BRANDING

 INTRODUCTION

In developing a marketing strategy for individual products, the seller has to confront the branding decision. Branding is a major issue in product strategy. For instance, developing a branded product requires a great deal of long-term investment spending especially for advertising, promotion and packaging. Many brand oriented companies subcontract manufacturing to other companies. For example, Taiwanese

Manufacturers make a great amount of the world’s clothing, consumer electronics, and computers, but not under Taiwanese brand names. Besides, some manufacturers observe that market power lies with the brand name companies. Even when these companies can no longer afford to manufacture their products in their homeland, the brand names continue to command customer loyalty.
Powerful brand names have consumer franchise – they command strong

consumer loyalty. A sufficient number of customers demand these brands and refuse substitutes, even if the substitutes are offered at somewhat lower prices. These companies around the world invest heavily to create strong national or even global recognition and preference for their brand names. In this unit, we examine brand names and their implications for marketing products and services.

 OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. define a brand name 
2. differentiate various types of brand names in our markets 
3. give reasons why companies invest millions of naira in choosing a brand name 
4. explain the characteristics of a good brand name. 

MAIN CONTENT

Branding

A crucial step in the branding strategy is deciding on a specific brand name for the product that is being introduced. In earlier times, when the concept and practice of branding was much less developed, very often

the family name or surname was used. Some of those are still very much alive, for example, Siemens or Ford. The other common method of branding was by way of addressing the product range of the company. Two famous examples are General Motors and General Electric. It seems the function that brands were supposed to perform was either to indicate the source or the origin of the product (family name) or indicate the product range. However, a brand name has emerged as one of the most important elements of the merchandising function in recent times, and will become more and more crucial as the competition becomes more severe in Nigeria and other parts of the world. Let us examine the conceptual meaning of the terms brand and brand name.

What is a Brand?

Perhaps the most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to create, maintain, protect, and enhance brands. Marketers say that branding is the art and cornerstone of marketing. A brand is a word, mark, symbol, device or a combination thereof, used to identify some product or service. The definition clearly focuses on the function of a brand, that is, to identify, irrespective of the specific means employed for the identification.

Akanbi (2002) reports that ‘brand is the name, term, symbol, or design or a combination of these which is employed to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers, and to differentiate them from those of competitors’

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as ‘a name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors’.

What then is a Brand Name?

As we have just seen, the American Marketing Association defines it thus:
‘Brand name is a part of a brand consisting of a word, letter, group of words or letters comprising a name which is intended to identify the goods or services of a seller or a group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors’.
Comparing this definition with that of other authorities, it is found that the function remains the same. A brand name is only one of the means

that the brand can use for identification. Examples of brand names are: Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, Mobil, Shell, Lux and Omo.

A Brand Mark – A brand mark is the part of the brand that is in the form of a symbol, design or distinctive colouring or lettering. Examples
include: ‘the Lion’ for Peugeot cars, the ‘Star’ for Mercedes Benz cars and a ‘Stallion’ for Union Bank of Nigeria Plc.

A Trademark – This is a brand that is given legal protection as an exclusive use of a particular company. Trademarks are brands, but not

all brands are legally protected. Hence, any mark that is not legally protected cannot be referred to as a trademark.

The American Marketing Association defines a trademark as ‘a brand that is given legal protection, because under the law, it has been appropriated by one seller’. Thus, trademark is essentially a legal term. All trademarks are brands and thus include the words, letters or numbers that can be pronounced. They also include a pictorial design (brand mark). Some people erroneously believe that the trademark is only the pictorial part of the brand.

Importance of Branding

The importance of branding is as follows:

1. Brands make it easy for consumers to identify products or services. 
2. Brands also assure purchasers that they are getting comparable quality when they reorder. 
3. For sellers, brands are something that can be advertised and that will be recognized when displayed on shelves in a store.
4. Brands also help sellers to control their share of the market, because buyers will not confuse one product with another. 
5. Branding reduces price comparisons, because it is hard to compare prices on two items with different brands.
6. For sellers, branding can add a measure of prestige to otherwise ordinary commodities, such as Gulder, Star, Coca-Cola, Mercedes’ products, Sony’s products, etc. 

