A brand is an identity. It embodies the company’s values, target audience and message they want to give out. It can responsible for how a company is perceived by the public and other business’s, which can affect the success of a company; therefore getting the right brand is vital. A good brand should be able to tell you everything that you need to know about a company from an image and name. A brand consists of at least one image and name or strapline. For example McDonalds has the iconic “Golden Arches” and the strap line “I’m Lovin’ it”. You do not even need the image and strap line together to know it belongs to McDonalds, the image or phrase would work on its own and it is iconic all over the world, this makes it a very successful brand.
A brand is placed on any advert or promotional piece for any given company that has its own brand. This is because a product can be sold not for the product itself but for the brand itself. For example people will buy a certain perfume just for the person branding it not for the smell, and others will buy the latest Nike trainers because it is Nike, and for that reason alone. It also makes the company more well known, if they see the advert and see the company’s name, it reinforces the name in to the public therefore it becomes more recognized as it is seen more.
A good brand will create an emotional response from the public, despite what that response may be. It could be happy, excited, upset or stressed, any emotion to encourage the target audience to respond to the advert in a way that will benefit the business, whether that is to donate to a certain charity or to buy the latest lipstick. This emotional response could be through the use of colours used, the facial expressions of characters or the strap line itself. For a brand to evoke a happy and upbeat response colours like orange, yellow and bright greens and purples should be used as they are bright, cheerful colours. More serious adverts have quite neutral colours or no colour at all. This is either to give the advert a professional look for example for home insurance or health insurance. People do not want to see an advert for those business that seem like they do not take themselves seriously as it is a serious issue they will be dealing with. Dark colours could be used for charity adverts. An advert for giving money for helping people in places in Africa browns and black colours could be used to give the idea of dirt, money and poverty, a place of darkness and lack of hope, this is to evoke sympathy from the audience to guilt them in to giving money to the charities.
Colours are not used to just create an emotional response but they can also be used to make a product iconic. Coke cola have the iconic colour of red, no other fizzy drinks company would wisely use that colour as it is so heavily associated with that very popular drink. Because of the Coke Cola red the fictional character of Santa Claus became red because Coke Cola changed him from wearing green to red clothing to match the drinks look. This worked well as people now associate Coke Cola as being the drink for around Christmas time; people say that it does not feel like Christmas until they see that advert on TV. Changing the character to match the products colours, it became the drink for Christmas.
The emotional response could be used to make the target audience feel a sense of connection to the brand so they develop a sense of loyalty. For example there is the rivalry between Burger King and Mcdonalds. If one goes to McDonalds they will refuse to go to Burger King
If someone feels like they can relate to a character from a TV programme they will be more inclined to carry on watching that programme. The same goes for brands. If someone feels like they can relate more to a brand they will be more inclined to carry on buying products associated with brand. For example young teens and young adults would feel that they could relate more with Babel M and Smackers as a make up brand, more so than Rimmel and no.7. This is because Smackers and Babel M are shown as more lively, up beat, fun and out going with the use of colours and writeing font, they are also cheaper and young teens and students tend to not be able to afford more expensive make up. However Rimmel and No.7 are more expensive and the colour pallets of the make up tend to be more classy, neutral and sophisticated colours that are associated with the successful or wealthy woman. The colours when advertising the make up are much more neutral as well and the fonts tend to be serif more so than sans serif. All these factors embody the message of the brand who the brad reaches out to.
Knowing who it is you need to reach out to is vey important. If your brand reaches out to the wrong people it is very bad for business. In order to understand the brand you must understand your target audience. Your brand should embody not just the values and ideals of the company but also who their audience is. For example Pixar has the desk lamp. The lamp is cute, random and approachable. It seems curious when bounceing on the letters and very innocent. This is exactly like the films they produce. The films are friendly, random and innocent. The target audience is family, the parents want a film that is innocent and child friendly, children are innocent, curious and approachable. Therefore that is a good brand image as it can reach out to the correct target audience, engage them with the film and make money.
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