Brand Definitions, Identity, Archetypes, and Strategies

Posted on Mar 12, 2025 in Business Management and Marketing

Definitions of a Brand

  • Brand is a ‘name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.
  • Brand – a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer. (P. Feldwick)
  • Brand – a form of socially constructed reality that has attained an objective reality, which is why it can have a cash value that is dependent on the totality of perceptions held about it. (F. Yakob)
  • Brand – is a set of mental associations, held by the consumer, which add to the perceived value of a product or service. These associations should be unique (exclusivity), strong (saliency) and positive (desirable). (K.L. Keller)
  • Brand – consists of a set of enduring and shared perceptions in the minds of consumers. (N. Hollis)
  • Global brand – a brand that has transcended its cultural origins to develop strong relationships with consumers across different countries and cultures. (N. Hollis).

Brand Identity & Brand Image

Brand Identity

  • Express brand’s essence and the promise made to customers who use the brand.
  • Is a complex message about the brand, sent by the seller to prospective buyers through all the marketing tools used.
  • Is a set of values and features that distinguish a brand, that should be created or maintained during the implementation of this brand’s strategy.
  • Is a required (desirable) way of perceiving the brand, that is communicated by the owner to the target market (of potential buyers).
  • Defines its destination in the minds of consumers, compared to other brands.
  • Allows to define the boundaries of brand positioning, adjust means of brand’s expression used and ensure its individuality and durability.

Brand Image

  • Is a picture of what a given brand is in the minds of market participants. This image is created by elements of the marketing mix, reflecting the implementation of the marketing strategy.
  • Is based on knowledge of the brand and its reputation (prestige).
  • Is an image of the brand in the mind of the consumer: a set of beliefs about the attributes and associations.
  • Is the way the brand is perceived by its actual and potential buyers.



Differences Between Identity and Image

The differences between the identity and brand image depend on:

  • the degree of compatibility between what the sponsor of a brand declares and what actually is on offer;
  • the efficiency of brand identity promotion in the target market;
  • the way the brand is perceived by the public.

Discrepancies between the identity and brand image are the result of the impact of information from competition, influential media or organizations and individuals who are reluctant to the brand.


Imagen

  • Its ‘physique’ made of combination of either salient objective features (immediately come to mind when the brand is quoted in a survey) or emerging ones. Physical facets – tangible things packaging, product look and feel
  • Personality. By communicating it builds up character. The way in which it speaks of its products or services shows what kind of person it would be if it were human.
  • Culture. Strong brands are a vision of the world, an ideology. Major brands are not only driven by a culture but convey their culture.
  • A Brand is a relationship being at the crux of transactions and exchanges between people.
  • Customer reflection. When asked for their views on certain brand, people immediately answer in terms of the brands; perceived client type.
  • A Brand speaks to our self-image. self-image is the target’s own mirror.


Brand Archetypes

Archetypes

  • Are certain patterns regarding the brand’s personality, how it should be communicated and how it should behave.
  • Are certain characters whose features are easy to imagine.
  • Archetypes transferred to brands facilitate their personification by consumers.
  • Are the remnants of human experiences occurring in the collective unconscious, so they are not related only to individual persons.
  • Archetypes contain basic patterns of thinking, experiencing and behavior of people present in many cultures.
  • Are deeply rooted in people’s psyche, accompanying them from childhood, so people react to them responsibly.


Imagen


Brand Architecture Types

3 most popular types of Brand Architecture:

BRANDED HOUSE

This Brand Architecture type has the parent brand, which is always closely associated with the child brand. The names of the sub-brands are attached to its parent brand. We can also see the relationship in the logo, packaging, and brand communication – all are aligned to the parent brand.

Virgin is an example of Branded House Architecture. Virgin airlines, Virgin café, Virgin digital etc.

HOUSE OF BRANDS

House of Brands is a Brand Architecture Strategy where a parent brand owns and manages various sub-brands, each of those is a unique brand. Those sub-brands don’t closely relate themselves to its parent brand. Their distinctive personalities are seen through Brand names, logos and communication style.

Chevrolet, Hummer, Chrysler, Cadillac, Jeep, Mazda, Opel, Buick etc. You’d be surprised to know that the age old General Motors is their parent brand.

HYBRID ARCHITECTURE

This type of Brand Architecture Strategy uses merits of both – Branded House and House of Brands. This is a combination model where all kinds of parent-child relationships can co-exist. Some of the sub-brands are associated closely with the parent brand while some other sub-brands dissociate or have a distant relationship with its parent.

The classic example of this architecture is that of Volkswagen. VW owns brands like Bugatti, Seat, Audi and Skoda. But it also carries a brand on its own name.

To Create or Acquire a Brand?

How a Brand Can Be Acquired:

  • Autonomous development of the brand
  • The acquisition of the rights to the brand
    • The purchase of trade mark rights
    • The purchase of a company with the rights to the brand
  • Obtaining the rights to use the brand – license agreement
    • franchise agreement
  • Obtaining the rights to use the Brand in strategic alliance

Autonomous Development of the Brand (Create):

>Advantages:

  • The concept of the New Brand fully aligned to the objectives of the Brand owner and the current market environment
  • Original Brand is introduced to the market with unique characteristics compared to competing brands
  • The company that introduces the New Brand may be its only user

>Disadvantages:

  • The need to incur increasingly substantial financial resources to develop the concept of a New Brand and its legal protection
  • A long period of time necessary to develop the concept of brand, market introduction and consolidation of its identity in customers’ minds
  • Significant risk of introducing a new brand that will not be accepted by buyers.

