A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product offering as distinct from those of other sellers.
The objective of brand marketing is to create certain attitudes towards the product or service in the minds of consumers, such as:
awareness of the existence of the brand;
recognition of the brand;
persuasion to try the brand - make a purchase;
retention or loyalty to the brand - making repeated purchases in the future.
The digital world poses many new challenges to the successful marketing of brands – especially with the advent of social media – which we now devote an entire section of the knowledge centre to.
In this section we concentrate on the marketing of brands across the board.
Most information technology companies are successful thanks to distribution channels that shepherd products from a manufacturer and ultimately funnel these to the consumer through a series of legitimate distributors across the world. Read More
Want to know how much your brand is worth? Consultants International, an international brand consulting firm, have some pretty strong ideas about how to assess its value. Interbrand claims to have isolated seven key areas that, when factored together, account for a brand's overall worth. A perfect score in all 7 areas equals 100. Read More
Times are tough, and budgets are down. Yet marketers are feeling more pressure to increase sales, profits and market share. Here's a list of ideas that have worked for other brands. Hopefully, they'll spark some ideas for you. Read More
On January 24, 2000, Arthur Andersen, the global professional services firm with more than 77,000 employees in 84 countries, announced a new strategy to better align the 86-year-old firm with developing trends in the world economy. Along with a new strategy, Arthur Andersen unveiled a drastically different new visual identity, brand positioning and brand architecture representative of the firm’s new vision to become “the partner for success in the new economy.” Read More
The question of how we can revitalise, and keep vital, existing brands is one of the most important issues facing us today. It may well be the most important of all. Read More
With the new and rapid changes happening in our industry, I was asked to repeat an article I wrote several years ago for DirectTalk on branding oneself as it is still very relevant today. Read More
Love it, hate it, or sing along to it, advertising is not going to go away. Whatever your viewpoint, the intrusive nature of advertising gives it a profound influence on modern life. And advertising, to a large degree, sets the standards by which we judge both our society and ourselves. Read More
The use of brands has always been central to marketing for more than a century. The dominant logic has been “Build a brand and the world will beat a path to its door”. Therefore what is the point of marketing Southern Africa without a brand? Read More
No room for new brands in the New Millennium? Exactly wrong! says Tom Peters. With wild information overload it is The Brave New Age of the Brand. And its even bigger cousin: IDENTITY. If you want to stand out in an insanely crowded marketplace, BRANDING is the only way you're going to do it. Read More
Sport is an inextricable part of the South African culture and fabric. The defeats and triumphs of our national teams and athletes affect our national mood and self-perception. Read More
The fundamental questions being asked today include: Is electronic commerce merely another revolution in information and business formats, or is it something fundamentally different? Does the information economy (some call it the network or knowledge economy) strengthen brands, supplier alliances, customer relationships, and the value of information – or does it destroy them? People wonder if the demise of Encyclopaedia Britannica as a word-leading brand, (based on reliability and scope of content), due to competition from Internet-based brands such as Encarta is an isolated, industry-specific example, or if it has generic lessons for all types of businesses. Read More
A brand has been described as the marketing asset that exists in customers' minds. There can indeed be no more vivid and vibrant evidence of the creativity and energy of modern commercial life than the flow of ideas expressed in brands and branding. Read More
