Brands generate pictures in the minds of consumers. For instance, an apple with a bite taken out of it represents not only the functional products of Apple computers, but also comes with a host of associated brand characteristics such as simplicity, uniqueness, and aesthetics. As Apple has expanded its product line to include mobile audio devices and phones, these too have been branded with the same characteristics. This example reveals a general and essential dimension to the development of brands (that is the process of branding). Although the attribution of certain brand characteristics to the product is ultimately dependent on consumer interpretations, the process of branding is always entrepreneurial, that is, purposefully initiated and guided.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the direct, personal contact that had previously existed between buyer and seller at the local market level was largely displaced by the rise of anonymous, transregional mass markets. As local businesses were supplanted by major commercial companies, entrepreneurs who had spent lifetimes struggling to establish their visions, ideas, and comprehensive business philosophies became the first brand creators. Isolated examples of local entrepeneurship in the branding process still exist today in small or new businesses, even on the global level. However, the creators of brands today are generally acknowledged as temporary employees with a dedicated purpose within a company’s marketing division. The organizational conditions under which brands have developed over the last century may have changed, but the fundamental conditions behind successful marketing development have remained largely the same. The starting point of any potentially successful brand construction is, of course, the development and subsequent differentiation of its products. Since the functional aspects of products are becoming more and more similar, other features are needed to distinguish a product from its competitors.
This is where the process of value-adding in brand development becomes important (> Added Value). Once the branded characteristics of the product are developed and defined, they provide the basis with which the brand communicates its (>) values to the consumer, effecting all aspects of the product’s appearance, packaging, marketing, and so on. The consistent use of these brand characteristics across a variety of medium for a sustained period of time ultimately serves to develop and establish a constructed image of the brand in the mind of the consumer.
In today’s oversaturated and increasingly complex markets, with their endless cycles of new (>) product development, consumers can often feel overwhelmed or spoiled for choice. By providing consumers with a consistent point of reference with which to identify, brands can come with significant consumer benefits. Commercially, brands are important because they ensure that specific businesses stand out amidst the mass of complex, dynamic, and globalized markets; that their core promises are conveyed; and, ultimately, that they remain anchored in the minds of their target groups. They also profit businesses by facilitating efficiency and effectiveness in (>) communications, presenting opportunities to capture new markets, and creating a loyal clientele base.
Internationally standardized processes are currently being developed to assess the ways in which brands accrue profit for its owners. Activating brand value in business financial reports is imminent, and finding ways to utilize it profitably for a company’s many financial interests is no longer only an issue for communication experts, but also for investors and financial groups.
After more than two hundred years of existence, brands are more important than ever before, and encompass an everwidening field of applications. Branding is now attracting the non-profit and public sectors, and is even beginning to penetrate the very personal realm of the “me brand.” Of course, it is important to acknowledge that the rise of the brand has also been accompanied by some serious, sometimes criminal, consequences. Those seeking to profit from the power of brands have begun to produce, distribute, and sell (>) fake products at an alarming rate—today, counterfeit goods comprise over ten percent of the global market. This does not only pertain to (>) luxury goods; spare parts, medicines, and other products that can potentially effect the safety and well-being of its users are also counterfeited regularly. The danger that these contraband items pose to the economy and to society has prompted repeated calls for government intervention.
The fact that brands have become so ubiquitous in day-to-day culture and society has naturally stirred broader resistance. In recent years, brands have also been widely and loudly criticized for using politically, environmentally, and socially irresponsible means to achieve profit. In other words, the process of “branding” has come to be generally regarded as carrying more weight—and more connotations of unscrupulous behavior—than the related process of advertising, which is, at worst, condemned for being “subliminal.” Brands have in fact become powerful (>) social institutions, and their creators and owners should be aware of this and act responsibly (> Ethics). Attentive observers of contemporary society should also investigate the phenomenon of brands more closely, as constitutive aspects of modern society at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
> Advertisement, Brand, Consumption, Corporate Identity
