brand and the product is so well known around the world that people only need the logo or consistent purple theme to identify it.
I feel that this research on branding will help us create an effective brand image for our product as it involves elements of advertising and creating a strong product. The three products that we are going to create (music video, Digipak cover & Digipak advertisement in magazine) will all be promoting the same product. It is therefore vital that we keep the image and theme consistent throughout so that audiences are able to identify the brand and link the products together. This consistent brand image is what helps distinguish quality and uniqueness from other products on the market.
Things that we will aim to keep consistent:
-Font and colour scheme for logo that portrays the correct indie image
-Brand image – the message we are trying to portray about the band/artist
-Indie theme
Gucci - A well known brand all over the world, and some of its range of products:
the brand has nothing to do with music, it is just to show the way in which brands operate. No matter what the brand whether it is to do with food, fashion or music they tend to hold a range of products that all give the same image of the brand. As we can see all the different advertisements of 'Gucci' Products they are given a very elegant, posh and expensive image. We can see the brand has quality and people are aware that the brand has quality and uniqueness no matter what the product.
No comments:
Post a Comment