Branding is what a company does to create an identity. It can be a product identity or a corporate identity. A company has to define it’s product brand or corporate brand before it markets that brand to consumers like you and me. Branding is the process of creating a unique, positive and recognizable identity for a product or service. You can see the difference between a corporate brand and a retail brand here: Pepsi v. Pepsico
Colors as they associate with brands
Branding involves determining the characteristics your product needs in order to appeal to your target audience. Branding sets the core message you want to communicate about your product.
Successful branding seeks to craft a message that represents the product or company the way they want to be perceived. If a new fast food restaurant wants to be perceived as fun and healthy, then their ad agency will craft a brand that try’s to appear fun and healthy.
Brand designers consider colors, typography, logos, and slogans when creating a brand identity. When building the Caterpillar brand, the company considered its target audience – people who buy construction equipment – and crafted a look and feel for their brand that appeals to that audience.
American Eagle went through the same branding type process as Caterpillar. American Eagle crafted a brand to appeal to teens. If you compare the two companies, it’s obvious they are meant for different target audiences and have different product messages. Each brand uses it’s own specific images, colors and even fonts that they think will help make the brand appealing to their target audience.
The ultimate goal of any company is to create brand loyalty to their products.
Think of the brand as the product or company’s image – how they want to be seen by the consumer.
Marketing is the strategy used to sell the brand to consumers.
Marketing the Brand
Once a brand is developed, it’s time to launch the brand or inform the public about the product. This is done through a marketing campaign. Marketing campaigns are highly developed, multi-media initiatives that corporations use to try and get their message out to their target audiences. A marketing campaign includes all the all the TV, radio, print, and internet ads along with logos, jingles and press releases.
When a huge company like McDonalds puts together a marketing campaign they make sure the core branding elements (logos, jingles and sometimes characters) are obvious in all their ads whether radio, TV, print or online.
Smaller companies can’t afford to dump millions into a marketing campaign. They have to be frugal and innovative in finding and marketing to their target audience. Smaller companies may not have a marketing campaign that includes all the various media of a McDonald’s campaign. Smaller companies often have to rely on innovative marketing strategies. (Baconsalt)
Discussion – Is the Company the Brand? – Brands are linked with corporate identity. A corporation like Nestle’s (slogan “Good Food. Good Life) may develop an identity of being focused on Bringing Our Purpose to Life. Nestle’ owns many brands and as each of those brands are bought or developed, they make sure to craft images and messages that reaffirm their primary corporate values of “quality, nutrition, convenience and flavor”
Assignment #1 – Compare Company Websites
Begin to hone in on what makes a brand unique and helps it to attract it’s target audiences by comparing and contrasting two company websites. Pick companies that have distinctly different target audiences. You can use this template to type your comparisons. Analyze the site for elements that appeal to the companies target audience. Compare and contrast how each companies website is built to appeal to the companies target audience.
Some examples of distinctly different companies are:
Barbie and Cabella’s
Monster Energy and Odwalla Juice
McDonald’s and DeEduardo’s
Whole Foods Market and Family Dollar
Your finished product should look like this. Please pay attention to formatting. Make it readable and use spell check.
Assignment #2 – Create an Atypical Brand
Think of a brand, any brand. If you study that brand, especially if it’s a smaller, niche brand, you will begin to detect the subtle things marketers do appeal to the brands target audience. It’s almost as if marketers create brands that have the personality characteristics that appeal to the target audience. Below is a comparative list of characteristics brands may try to emulate:
conservative v. liberal
reserved v. wild
safe v. dangerous
muted v. colorful
indoors v. outdoors
subdued v. energetic
still v. action-oriented
feminine v. masculine
light v. dark
religious v. secular
sophisticated v. childish
deep v. superficial
predictable v. spontaneous
local v. global
thoughtful v. flighty
all-American v. ethnic
Popular, mainstream brands (ie. Target, McDonalds) are going to develop more generic corporate brands. It’s harder to put big corporate brands into a category. Smaller, niche brands try to appeal to their target audience with branding that is edgier and more focused (Monster Energy, Hot Topic). Young, small companies that succeed put a lot of thought and time into developing their image or brand.
Selling ice-cubes to Eskimos
Your next task is to take create a brand that tries to make a product appealing to an audience that would not normally buy it. This is done by understanding what appeals to your target audience and then crafting the brand to include what appeals to your target audience.
