Branding – How it all started

Brand – The word, the phenomenon which has revolutionised the behaviour of shoppers when they are all out in pursuit of finding THE  perfect stuff in stores. Little do they worry of what goes behind in formation of a phenomenon, which magnetizes them towards itself in a shopping store.

Companies at the same time are putting in mammoth efforts to create their individual identity in the cluttered market space. In order to really understand, what needs to be done, along with its most important counter parts “when” and “how”, I invariably think it is very much necessary that we start from the very basics of it, i.e. how it all started and what does it actually mean and intend to do, so here we go:

So how was this whole concept of branding born which today governs the fate of a new product or a service in the market? Well, the word brand is derived from Old English which means “Burning stick”.

Way back in 2700 BC a hot metal stick was used to create a mark on livestock so that their rightful owners could identify them and thus theft also could be avoided. Taking a cue from this, in order to differentiate their goods in cluttered market space, manufacturers started marking their goods and the whole process has evolved a lot since then. However there wasn’t any formal name or a defined process for it until recently American Marketing Association in 1960 came up with a formal definition of the entire process as follows:

“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 other sellers”

Thus Branding can be understood as a process which helps a brand manager to create a distinct positive identity of the product under consideration in the minds of intended target audience. The complete brand strategy has to be interwoven and completely in synchronization with every activity that goes on to generate more awareness about the brand.

“Google” can be taken as a wonderful example in present context, as netizens, whenever want to search a thing or two , they just google it and google has now become a synonym for search  and that says a lot about the intelligently crafted brand strategies behind it.

The Branding discipline as such is very young and is still going under evolution but the brand manager needs to be very much clear with the image he wants his brand to attain in the minds of consumer, his strategies should focus on how well his brand creates a connect and resides within the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects as it is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions. After all, Brand is what remains in the minds of consumer, much like a memory where as the product or a service is just another moment, which has a limited time span!

The article has been contributed by Mr Rohil Raina. He has a MBA in marketing & Strategy and has over 3 years of  industry experience.