Blue Vine Design

Review: What is a Brand?

What is a ‘brand'?

As consumers all of us are familiar with brands, be they product brands like Coca-Cola or service brands like Virgin Atlantic. In effect, names that we know and trust. So, perhaps it's not surprising to learn that the word brand is derived from the Old Norse "brandr", meaning to burn, in reference to the practice of producers burning their mark or name onto their products or livestock.

But from this early incarnation, branding has moved far beyond the visual identity - name, term, logo, design or colours - associated with a product or service.

These days, organisations talk about the ‘brand experience', which also encapsulates psychological aspects like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs and attitudes that they wish customers to associate with their products or services. In doing this, organisations want customers to feel that their brand has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique, and for which they can then often charge a premium.

It sounds simple but, unlike a new visual identity that is relatively easy to create and implement, communicating and delivering the values of your brand - in such a way that individuals respond positively to your message and choose to use your products and services over others that are available to them in the marketplace - is a much more difficult challenge.

The challenge of delivering the brand experience becomes even more difficult for service providers as they are at the mercy of the behaviours of their staff, who have to deliver the service to the required standards on a consistent basis. In a factory, provided the manufacturing process is robust, every product will look and perform as well as the next. Human behaviours are not as easy to control.