Freshly Dead Flowers is an example of a product (fresh flowers – fresh, outdoors, colorful) not usually associated with a group (goths – death mongers, anti-colorful) but with a message that targets the audience in a way that would appeal to them. (the flowers are freshly dead, watch them wither and die before your eyes).
Another example is selling purses to farmers. How would you describe a stereotypical farmer? Maybe you’d say a typical farmer seems hard working, dirty, calloused, manly and simple. A purse brand that appeals to farmer-man would have to be rugged, simple and include features that somehow make his life easier.
Here are some examples of target audiences and products you can use
| Target Market Profiles | Products |
| Teen Males Prone to Risk-taking Goths Animal Rights Enthusiasts Low Income Country Music Fans Skater Wannabe’s The Super Rich Retired People with Health Issues and Disposable Income People Living in an Urban Environment People Wanting to Appear “Ghetto” Middle Age Male NFL Fans Prone to Laziness Housewives with Children at Home Slightly Obsessive about Cleanliness 5 – 7 Year Olds with Pets Hunting & Fishing Enthusiasts Athletic Individuals World Travel Enthusiasts Do It Yourselfers Mechanics Weight Lifters with Body Image Issues People with Psychological Paranoia Farmers | Tractors Leather Loafers (dress shoes) Converses Wood Stoves A Set of Cookware Tires A Skateboard Organic Apples Pencils Health Insurance Hair Color or Extensions A Vacuum A Candy Bar An Aquarium A Computer Scuba Gear A Tent |
Brand to Ad
You will be creating a mini-marketing package for your new brand. Remember, you are selling something to an audience that would not normally buy it (ie. leather loafers to animal rights activists, make-up to men, purses to farmers, dresses to tomboys). Your group will need to complete 2 or 3 of the items below.
Required
A full size (8.5×11 or 8.5×14) printable magazine-type ad that includes:
– a unique logo
– a slogan
– an integrated product image and background
– detailed product information; write with your target audience in mind. Minimum of 80 words
– text with various formats (fonts, headings, subheadings, etc)
Options – pick 1 if you are working in a group of 2, pick 2 if you’re in a group of 3
4 logos (in addition to the main logo – total of 5)
If you and your partner are graphic design oriented, you can create a series of logos for your product. Act as if you are presenting logo ideas to the company’s CEO. Each logos should be unique. You should be able to explain how at least one of your logos was designed for your target audience (ie. we made it grungy to appeal to skaters or we used pastels to appeal to women, or we used WWII images to appeal to senior citizens)
If your looking for logo inspiration, there’s a billion logo samples at Go 2 Web 2.0.
Want to beef up your graphic design tricks? Smashing Magazine has a bunch of Web 2.0 Design Tutorials, I’ve used these and they’re good. They are written for Photoshop, but most Gimp users can replicate the effects. Here’s a batch of GIMP how to’s and other resources.
2 – 15 second recorded radio ads with a jingle.
This is a strictly audio commercial. You and you partner should each have speaking parts. You can have additional characters if you like. There should be music somewhere, either as part of your jingle, or as background music. You need to write and submit a script for each commercial in correct script format. Here’s a wikihow on writing scripts.
A recorded 30 second TV Ad
This option may require some outside-of-school work. You and your partner should both have a part. You can add other characters if you want. You need to include a title and credits and edit if necessary. You will hand in the finished product as well as a script. This is a sample video script about underage drinking. Here’s the script to a play
Assignment #3 – Re-branding: Practice Positioning a Familiar Brand
Our culture is so saturated with advertising, we stop taking notice of common products in advertising. It takes a big effort for companies to draw attention to a product we already have preconceived ideas about. For this positioning practice, you need to develop a marketing plan to give people new ideas about an old product. Consider something that has a very stereotypical audience (ie prunes, minivans, video games) and re-position the product by creating a marketing message to appeal to a new audience.
Describe the re-positioning concept in a short paragraph (minimum 100 words)
Create 3 types of printed media that reflect both your new marketing message and the correct printed media format. I’ve listed below 5 primary forms of printed media and the characteristics of each
Bumper Stickers and T-Shirts
Quick, Clear & Memorable phrases and Images
Company Names, Slogans, & Logos
Posters
Usually on Location
Dated Information
Newspaper
Black & White or Color
Less Detailed Images
Dated Information
Fine Print
Magazines
Focus on the Image or Picture
Models used
Close Attention to Layout
Billboards
Similar to Magazine but no Fine Print
Attention to Image and Layout
