Brand Identity

Brand identity is a unique set of the brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand stands for and imply a promise to customers from organizational members.

Brand Identity What is Brand Identity? – “A unique set of brand associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain” Aaker 96 – It is different from brand image : how customers and others perceive the brand. It is on the receiver's side – Brand identity is on the sender’s side : the purpose is to specify the brand’s meaning, aim and self image – As such Identity precedes image : before projecting an image we must know exactly what to project

Aspects of Brand BRAND IMAGE How the brand is now perceived BRAND IDENTITY How Strategists want the brand to be perceived BRAND POSITION The part of the brand identity and value proposition to be actively communicated to a target audience.

AAKER’S FRAMEWORK He defined Brand Identity as sum of the brand expressed as a product, organization, person and symbol. 1.Brand as a product: deals with the acceptance of the brand as a product itself 2.Brand as an organisation: emphasizes that a brand is successful among other things because of the organizational values it holds. 3.Brand as person: deals with the question “ What happens to this brand when it becomes a person ? “ 4.Brand as Symbol: deals with heritage and what the brands stand for.

Brand Identity Prism Brand identity should be represented by an hexagonal prism – A Brand has physical qualities and specifications, a set of salient objective features that come to mind when the brand is mentioned. They can also be latent, emerging Coca-Cola – bottle, color Absolut Vodka- bottle, product color (e.g. no color) Hermés – leather and silk

Brand Identity Prism The conception of brand identity was mentioned for the first time in Europe by Kapferer,1986.

Brand Identity Prism According to J. Kapferer, brand identity could be de-fined by answering the following questions: - What is the aim and individual vision of a brand? - What makes a brand distinguished? - How satisfaction could be achieved? - What is brand's equity? - What are brand competence, validity and legitimacy? - What are the features of its recognition?

A Brand has a Physique First of all brand contains an external specificity that is physical appearance, which is the core of brand and its value added. This determines a traditional brand management due to orientation to “know how”, classical positioning, selecting a principal good or brand features and the benefit. The first step building up a brand is the definition of physical factors, identifying what it is, what it does and how does it look like. Physical appearance is closely connected with a brand prototype, revealing the quality of a brand (for example Coca-Cola bottles on tins of Coca-Cola)

A Brand has a personality – The easy way to build a personality is to use a spokesman a star or an animal. – Brand personality are those traits of human personality that can be attributed to brands. This is the personality facet of the Sender. – It should not be confused with the customer reflected image, which is a picture of the ideal receiver deals with the question “ What happens to this brand when it becomes a person ? “

A Brand is a culture Culture plays the essential role in brand differentiation as it indicated what moral values are embodied in goods and services. This feature helps identifying the strongest brands because sources, basic ideals and a set of values are revealed.

A Brand is a culture – Every product is the product of a culture, its concrete representation and its support (in the media sense) – Culture means the set of values,source of inspiration for the brand -- symbolizes the organization, its country-of- origin and the values it stands for -- A brand has its own culture and origin. The both influence & is part of strong brands.

A Brand is a relationship – Brands are often the object of transactions between people, of exchanges. This is critical for services and for retailers -- relationship is the hand-shake between the consumer and the organization. Nike – provocation : “Just Do It” Apple – friendliness IBM- order setting Saffola- safety

A Brand is a customer reflection – is the consumer’s perception of what the brand stands for Reflection :If asked for views on car brands consumers identify them on the perceived client type: for young people, for family fathers, for show offs…out of the communication history and most representative products brands build an image of the buyer or user they seem to target. – However the reflection and the target (potential purchasers or users) are different: Customer should be reflected as he /she wishes to be seen as a result of using the brand e.g. in ready to wear the obsession of looking younger concern’s reflection Coca Cola targets a much wider target then Pepsi does the same

A Brand is a self-image If reflection is the target’s outward mirror (they are), self image is the target’s own internal mirror (I am, I feel) Many Porsche owners in buying one want to prove to themselves that they can do it! (Betting on their career). The brand works like an obligation to push to the limits. However its customer reflection was a car for show-offs. A user of SURF is telling herself that she is conscious of not just price but value as well The internal mirror, inner reward Is what the consumer thinks of himself

Brand is to be evaluated Physical Facet talks about what the product is, what does it do, how does it add value to customers, how does it fill up the gap in the market

Brand is to be evaluated Brand personality is measured using those traits/features of consumer personality that are directly related to brands. Proper care should be taken not to confuse it with consumer's reflection. Brand personality is closely linked with self image and image of the consumer. Questions to be asked are: 1) What are the features of consumer personality? 2) What are the features of brand if it was a person? This depends on the functional aspect of the product and the gap it would fill.

Brand is to be evaluated Brand Culture As the name signifies, it talks about the culture of the brand. The values and the principles will follow from the culture and it is these values which will bind the customers. Remember HSBC's "The World's local bank". Questions which need to be asked:- 1) Is the brand's culture global? 2) What are the values for which the brand stands for? 3) How would customers take the values of such a brand?

Brand is to be evaluated Brand Relationships: No prizes for guessing what would this be about! Yes, after all every brand has to maintain healthy relationships with customers. All marketing collaterals are intended to do just that. Therefore to gauge the identity, this had to feature. 1) How would Sales describe the relationship attributes for their customer management process? 2) How would Customer support describe their approach to increasing customer satisfaction? 3) How does the brand want to be seen by customers in marketing communication?

Brand is to be evaluated Customer Reflection: Every product is designed to satisfy some need of the intended customer base. A consumer has to be reflected in a way, which would show how he or she could image himself consuming a particular good. For example, in India anyone consuming Pepsi Cola would imagine himself to be young and Thums up (another cola drink from Coke stable) to be adventurous. For this aspect, questions are to be put to customer experience team about What would the users imagine while using the product?

Brand is to be evaluated Customer Self Image: Consumers get attracted to those brands in which they see their own traits, for example, a man who is muscular and strong would smoke Marlboro. This goes hand in hand with brand personality.