[SOUND] So now that we see how important a brand is at creating perceptions of quality, let's get into some of the inner workings of a brand and talk about the different elements of the brand. And let's start with, how do you choose a brand name? but first let me define what the different elements are. So there's a variety of brand elements that can be chosen. you can use some, not use others. and they will totally identify or enhance the brand awareness. And if you choose them right, they can help facilitate the formation of strong, favorable and unique brand associations. And so the things we'll talk about are the brand name, which is the first one, the anchor. different brand logos, symbols brand characters, packaging, brand slogans and brand colors. When you're looking at all of these brand elements, you gotta ask a couple of questions. First of all, you have to make sure all the brand elements work together to create a unique identity for the product and service. So make sure that everything you've chosen is, is of one, one thought, one, one belief and work together in unison. And the second thing to think about is if people see the brand elements or whatever you do create for that brand identity independent of the product, what would people think of just that brand label? And so think about those kinds of things in general as we discuss some of the more tactical issues of choosing these different brand elements. and when we consider each of the different ones, and I'll go over all of them in, you know, in various detail. Not, some of them are more obvious or more, you can figure them out for yourself more easily than others. But, when you think about all of them, you should think about these criteria for choosing a good one. The first thing, when you, when you think about choosing different brand elements, you really want them to be memorable. You want people to be able to recognize it very easily, and you want them to remember what they've seen. The other thing you want to have happen when you choose these elements is that they're meaningful. And they can be meaningful in two different ways. One, in a descriptive way, which is, how do they describe the attributes of the product or the benefit of the product or the customer segment. And the other thing that we're looking at is remember these, this brand label is forming a perception. So you also want these brand elements to work together to persuade the customer of something usually of something positive. the other thing you're thinking about is the, how they look, you know, and you want them to be fun, interesting, aesthetic. You want it to be rich visual imagery. And you also, if you have visual and verbal image, imagery, you have to think about how those two things work together. Again, you want a congruent unified vision here. Another thing to think about, and this is very important, is can you protect your identity? There's two ways to protect it. One is legally. And so many times, if you have a good brand name, you trademark it and then it's against the law for people to copy your brand name. But there's other things that are more subtle and remember I told you about that perception of similarity. People may not be copying exactly what you do. But they may do something that looks similar and they can kind of steal your identity by just looking similar. And so you not only want to have legal protection, but you want to try to identify a brand image and brand elements that work together that are hard to copy. So that you have some sustainable competitive advantage, in addition to the legal protection that you may have. When you're thinking about this brand, remember, it's very expensive to create a strong brand name and it's an extremely valuable asset. And so the other thing you want to think about is how adaptable is this brand name to go, to stay modern? times change, consumer's taste change, competition changes, and so you don't want a brand name that is so, is so static that it can't adapt with changing times, and it's not flexible, and it's not updateable. And along this line, you also want a brand name, if you can, or a brand image, with all these elements that work together that you can use them to go on to different products, if you introduce new products. So I mention Coke started out on a regular a full calorie cola drink, and they stretched that brand name to go to a diet cola drink. So you want to think of brand images that can go, not just on your initial product, but could perhaps go on other products in the future as the company grows. And similarly, you want a product that can go across cultures. Into and that's some, a brand name, I mean, that can go across cultures. So you don't want something that won't be understood or be interpreted differently or inappropriately in other cultures. So more and more as brands are becoming global. Even if you start our very locally. When you choose your brand elements, you should choose brand elements that can go global, should your business get big enough. And each element in, in thinking about this brand image, are going to play a different role in creating those overall perceptions. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. but you really want to think about how you can use them strategically, to achieve some kind of balance and overall impact. And again, as I mentioned before, they have to work together to, to form a unique, consistent image. So let's look at some of the different brand elements and just think about, on the face of it, what some of the advantage and disadvantages are. We start out, the name is obviously crucial. It's the anchor and it's very, very important that you can choose a, a, a good brand name. Sometimes you're, there's legacy brand names and you have a great deal of awareness with a particular brand name. And maybe it wasn't the best one to choose, but you have to use some of the other ones to build it up. Like, for example, the brand name Aflac, or Geico, both of those are brand names that were acronyms. They actually weren't such great brand names because they don't have the advantage of a good brand name of being quick, easy to process, easy to remember. And in both of those cases the marketers us other elements to, to, to help with the brand names. So Aflac came up with the, with the duck image and Geico came up with the Gecko image. So that you can kind of remember those brand names better. But if you can choose it in the beginning, it's better to choose one that's easy to process and recall. Because, the disadvantage of a brand name, is once you bring up that or develop that brand awareness and people really understand what it is, it's pretty difficult and expensive to change. It's not impossible. But a lot of the whole brand imagery is really anchored on the name. So the name, and I'm going to spend some time thinking about that going