Brand: Types of Brands and How to Create a Successful Brand Identity (2024)

What Is a Brand?

To marketing professionals, a brand is a product or a business that has a distinct identity in the perception of consumers. The brand is created through elements of design, packaging, and advertising that, as a whole, distinguish the product from its competitors.

The product contributes to the brand equity of the company that produces it. A successfully executed brand provides enormous value to a company, giving it a competitive edge over others in the same industry.

As such, many companies seek legal protection for their brands by obtaining trademarks.

Understanding Brands

A brand is an intangible asset made up of many elements. Together, these elements help consumers identify a product and give them reasons to buy it rather than its competitors.

The brand may convey a message that the product is more effective, easier to use, better tasting, cheaper, classier, hipper, or more environmentally sound than its competitors.

This is especially challenging, of course, when the product is essentially identical to cheaper competitors. Advil, for example, is a brand name for ibuprofen. Through effective advertising and packaging, its parent company attempts to convince consumers that Advil’s ibuprofen is a better choice than the cheaper generic versions of ibuprofen that sit next to it on pharmacy shelves.

Elements of a Brand

A product’s logos and slogans are elements of its brand and are designed to support a product’s brand identity.

Allstate’s slogan, “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” was introduced in the 1950s. It suggests that its insurance customers can count on it being reliable and competent when they need its help. Its commercials reinforce the message.

Other slogans are harder to translate but nevertheless become an intrinsic part of a brand’s identity. Since the 1930s, the slogan for Kellogg’s Rice Krispies has been “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” It says that the product adds a pleasing noise to your breakfast, but also evokes images of the cheery elves that serve as the cereal’s commercial spokesmen.

Beyond these elements, a brand's colors, typography and fonts, and brand imagery all contribute to its visual identity.

Standing Out From the Competition

Successful marketing keeps a company’s brand front and center in people’s minds, at least at the moment of decision making. That’s why the brand is considered to be one of a company’s most valuable and important assets. It carries tremendous monetary value, affecting both the bottom line and, for public companies, shareholder value.

A company can become inseparable from its brand. Coca-Cola, the soft drink, is synonymous with Coca-Cola itself, even though the company now owns Schweppes, Dr Pepper, and Hi-C, among hundreds of other brands.

Newer brands face a great deal more urgency in establishing themselves with consumers. To build customer loyalty, a brand needs to convey how it can deliver its product, whether it is making it enjoyable to buy, functional, valuable, and memorable to customers. A core part of building a brand is understanding the customer base to know how to deliver each of these aspects.

What Is Personal Branding?

In the age of reality television and social media, a person can be a brand, especially as social media influencers play a growing role in marketing strategies through targeting their dedicated audience base.

The Kardashian family members developed brand value after gaining popularity from their long-running reality show. Collectively and as individuals, they have used their name to successfully launch media and modeling careers, spinoff shows, cosmetics, perfumes, and clothing lines.

For instance, Kylie Jenner sold 51% of her makeup line, Kylie Cosmetics, to Coty, Inc. for $600 million in 2020 thanks to the success of her social media presence, which stood at 398 million Instagram followers as of July 2024.

History of Brands

The concept of branding may go as far back as 2000 B.C.E., when merchants began considering how they could sell their wares more effectively. Merchants in ancient Babylon developed sales pitches to lure in customers. Craftsmen branded or carved symbols on their merchandise to indicate their origin. Tavern owners hung attractive signs outside.

The word “branding” for product marketing might have come into use in the 19th century, when Western cattle ranchers started using hot irons to mark their livestock with the ranch’s initials or a symbol. Their initial purpose was less marketing than protection from cattle rustlers, but the association stuck.

Branding as mass marketing took off in the 19th century, as sellers of products like flour began thinking about ways to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Types of Brands

The type of brand used depends on the entity using it. The following are some of the most common forms of brands:

• Corporate brands: Corporate branding is a way for companies to enhance their reputations and distinguish themselves from competitors in their industries. The company’s pricing, mission, target market, and values all reflect the corporate brand.
• Personal brands: Social media enabled ordinary people to become influencers. Their financial success depends on their ability to create a brand that attracts an audience that certain advertisers want to reach. Personal brands are built through social media posts, sharing images and videos, and conducting meet-and-greets.
• Product brands: Introducing a new product or supporting an existing product involves creating and maintaining its brand. Branding a product starts with market research and identifying the right target market.

Companies might choose to create a master brand identity. The Virgin Group, founded by Richard Branson, includes hotels, telecommunications, and airlines, but all sub-brands carry the master brand identity.

Creating a Brand

When a company seeks to define its public image, it first must determine its brand identity, or how it wants to be viewed by the public. A company logo reflects its message, slogan, and product.

The goal is to make the brand memorable and appealing to the consumer, or rather to the consumer that the company is targeting, whether that is hip single people, couples with small children, or affluent retirees.

The company may use a design firm or logo design software to come up with ideas for the visual aspects of a brand, such as its logo. A successful brand accurately portrays the message or feeling that the company wants to get across. This results in brand awareness, or recognition of the brand’s existence and what it offers.

Once a brand has created positive sentiment among its target audience, the firm is said to have built brand equity. Some firms with brand equity and very recognizable product brands include Disney,Coca-Cola, Ferrari, Apple,and Nike.

If done right, a brand results in an increase in sales not only for the specific product being sold but also for other products sold by the same company. A good brand engenders trust, and, after having a good experience with one product, the consumer is more likely to try another product related to the same brand.

The phenomenon is known as brand loyalty.

Benefits of Brands

Creating a brand provides numerous benefits to a corporation or an individual. A company that gets its message across is able to induce and evoke emotion within its customer base. Consumers develop unique relationships with these companies. The companies rely on these customers to help draw in others.

This helps companies build trust and credibility that give them a competitive edge against the competition.

It also helps companies introduce new products and services. Consumers stay loyal to brands they know and trust, and with which they already have a relationship. That makes them more likely to spend when new products are released, even if they’re more expensive.

Apple is a classic example. The company built a hugely loyal customer base that is willing to overlook the higher price tag associated with an iMac, MacBook, iPad, or iPhone because of their loyalty to the brand. Its customers don’t hesitate to replace their existing Apple gadgets with new Apple gadgets as the company releases them.

The Bottom Line

When we hear the word “brand,” most of us think of a logo, slogan, or other identifiable mark. But that’s just one part of the definition. The term “brand” is actually an intangible marketing concept that helps people recognize and identify a product and, at best, reach for it instead of one of its competitors.

A company’s brands are among the most important and valuable assets that it owns. They can make or break a company. That’s why companies do extensive research before launching a new product along with identifying its target market. From there, every aspect of its content, design, and marketing is tailored to the brand identity that they want to create for that market.