Reasons for Branding

There are various reasons why a company may wish to adopt a brand name and/or trademark. Some of these include the following:

1. Branding enables a company to differentiate its product. It gives the marketer a different product to promote. Each market segment will have a specific version of the same product from the company. 
2. Brands help to ascertain who the producer of the product is. 
3.  A company’s name is built around the brand name which can be used to stimulate the sales of the product. 
4. Branding enables a company to control the distribution and the price of its product because of its distinct nature. 
5. The promotion of a brand will help the company to increase its market share in the country. It helps to build loyalty for the product and increase repeat purchases. 
6. Branding can aid a marketer to increase his product lines. The qualities associated with an established line can be exploited to reflect on a new product marketed under the same brand name. 

Reasons for not Branding

Some of the reasons for not branding include the following:

1. Many firms do not brand their products because they are unable or unwilling to assume the two major responsibilities inherent in brand ownership: (a) to promote the brand and (b) to maintain a consistent quality of output. Some items are not branded because of the difficulties of differentiating the products of one firm from those of another. For example, clothes pins, nails and industrial raw materials (coal, cotton, and wheat) are examples of goods for which product differentiation is generally unknown. In addition, the physical nature of some items, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, may discourage branding (although, these days, they are packaged in tins/cans). 
2. Producers frequently do not brand that part of their product (output) that is below their regular quality. Products graded as ‘seconds’ or ‘imperfects’ are sold at a reduced price and are often distributed through channels different from those used for regular quality goods. 

 Characteristics of a Good Brand

A good brand should possess as many of the following characteristics as possible. It is extremely difficult to find a brand that has all of them. A brand should:

1. Suggest something about the product’s characteristics – the benefits, use or action. Some names suggest desirable benefits including cold spot, craftsman (tools), etc. Product use and action is suggested by minute rice, thermo pane, spic and span, etc. 
2. Be easy to pronounce, spell, and remember, simple, short, one- syllable names such as Omo, Mobil, Total, Toyota, Shell, etc. are helpful. 
3. Be distinctive. Brands with names like national, star, ideal or standard fail on this point. 
4. Be adaptable to new products that may be added to the product line. 
5. Be capable of being registered and legally protected under the Acts or other statutory laws. 

Branding Decisions

Having an appropriate brand has emerged as the most important activity in the area of marketing of products, especially consumer products. Several decisions need to be taken, though not simultaneously, with regard to brand selection and its use.

Whether to brand a product or not is a decision which can be taken only after considering the nature of the product, the type of outlets envisaged for the product, the perceived advantages of branding and the estimated costs of developing the brand.
In addition, marketers also have to decide at the outset whether they

would like to adopt a family brand under which all the products of the company would be sold or to brand each product separately. For instance, companies like GE or Philips follow the family name strategy while GM follows the individual brand strategy.
These are the advantages in either approach:

Family Brand

1. It reduces the costs of product launching and ongoing promotional expenditure substantially. The firm has to promote only one brand which, if successful, would be able to sell the entire product line. Lining up the distribution channel members also becomes comparatively easier. A family brand name has been found to be very cost effective in tyre marketing. 
2. If one product does exceptionally well, it is perfectly possible that there would be positive fallouts for other products being marketed under the same brand. 
3. A greater weakness of this strategy is that it does not recognise that each product can be given a specific identity by a suitable brand which can go a long way to make it successful. 

 Individual Brand

1. If there is a product failure, its damaging effect will be limited to that particular product and will not extend to the entire product line. 
2. Individual brand strategy can immensely influence the decisions. 
3. The basic disadvantage lies in the economics of developing an individual brand. It is obviously a costlier strategy than the family brand. 
4. The other disadvantage is that the brand does not directly derive any benefit from the reputation of the firm. 

Brand Repositioning

Over the life cycle of a product, several market parameters might undergo a change such as introduction of a competing product, shifts in consumer preferences, identification of new needs, etc. All and each of such changes call for a re-look as to whether the original positioning of the product is still optimal or not. Stagnating or declining sales also point to a need for reassessment of the original product positioning.
A classic story of successful brand repositioning is the Seven-up

campaign. Seven-up was one of several soft drinks bought primarily by older people who wanted a brand, lemon flavour drink. Research indicated that while a majority of soft drink consumers preferred a cola, they did not prefer it all the time and many other consumers were non- cola drinkers.

Seven-up went up for leadership in the non-cola market by executing a brilliant campaign, calling itself the Uncola. The campaign featured the Uncola as a youthful and refreshing drink, the one to reach for instead of a cola. Seven-up created a new way for consumers to view the soft market, as consisting of colas and uncolas, with seven-up leading the uncolas. It thus repositioned seven-up as an alternative to the traditional soft drink, not just another soft drink. Another exciting story of brand repositioning is Pepsi Cola’s campaign to reincarnate its flagging 30- year old Mountain Dew brand.