OUGD601 - Research - What Is Branding?

What is Branding by
Matthew Healey

Healey, M. (2010). What is branding?. Mies: Rotovision.

"Human civilisation is dependent upon signs and systems of signs, and the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs - if needed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning" - Charles Morris

- Originally, the word 'brand' derives from the Germanic word for burn, referring to the branding of cattle
 > we mean it figuratively when we talk about all the attributes of a product that make a lasting impression in a customer's mind

- A brand is a promise of satisfaction
- It is a sign, a metaphor operating as an unwritten contract between a manufacturer and a consumer, a seller and a buyer
- A consumer forms their own feelings about what a brand means - but they can be influenced by advertising and publicity of the manufacturer
- Branding is the process of continuous struggle between procedures and customers to define that promise and meaning

- Paraphrasing Karl Marx - People make their own decisions about who to be, how to live, and what to buy, but under circumstances shaped by brands' advertising, marketing and publicity

- Most buying behaviour is driven by storytelling and emotions, which are exploited by brands

Lifestyle

- One of the best ways to sell a brand is to position it as a vital part of a lifestyle that customers aspires to
- Build on attractive picture of how customers could live if they bought the products being sold

- "Every society can be broken down into segments"
 > the defining characteristics of these segments can be used to build this 'picture'

- Sometimes customers nowadays reassign products to lifestyle categories not intended by their marketers
 > e.g. vintage sport apparel being popular among street wear brands, consumers

- One of the things that make 'cult' brands so successful is that they seem to define a lifestyle all their own e.g. Apple defines the digital lifestyle
- Magazine brands were/are powerful definers of reader's lifestyles
- Esquire and playboy defined the lifestyle of the young man with aspirations and disposable income from the 1930s to the 1970s
- Power of mainstream magazines has decline with the growth of media

Brand Personality

- Every brand can be anthropomorphized
- At the heart of every brand is a set of characteristics, akin to a human personality, that customers can relate to
- We tend to see human atributes in things we want to have a relationship with