Product marketing

The power of advertising & branding Branding and advertising have a major effect upon many consumer groups, particularly fashion conscious teenagers.

Brand creation offering the latest technology high-quality customer care and technical back- up giving best value for money in the marketplace Branding is about promoting your strengths. Businesses need to think about what they are good at and what they believe in. For example, they might consider their brand should be about:

Brand values The promises the business makes to it’s customers is sometimes known as it’s brand values. Keeping the brand simple by focusing on a small number of key brand values is crucial.

Maintaining the brand Focusing on what the business achieves for it’s customers and continually looking for ways to improve. Not making claims that they cannot deliver. Every aspect of the business needs to make customers feel the same way and just a single failure can seriously damage the brand. Paying attention to customers' needs, but still controlling what they want the brand to mean. Businesses need to maintain their brand and the following issues are important:

Communicating the brand Most businesses communicate their brand by creating a logo and ensuring that every advertisement, catalogue, brochure and item of business stationery helps to reinforce the message. Many products have these logos emblazoned on them and this is important to many image-conscious consumers.

Protecting the brand Designer’s ideas are protected by law so that no one can copy them. Copyright, patents and registered designs are some ways in which the ideas are protected. This is called intellectual property. The brand logos created and displayed on products and their packaging are good examples of intellectual property and are always defended by the businesses which own them. This is sometimes referred to as design protection.

Copyright Copyright is the simplest way of saying "hands -off, this is my idea" but it can be difficult to prove ownership but is commonly used for publications, building plans etc.

Registered designs Registered designs offer proof of ownership. This is sometimes accompanied with the registration number and is used to protect the form or style of a product or logo.

Trade marks Trade marks are also registered and become a major part of the brand as they protect names, symbols and logos.

Patents Patents are used to protect inventions, new technologies or new processes. These might be worldwide patents or restricted to certain countries. For example, James Dyson holds numerous patents for his cleaners.

Licence agreements Many ideas are allowed to be used by others through a license agreement. This is a contract between the owner and a manufacturer and will be linked to payments. Disney, for example allow products to be manufactured which use their cartoon characters but have strict license agreements in place which protect the image and maintain the quality associated with Disney products. This is an essential part of maintaining their brand.