forward, is extremely important to think about. Once you have a brand name, then you can start thinking about logos and symbols, like the Nike Swoosh or McDonald's arches. These are attention getting. They can be emotional. They can reinforce any of your brand identity. But again, symbols and logos can get out of date. they, they can be ambiguous. They can be in, interpreted differently across cultures, so you again, just have to think about how those work. Not all brands have a character, but a character, if you do have one, can be very quick, very attention getting. Think about what happens if you see Mickey Mouse on something. I mean that's a world famous character, recognized every where and people understand it's fun, it's kids, it's exciting. and so characters can work very well, but they can get outdated, or they can be culturally bound, and certainly not all brands have a character. A slogan and a jingle, if it's done well, gives you a few more words and can give you music to add to the brand element, so it can be used to convey meaning. Nike's Just Do It is an extremely strong slogan, that adds to the Nike brand name. but again, sometimes it's difficult to translate. Sometimes if you do jingles, musical tastes are different, and not everybody likes it. Some people think mus, some of these jingles are annoying. So, there's advantages and disadvantages. Packaging also is extremely advantageous and I'm going to show you some examples of brands that were built on their package design. and we go back to this notion of perceptions. There's a lot of research that shows, and I'm going to talk about that, that people form perceptions of the quality of the product, not by the product itself, but by the package it's in. So this has a very very strong effect on creating perceptions. The difficulty with packaging is many times you don't control how it ultimately reaches the consumer. So the manufacturer builds a product in a package, but then it's the channel or the retailer that delivers that package to the consumer. So for example, if you want the package oriented in a certain way, like front on, it may not appear that way on the shelf. Or if it's supposed to be refrigerated, it may not be at the right temperature, etcetera. So the problem with packaging is that, these channel issues. But after all of these elements have advantages and disadvantages. If you choose them strategically, they can work very well to create a very strong brand image. Let's look specifically at this notion of brand names. Now, the brand name is extremely important for many, many audiences. Obviously, and what we've been focusing on here, it matters to consumers and customers. And, it can, as I mentioned before, seriously affect the likelihood of purchase. It also effects people who work for you, for employees. So, that you really want to do branding externally to your market. But internally to your employee base too. People can be very proud of the company they work for. and the reputation and brand name of the brand may make it easier or harder to hire people, to retain people, and may affect their morale and productivity. it also, the brand name, affects growth opportunities, like I mentioned. If the brand name is not adaptable and not transferable, it may be difficult for the firm to go into new markets or to go into different products. And so it affects the growth potential of the firm, and it affects investors. So just, investors are people too, and they can be very much affected without even realizing it by the brand name. about using the value of the brand name to infer make inferences about the merits and strengths of the firm as an investment opportunity. So the brand name matters a lot in lots of different ways. So, what are the different types of brand names? There's lots of examples, and I'll just go through this kind of quickly. We can look at this chart here. You know, there's a descriptive brand name, where it just basically describes the product or service. Lean Cuisine is like that. It's about non-fattening food. You know exactly what the product is by the brand name. There can be brand names that are metaphors, that represent some kind of symbolism like Nissan's Infinity. A lot of the legacy brand names are based on people's names. So Ford or Ralph Lauren, those are real people. And the brand name was chosen for, because it's based on a particular person. Sometimes there's brand names where the word means something, but it's not really clear how it applies to the product. Apple's a great example of, of that kind of. Or Camel, what are those, those are brand names. You know what the words mean and now, certainly, they're very famous brand names, so you understand what they are. But they don't really have any direct connection with the product. Then there can be brand names that are altered. They kind of sound like they're a real word, but actually they're not, like Lucent or Spotify. You kind of have a sense what those brands mean, and you think you know what those words are, but they're not real. Or you can have a new word that's created by blending together two other words. Facebook is a great example of that that, that's not a real word, but you know what it is, a book of faces. And then, of course, there can be invented words that are not at all real and you have no idea what it means, and you can't even guess, like something like Exxon. Let me give you just three examples of modern brand names that follow all of these things, and you can see, these brand names were extremely strong choices. and they worked very very well, and they were all very different. So I'll start with Richard Branson's Virgin. He explains that the origin of that brand name was when he was 15, he was sitting in a room with other 15 year olds, and they were trying to think of the name, of a name for a record company. And a couple of the girls said, well, we're all virgins here. And somehow or another, that name just seemed to spark interest, and they said, well, if we started a record company, we'd be virgins in that business, so let's use that name. And apparently that's how that name was chosen. He mentioned that, at the time, it was considered a pretty risky brand name and it was hard to register for a while. But now, it's become an extraordinarily strong brand name. And, it, there, it's a funness to it that actually works really well with a lot of his products and markets. Priceline's a different type of brand name. That's a brand name that's quite descriptive. you know, if you know what that business is, you know it's absolutely about establishing a line of prices. It's quite clear what it means and it has been very useful in that way, in, in a different way than Virgin. And finally Google, which you know has now become a verb, people Google things, with, it's interesting that brand name was chosen by mistake. they meant it to