What exactly is brand?, and what counts and doesn’t count, does Hersheys count as brand?, does Sony count as a brand?, can a company itself be a brand. And what is needed for a brand to be considered a brand?
Edit: I meant like brands in a business way
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>What exactly is brand?
A product made by a specific company.
>does Hersheys count as brand?
Yes; you can buy chocolate made specifically by Hersheys as opposed to any other company.
>does Sony count as a brand?
Yes; you can buy electronics made specifically by Sony as opposed to any other company.
>can a company itself be a brand
Yes, that is what a brand is.
>And what is needed for a brand to be considered a brand?
For it to…exist? This is like asking “what is needed for my name to be my name?”. It’s kinda a meaningless question.
A brand is, basically, the public reputation of something.
Hershey is a company with a brand. When you hear “Hershey” it makes you think of things like Hershey kisses, what their packaging looks like, and likely the taste of their chocolate. That is their brand. Many people would reach for a Hershey bar over the same bar wrapped in plain packaging because they know and like Hershey.
> can a company itself be a brand.
I mean, almost anything can have a brand. The term is typically used in the context of marketing consumer products, but you can think of, for example, famous artists having a brand.
> And what is needed for a brand to be considered a brand?
Essentially some discernible, recognizable characteristic.
A brand is essentially the perceived identity of something or someone; that make them identifiable to others. Examples:
1. Captain Jack sparrow is literally a human, but his brand are his unique character traits (pirateness, funny walk etc.)
2. McDonalds is literally a business. It’s logo, color scheme, and public perception as “family friendly” are all part of their brand
To really simplify it, your brand is basically the public perception of your company. Hershey’s and Sony are both brands, yes. It entails everything from your logo, visual design and public awareness to your customer service and everything in between.
Hell, you could argue that even people have brands in a way. Like, Henry Cavill’s brand is “super hot actor, who’s also really nice and a nerd.”
EDIT: To push it a little further, you have things like *brand awareness,* which is basically “How well-known is your company/products/services?” and *brand loyalty*, which is “Are people more inclined to buy your products/services over anyone else’s?” Apple is a great example of a company that has very high brand awareness and brand loyalty.
A brand is a way of transfering consumer trust between products, either across different business lines, or between product generations.
For example, you grow up with an NES. You enjoy it, and when the SNES comes out, you trust that it’s just as good, so you get that too.
But then you branch off and buy a Sony PlayStation. You like that, and when your TV breaks, you put value on the Sony name and choose to buy a Sony TV.
All this time you’ve been using a PC with Microsoft Windows, and you fucking hate it, so when Microsoft comes out with the XBox, you assume it will also be trash and you don’t buy it.
Different brands can exist at different levels. The Sony brand and the Sony PlayStation brand are not entirely the same. Brands are more than just the name, but also other things associated with them, like their Logo, or even their brand colors (within their industry).
The word brand pertains to the public-facing persona of a company (or an individual for that matter). It’s basically the totality of how they represent themselves through design, advertising, social media and other communications, the quality of the product / service they provide, and any other way that you (someone who isn’t involved in the company) might interact with them.
Yo use your examples, you would probably be very surprised if Hershey started making, say, Hershey-branded energy drinks and making edgy advertisements for them and using swear words in their tweets, right? That’s because Hershey has cultivated a particular image, and that style doesn’t fit in. If the larger company Hershey *wanted* to do that, they would probably create a new brand for the energy drinks (with its own name, logo, and media). That way they aren’t diluting or betraying the brand that most customers are familiar with.
In the ol’ medieval days, if you wanted to buy (let’s say) shoes, you went to the local cobbler and they would made a pair of shoes for you. There was no doubt about who made them.
With the industrial revolution and the possibility of mass-creating things, now there’s a shoe factory making shoes not for the community near it, but for the entire region or even the country. Now you have to separate the idea of the shoe-maker from the shoe-seller.
But why would people buy the industrial shoes? The shoe factory needs to create a product that people would want to buy, and it costs effort (read ‘money’) to promote your shoes. They would need a way for people to recognize their product, so they add a name to associate with the shoes, let’s say “Bristol Shoes”.
Ok, there’s another guy that opened a shoe factory, and thinks “what if I start to sell shoes saying they’re Bristol Shoes? That way people would buy my shoes, without investing a single cent in ads”. Now, the actual creator of Bristol Shoes is angry, that people is making shoes saying they’re Bristol when they’re not. Or worse, they purposefully make bad shoes in order to make people think Bristol Shoes are bad, just to create another brand saying “this ones are actually good”.
So, for the concept of “brand” to make sense, two things should happen: 1) there’s a way of recognizing the product from others depending on who made them, and 2) if someone is making a product saying they’re from X brand when they’re not, then there should be a way of claiming damages, probably through the judicial system.
Naomi Klein wrote this great book “No Logo” that explores the rise of the individual as a brand in the mid 90’s (think Michael Jordan) and the long term effects that global brand management has had on our lives and culture.
You can refer to the actual etymological meaning of brand for the best description what a brand is.
Etymologically speaking, a brand is a mark made on an animal (or even in people, in the times of the slavery) with a hot iron that would serve to identify the owner of said animal/slave.
By extension, a brand is just something that identifies who made a product (or provided a service) and/or the family of products.
A company can be a brand: Hershey’s
A company can own a brand, like Hershey’s owns Hershey’s Kisses and also Reese’s
A company can be a brand that owns more famous/directly used brands: General Motors vs. Chevrolet
A company you don’t hear about can own a brand you know: Kimberley-Clark isn’t super famous, but Kleenex is; Crayola used to be made by Binney & Smith before they wised up and renamed the company to just Crayola
In the modern era, a brand of products will almost certainly have a legally registered trademark, which allows the brand and its owner to protect it against competitors making something that looks similar and confuses the customer. The trademark is usually a name and logo, but can also include other distinctive elements like a particular color or “look.” Basically, if you go to a store, how do you know whether the item you’re buying is the one that you like and trust versus some knock-off. If anybody could sell “Nike shoes” with a swoosh on them, some of them would be the kind you like, trust, and want to buy, and some would be terrible, and you’d have no way to tell. Branding and trademarks are about making it possible to tell.
Kleenex is an interesting one because it’s a brand, meaning a legally registered and protected trademark, but it’s also somewhat “genericized” as a word for a product category, which can endanger the legal trademark status. Nobody says “pass me a facial tissue,” they say “pass me a Kleenex”—even if the facial tissue was made by Puffs or Walmart or whoever. Xerox is another (now maybe dated) example—your photocopier might be Xerox brand or it might be someone else, but “xerox” was/is a common verb or noun for photocopy regardless.
I believe this is why companies put descriptions on the product, like “Kleenex ^(brand facial tissues)”—so they can be clear that this word refers to one trademarked version of this product, not to all of them genetically. They also can file lawsuits and do other defensive actions to protect their brand and trademarks.
(See also: “Is Pepsi okay?” Apparently the Coca-Cola Company has taken legal action against restaurants that serve another cola when someone orders “a Coke.”)
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