How to Establish a Brand Identity

A brandname identity is like a personality of the company. It describes the company's ideals and targets in a flash with just a few words. Brand identity has been defined as, 'A title, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that recognizes one seller's good or service as distinct from individuals of other sellers. The legal term for brand is actually trademark. A brand may identify one item, a group of items, or all items of that seller. If used for the firm in general, the preferred term is trade name'.

A brand identity is generally a unique and visually appealing combination of a brand title, a related tag line, an emblem or a image with specific designs, colors and fonts to suit the business's identity and preferences of the company's prospective customer bottom. Here is how a company's brand identity is set up.

Creating a Brand Identity

Once the process of establishing the organization begins, the promoters of the company need to solution some basic management questions viz. What are the corporation's goals, What are the strategies of the company to achieve the goal, What is the nature of prospective market that may help the company achieve its goal. These questions may appear irrelevant to a layman. But to a company's marketer or manager, these very questions help to strategise the brand identity from the company. Steps followed to create a brand identity for that company are as below:

Select Brand Name
It is essential to go through the company's product line or services in order to generate a fitting brand name. Ideally, the brand name should easily help the shoppers identify a product of the company. It is suggested that the brand name should be short and readable and write. The font selected for the brand name shouldn't be flowery and illegible. The basic idea is to help the shoppers relate to the particular product just by reading the brand.

Creating Logo
A logo is a pictorial design used being an emblem or a symbol to complement the company's brand. Sometimes, the customer's minds tend to retain the designs from the logo better than brand names. A logo should be visually appealing and in colors ideal for the product. Managers generally opt for colors that have been in sync with the current market trend, nature of the merchandise or the age and preferences of target customers. at the. g. Logos of eco-friendly brands are mostly in eco-friendly color. Logos for brands meant for youth are usually in bright catchy colors. Some unforgettable logos that speak a great deal for themselves are the Nike swoosh or letter farrenheit in small caps for Facebook.

Drafting Tag line
A tag line does a major job of informing the shoppers about the company's goal or the nature of experience (perception) on using the service or product offered by the company. e. g. Philips used the tag line 'Lets make things better' and today uses ' sense and simplicity'. Both the tag lines are catchy and simple to remember. They share the company's goals for creating items with better technology. It also tells the customers to depend on Philips for simple and sensible products. McDonald's on the other hand uses 'I'm lovin' it' which ideally tempts the customer to test the feel good experience of dining at McDonald's.

Making Brand Identity for Umbrella Products

A company may not always have single product on the market. When a company has a product line with several and varied products, it is essential to select a brand identity which can signify any or all the products simultaneously. e. g. Johnson & Johnson is a leading company manufacturing baby care and healthcare products. However, all the company's products get identified underneath the brand identity called Johnson's.

Facts about Brand Identity
  1. It is to begin with essential to select a brand identity that will continue to remain popular for a long time. Creating a new brand name once in a while is extremely costly and therefore, out of question.
  2. A brand identity is treated like a company's intangible asset. Its value increases as the corporation's goodwill rises.
  3. The brand identity of a company must be registered on incorporation of the company. Also, one must create copyrights to avoid illegal use of a corporation's brand identity.
  4. No two brand identities in this particular world can ever be same or similar. Brand names are designed to be unique. There are competitors trying to vie a company's customers by creating brands that sound similar. However, this is treated as illegal and may attract some heavy monetary penalties.
  5. Some brand names have grown to be so popular in their own right, that they have turned out to be associated with the name of the product. Here are some examples that will help you understand this point better.
  • Band-aid is an adhesive bandage remove manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. The product is so popular that individuals now refer to adhesive bandage strips of any contending brands by name Band-aid.
  • Xerox Corporation is a number one manufacturer of photo copiers and printers. Their photocopiers grew to become so popular that today, photo copiers manufactured by their competing brands are known as xerox machines. There is also a tendency to make reference to photo copied documents as xeroxed documents. The word Xerox has become treated as a verb.
Brand identities often make the customers perceive that your company is selling the highest quality products. It therefore puts an unshakable responsibility on the company and its management to meet the customer's expectations.