Branding

What is a brand?
a brand is the identity of a product, business or service, a brand can take many forms including a name, sign, symbol, colour combination or slogan. Brands can be legally protected which is known as a trademark, brands are almost a personality of companies, products or business. A global brand is one which is perceived to reflect the same set of values around the world, a few good examples of global brands are Coca-Cola and Mcdonald's. The Coca-cola logo is recognizable whatever language you might speak, the words and their styling become a symbol for the product, similarly Macdonald's is known for the 'golden arches'.


Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to the customer's ability to recall and recognize a brand in any situation and link the logo, jingle etc to that brand, this becomes a sort of shorthand for the brand through the associations the consumer makes in their mind. It also ensures that customers would know which of their needs would be satisfied by buying or using that brand, that is brand awareness.


Brand Promise
Brand owner's have a vision of what the brand should be and what it should do for their consumers. Brands create strong enduring bonds with their consumers so that the consumer will always buy a certain brand, the brand becomes trustworthy as the consumer believes they are buying the best eg "Beanz meanz Heinz" and thus the brand builds up a good reputation.

Brand Identity
The brand identity is typically the attributes which someone would associate with a brand and also how the brand owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand. Effective brand names build a connection between the brand personality which connect with the target audience. However, over time, a product's brand identity may evolve and gain new attributes from the consumer's perspective but this is not necessarily from the marketing communications.
A good example of a brand that has changed over time is McDonald's, originally Mcdonald's started out with a target audience of mainly children but as times have changed and the media has focused on the unhealthiness of McDonald's food McDonald's has had to evolve their brand image and alter their target audiences and they have done this very cleverly over time. We would have hardly noticed the change in the brand but looking back and comparing we can see how the target audience had now broadened to encompass the family suggesting Macdonald's is part of family life, and how the food has been portrayed as being healthy eg salad options, portions of fruit, prime beef and real chicken pieces.

Artists as a brand


Artists need to be branded in order to create an image and to portray their genre, some artists have a logo, a certain style of dress, haircuts or dance style which is evident  in each of their videos, for example 'The Saturdays' have certain colours for each member which we see in more or less all of their videos. I think with The Saturdays the colours work very effectively at creating individual images within the band but complying with overall conventions of their genre of Pop.





Other artists logos

This fits Katy Perry's brand image as she is very girly and acts sweet in her videos with controversial songs such as 'I kissed a Girl" i think this image works well to show she's sweet but mischievous as the colour clash and are typical girly colours whilst the hearts suggest a loving personality.

This logo suits Paloma well as the font is quite retro in an Art Deco style and she herself is quite classically stylish but quirky. I think the bird is a dove symbolizing peace but also her escapism from the conventional Pop genre and puts her own twist on it.

Molly