This article will provide brief overview about the
concept, advantages and use of effective branding to create brand awareness among consumers.
There is no disagreement that effective branding
through ‘use of a name, term, symbol or design, or a combination of these’ (Quester et al, 2001) can create brand
awareness and recognition in the quickest manner. Companies use different kinds of ‘Brand Name’, that is, a word,
letter or a group of words such as AOL, Intel Pentium III etc to project their companies. Sometimes such words, symbols or
marks are legally registered and copy righted to a single company known as trademarks ( for product oriented companies) and
service marks ( for service offering companies) (Perreault & McCarthy, 2000).
However in any form, branding can be used to create
brand familiarity among consumers in terms of brand recognition and brand preference (Papers4you.com, 2006). The advantage
of using branding effectively is both for consumers as well as marketers. For instance it becomes easy for a customer to choose
preferred brand among 1000s of other items just because of famous well recognized symbol, word or trade mark that can not
be possible with out effective branding (Quester et al, 2001). For instance imagine you are driving down the road with hunger
and suddenly you see a symbol ‘M’ on a sign board with red background and yellow font. It is not difficult to
realize that McDonalds is waiting for you, easily manifest effective projection of McDonalds’ through brand symbol ‘M’.
Similarly imagine buying a computer accessory and among thousands of unknown brands, suddenly you observe ‘Intel ®’
sign. A quick reminder will prompt that it’s a well known brand symbol that you observe common everywhere in media and
at your own computer.
Now keeping these examples in mind, it is obvious
that marketers can cash in such advantages as well (Papers4you.com, 2006). One best way to use word and symbols is while launching
new products under same brand names (Quester et al, 2001). For instance, as every one is aware of ‘Coca Cola ™’
, any new soft drink introduced under this brand name has highly probable chance to achieve awareness and attention of coca
cola lovers. Similarly it is quite often that no matter ‘ IBM’ entered in so many IT related services after initially
famous for IBM computers but whenever you observe its trade mark of ‘IBM’ written in horizontal lines, consumer
is not bothered about checking the background of the company. So as a result it also saves huge promotion costs that a company
with less famous brand names and symbols needs to incur.
To conclude discussion, the outcome of effective
branding can be seen in terms of ‘brand equity’ that is the value of a brand in terms of its perceived brand awareness,
recognition, loyalty and associations from customers. To give the advantage of effective branding, the brand equity of the
Coca Cola brand is valued $ 43 Billion, IBM brand at $ 18 billion and Kodak’s at $ 12 billion (Kotler & Armstrong,
1999).
References
Kotler, P & Armstrong, G, (1999), ‘Principles
of Marketing’, Eight Edition, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall Inc
Quester, P, G, McGuiggan, R, L, McCarthy, E, J &
Perreault, W, D (2001), Basic Marketing- A Managerial Perspective’, Australia:
McGraw Hill Book Company Australia Pty Limited
Papers For You (2006) "P/M/457. What is successful
branding?", Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmrk31.htm [19/06/2006]
Papers For You (2006) "P/M/270. A consistent brand
identity can only exist as a result of a well planned advertising strategy, which has clearly stated communication effects
and one which considers exposure to appropriate target audiences and positioning strategies. Discuss", Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmrk31.htm [19/06/2006]
Perreault, W, D & McCarthy, E, J, (2000), ‘Essentials
of Marketing- A Global Management Approach’ International Edition, USA:
McGraw Hill Companies Inc
