What is branding?

Brand experts help us to understand that according to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand is 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 competition.” Technically speaking, then, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol for a new product, he or she has created a brand.

 

 

However, many practicing managers refer to a brand as more than that—as something that has
created a certain amount of awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on, in the marketplace. It is
the difference between a commodity and a distinctive offering that constitutes a brand. 

Thus, we can make a distinction between the AMA definition of a “brand” with a small b and the industry’s concept of a “Brand” with a big B. The difference is important for us because disagreements about branding principles or guidelines often revolve around what we mean by the term.

Thus, the key to creating a brand, according to the AMA definition, is to be able to choose a name,
logo, symbol, package design, or other characteristic that identifies a product and distinguishes
it from others. These different components of a brand that identify and differentiate it are brand
elements.

For example, consider the variety of brand name strategies. Some companies, like General
Electric and Samsung, use their names for essentially all their products. Other manufacturers
assign new products individual brand names that are unrelated to the company name, like Procter
& Gamble’s (P&G) Tide, Pampers, and Pantene product brands. Retailers create their own brands
based on their store name or some other means; for example, Macy’s has its own Alfani, INC,
and Charter Club brands. 

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