What is a brand? It can be hard to define, in part because its meaning has evolved over the last few decades. Here are a few thoughts on that evolution, and ideas on what we might all be meaning when we use the word today.
1st April 2024
ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD ‘BRAND’
The word ‘brand’ is thought to have originated from rancher’s branding their cattle in Ancient Egypt – the need was to identify that this particular cow belonged to them. This way of thinking about the process of branding is where we began: a brand was the name and ‘marque’ you put onto the product that would signal to purchasers which company had made it. This is probably what many of us still think of when we think of ‘a brand’ today: the ‘brand’ of laundry detergent you choose, the chocolate bar, the badge on the front of the car.
HOW THE PROCESS OF BRANDING HAS EVOLVED
David Ogilvy described a brand as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes”. This idea of ‘intangible’ value – the value that can be ‘added’ to the tangible worth of the product through the way you conceive of the branding – now shapes the process much more consciously. The introduction of a metric for ‘brand valuation’ as a way of translating the intangible value (brand equity) to a tangible figure that can be added to a companies balance sheet, has further embedded this understanding of branding as critical to commercial success and the creation of value.
Jeff Bezos of Amazon says: “your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”. This way of thinking requires a business to go beyond focusing on ‘what’ it makes and how it presents its products to the world, to looking at ‘how’ it goes about its business – the conditions for the people who work there, policies on sustainability, its supply chain, etc – the elements that will ultimately combine to make up the overall reputation of the company itself (and define what’s said about you by people when you’re not in the room).
THE CONTEXT
To add further complexity, the context brands operate in is constantly evolving and with that comes changes in the perception of your business and your brand that you are not fully in control of. Whether that’s related to the cost of living, our feelings around the ethics of the energy sector, what is happening in the housing market – all of these factors impact the way people feel about brand. Coca Cola is no longer just about the drink, it has had to consider how people feel about sugar, the obesity epidemic, marketing to kids, etc. A powerful brand and a great reputation can help companies be robust in the face of the changing context. Lego for example knows it is under significant pressure to evolve its production processes given its reliance on single use plastics and has pledged to be fully sustainable by 2032. Chances are, we will trust them to achieve that and we’ll stick with them on their journey to getting there.
THE ETHICS OF BRANDING
As with so many things – the internet, AI, etc – branding itself, as a tool or a process, cannot be seen really as good or bad – as either making things better in the world or making things worse. It’s the goals the company is pursuing and the way they are going about their business that will determine that – the brand is just what is helping them to get there.
Branding can of course be used cynically as a tool for manipulation – encouraging people to buy things they don’t need or can’t afford, presenting a product as ethical and sustainable when it’s not, dressing up an offer to feel more exciting or professional than it is, and these are all the things that can give branding a bad rep. Branding can also be used to help customers navigate towards companies that enhance their own individual experiences of life, to support businesses that are using enterprise as way to simultaneously be successful whilst solving a societal problem, as a way to choose the companies that match to our own values, or share the perspectives on the world we want to identify with. Shell is a brand and so too is Patagonia. How we feel about these two companies is very different – but they are both “brands”.