be the word Googol, which is not spelled the way the brand is spelled, and that, that's a very, very large number. It's 1 with 100 zeros after. So this was a mistake, they meant to spell it right and they didn't. Google's a very, very interesting brand name from a marketing point of view because one of the things that we argue is extremely important in brand names is consistency. And Google has met, because it is so well known, and people identify it in just little pieces of the brand name. They identify the colors, they identify the typeface, that Google plays around, as I've showed you on this screen, where they'll show you its trademark differently everytime you see it. Whenever you go to the browser, you'll see a different version of the brand name. That's a sign of an extraordinarily strong brand name that has very, very high brand awareness, that you can see it even when it's not exactly the same every single time. But these are all fairly new brand names that have been very, very successful. When you look at new startups now, a lot of the trend in the new startups, and there was a recent Wall Street Journal article about this. the new startups are, are making up brand names, and so a lot of the new businesses come up with brand names that are, just these invented words like Mibblio or Kaggle or Shodogg or Zaarly. You don't even know how to pronounce some of these words. Why is that happening? Part of the, part of the reason is, in today's world, when you have a, a brand new business, you need a, a website right away. And most of the recognizable URLs have already been taken and so one of the ways to get a URL that's uniquely identified with your business, is to invent a new word. Then you're going to have to use the other elements of the brand mix to try to give some kind of identity to this brand name. Let me talk about an interesting hap, thing that happened with brand names somewhat recently. The Gap brand name, a few years ago now, I'm not sure exactly when. But Gap wasn't doing very well with their same store sales, revenues were down, they really needed to do something to turn the business around. And one of the things they were trying to do to modernize it was to change the trademark, or change the brand logo. So the original brand logo as shown on the screen is a blue square with the word Gap in white on that blue square and you can see the new logo that they put out, is very different. The blue square has shrunk, the typeface has changed it's now on a white background. And they put that brand name out in, into their social media market, and instantly got very, very negative reaction to that brand name. The consumers hated it. Within, that brand name was out there, just tentatively, as a test, for one week. The reaction was so negative that the company pulled it back and that was the end of that. So it ended up actually being a, a pretty, it was, you know, they got a lot of publicity at the time. But it was a pretty inexpensive way. A lot of times, if you try to change your, your brand image, it's extremely expensive to change it, especially for a retailer. There's signage, there's bags, you know, the, the packaging. And all sorts of things that would be very, very expensive. So actually, that this got such a negative reaction, that they found out so quickly, it was, was a benefit for the company. But because this was somewhat of a famous incident some market research was done, and some fMRI studies, and neurostudies were done to figure out what was so bad about that image. Why did people not like it. And there's a couple things that they identified that when I show you, you can see make sense. One of them is, if you have visual and verbal things in conflict with each other, people read the visual first. And so where that blue box is, behind the P, it, you're, it actually kind of blocks out the P, and you see a hole in the P, and the P is not as strong because you're attracted first to the vision. So that weakened the whole idea of the brand there. because the P was kind of weakened because of the visual block on it. The other thing that, that's different between the two logos is that instead of being all caps, which is in the original one, now this is an initial cap and then smaller letters. And what that ended up doing was making people think of it as a word, rather then a brand name. And if you think about it, the word gap, that means a hole, that's, you know, you have, that's not so positive. So when we're looking at these things in hindsight, you can kind of see why that wasn't a good choice. And people just didn't have a very strong emotional reaction to it, also. There were negative emotions to it that were kind of more on a visceral level, and what I'm explaining here is, you know, more thoughtful. and the last thing I want to mention in thinking about brand names, is a lot of people now, you've got to think about global business. And a lot of the business, the future business is in China. And that's tricky to think about how your brand names might translate into Chinese. And there's a number of issues there. A number of different ways to do it. One way is to keep your brand name in the English let or, the French letters, or the English letters, or the non-Chinese letters. some of the luxury brands do that. So, Chanel, or LV, you know, Louis Vuitton, will do those kinds of things. They keep them in their native language. But other brands try to change their brand name into Chinese. And this is tricky because you can do it, Coca-Cola, for example. what does Coca-Cola mean? How do you translate that? And if you just go and look for the Chinese characters that kind of sound like Coca-Cola, well, the characters themselves may mean something. So when Coca-Cola first did that and tried to pick Chinese characters that sounded like Coca-Cola, it had a very bad brand meaning. And they had to take that one off the market. The one they currently had, have means tasty fun, so it kind of sounds like Coca-Cola, and it means something that at least makes sense with a drink. Reebok did the same kind of thing, the Chinese characters that they chose kind of sound like Reebok and it means, quick steps, which again makes sense. Colgate did something different. Colgate picked Chinese characters that they thought was consistent with their brand image, which meant superior cleanliness. And then the Chinese characters, if you said them, didn't sound very much like the word Colgate. And Cadillac did it the opposite way. They took Chinese characters that sounded like Cadillac, but they didn't mean anything in Chinese. So, when you're translating to a very, very different language, and an important language like China, because of the size of the market, there are some big issues. And there are a lot of agencies now that are developing to help you choose a name that will make sense in China. [MUSIC]