The Acquisition of the Rights to the Brand

>Advantages:

  • Acquiring a strong brand, often one with a high level of loyalty, knowledge and positive image.
  • Faster acquiring a strong brand
  • Faster market penetration of the product market or a new geographic market.
  • Strengthening the company’s position in a given geographic market, product market or in the specific segment of buyers
  • The possibility of company’s product range extension
  • Brand portfolio diversification

>Disadvantages:

  • Usually, the high cost of acquiring the rights to the trademark
  • The strategy of the acquired brand and its image is not fully adequate for the aims of enterprise.


Brand Development Strategies

>Brand Extension – an existing strong brand used as a vehicle for new or modified products.

Approximately 40% of the new brands are actually Brand extensions. Brand-extension strategy is designed to capture as wide a shelf space in the retail store as possible in pursuit of shelf space monopoly.

>Multibrands – On the market, which is divided among many brands, the supplier can consciously decide to launch new brand(s) that will seemingly compete against his own existing strong ‘old’ brand (used for ‘old’ products that often have identical product characteristics to products of a ‘new’ brand).

This is done in order to absorb part of the market demand that would otherwise be managed by niche brands from other manufacturers.

>Cannibalization – it is a problem of multibrand approach, in which an organization’s new brand takes business away from its established one.

This may be acceptable if there is a net gain overall. The cost of cannibalization may sometimes unexpectedly reach an unacceptable level in terms of the attrition of existing profitable businesses (brands).

>Private Brand – the retailer’s own branded product (or service). When the retailer has a particularly strong identity (ie. Biedronka, Tesco, Castorama, Lidl) the store brand may be able to compete against even the strongest brand leaders and may dominate those markets, which are not otherwise strongly branded.

Consumer-Based Brand Equity – Brand Resonance Pyramid

The Customer-Based Brand Equity model is a base for the roadmap and a guidance for building a strong brand. It provides a yardstick by which brands can assess their progress, and a guide for marketing research initiatives.

The CBBE model maintains that building a strong brand involves a series of logical steps:

  • Establishing the proper brand identity.
  • Creating the appropriate brand meaning.
  • Eliciting the right brand response.
  • Forging appropriate brand relationships with customers.

Brand Names, Logos, and Logotypes

A list of guidelines associated with brand name success:

  • Use many vowels that makes its pronunciation easier.
  • Brand names must be preferably short.
  • Brand names should not carry negative or offensive meanings.
  • Artificial brand names ensure that they are not used by another company.
  • Brand names may describe certain product uses or characteristics.
  • Brand names may suggest the impact they have on people.
  • Brand names should not be similar to competitive brands for avoiding customer confusion.

Types of brand names:

  • The Names of the brand founders, Metaphorical, Descriptive, Acronyms, Invented, Combined.

Logo – A recognizable graphic design element, often including a name, symbol or trademark, representing an organization or product.

The five types of Logos:

  • Thematic signs – Referring to the graphic images of the industry, which the brand represents.
  • Symbolic signs – depicting specific concepts, operations or processes that relate to the associations, metaphors.
  • Characters inspired by heraldry – these emphasize the links with the region, town or family.
  • Inspired lettering signs (logotypes) or numbers.
  • Abstract signs – purely graphic combinations.
  • Characters inspired by the name of the company – graphic visualization of the designate of the name.


Brand Equity Models – BAV and BrandZ

BAV

BAV provides comparative measures of the brand equity of thousands of brands across hundreds of different categories. There are four key components—or pillars— of brand equity, according to BAV.

  1. Differentiation measures the degree to which a brand is seen as different from others.
  2. Relevance measures the breadth of a brand’s appeal.
  3. Esteem measures how well the brand is regarded and respected.
  4. Knowledge measures how familiar and intimate consumers are with the brand.


BRANDZ

According to this model, brand building involves a sequential series of steps, where each step is contingent upon successfully accomplishing the previous step. The objectives at each step, in ascending order, are as follows:

  • Presence. Active familiarity based on past trial, saliency or knowledge of brand promise
  • Relevance. Relevant to consumer’s needs, in the right price range or in consideration set
  • Performance. Felt to deliver acceptable product performance and is on the consumer’s short-list
  • Advantage. Felt to have an emotional or rational advantage over other brands in the category
  • Bonding. Rational and emotional attachments to the brand to the exclusion of most other brands


Points of Parity, Points of Difference

  • Points of difference (PODs) are strong, favorable and unique associations for a brand. These associations can be functional, performance-related considerations or abstract, imagery-related considerations.
  • The concept of POD is similar to the notion of Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It is also closely related to sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) – that relates to a firm’s ability to achieve an advantage in delivering superior value to the market place for a prolonged period of time.
  • POD may involve performance attributes, or performance benefits and also imagery associations.
  • Many top brands attempt to create a POD on ‘overall superior quality’, whereas a positioning strategy adopted by other firms is to create a POD for their brands as the ‘low-cost provider’ of a product or service.
  • Many PODs are possible.
  • Points of Parity (POPs) are associations that may be shared with other brands. These types of associations come in two forms:
  • Category points of parity – associations that consumers view as being necessary to be a legitimate and credible offering within a certain product or service category. These represent necessary – but not necessarily sufficient – conditions for brand choice.
  • Competitive points of parity – associations designed to negate competitors’ points of difference. If a brand can ‘break even’ in those areas where its competitors are trying to find an advantage and can achieve advantages in some other areas, the brand should be in a strong – and perhaps unbeatable – position.