Brand Identity

Brand Identity
• Brand identity is a unique set of the brand
associations that the brand strategist aspires to
create or maintain .
These associations represent what the brand stands for and
imply a promise to customers from organizational members.
 Brand Identity
• Brand Identity
• What is Brand Identity?
– “A unique set of brand associations that the brand
strategist aspires to create or maintain” Aaker 96
– It is different from brand image : how customers and
others perceive the brand. It is on the receiver's side
– Brand identity is on the sender’s side : the purpose is
to specify the brand’s meaning, aim and self image
– As such Identity precedes image : before projecting
an image we must know exactly what to project
 Aspects of Brand
• BRAND IMAGE
How the brand is now perceived
• BRAND IDENTITY
How Strategists want the brand to be perceived
• BRAND POSITION
The part of the brand identity and value proposition to be
actively communicated to a target audience.
 AAKER’S FRAMEWORK
• He defined Brand Identity as sum of the brand
expressed as a product , organization , person and
symbol.
1. Brand as a product: deals with the acceptance of the
brand as a product itself
2. Brand as an organisation: emphasizes that a brand
is successful among other things because of the
organizational values it holds.
3. Brand as person: deals with the question “ What
happens to this brand when it becomes a person ? “
4. Brand as Symbol: deals with heritage and what the
brands stand for.
 Brand Identity Prism
• Brand identity should be represented by an
hexagonal prism
– A Brand has physical qualities and specifications, a
set of salient objective features that come to mind
when the brand is mentioned. They can also be latent,
emerging
• Coca-Cola – bottle, color
• Absolut Vodka- bottle , product color (e.g. no
color)
• Hermés – leather and silk
 Brand Identity Prism
• The conception of brand identity was
mentioned for the first time in Europe by
Kapferer,1986.
 Brand Identity Prism
• According to J. Kapferer, brand identity could
be de-fined by answering the following
questions:
- What is the aim and individual vision of a brand?
- What makes a brand distinguished?
- How satisfaction could be achieved?
- What is brand's equity?
- What are brand competence, validity and legitimacy?
- What are the features of its recognition?
 A Brand has a Physique
• First of all brand contains an external specificity that is
physical appearance, which is the core of brand and its
value added. This determines a traditional brand
management due to orientation to “know how”, classical
positioning, selecting a principal good or
brand features and the benefit. The first step building up a
brand is the definition of physical factors, identifying what
it is, what it does and how does it look like. Physical
appearance is closely connected with a brand prototype,
revealing the quality of a brand (for example Coca-Cola
bottles on tins of Coca-Cola)
 A Brand has a personality
– The easy way to build a personality is to use a
spokesman a star or an animal.
– Brand personality are those traits of human personality
that can be attributed to brands. This is the personality
facet of the Sender.
– It should not be confused with the customer reflected
image, which is a picture of the ideal receiver

deals with the question “ What happens to this brand

when it becomes a person ? “
 A Brand is a culture
• Culture plays the essential role in brand
differentiation as it indicated what moral
values are embodied in goods and
services. This feature helps identifying the
strongest brands because sources, basic
ideals and a set of values are revealed.
 A Brand is a culture
– Every product is the product of a culture, its
concrete representation and its support (in the
media sense)
– Culture means the set of values ,source of
inspiration for the brand
-- symbolizes the organization , its country-of-
origin and the values it stands for
-- A brand has its own culture and origin. The
both influence & is part of strong brands.
 A Brand is a relationship
– Brands are often the object of transactions
between people, of exchanges. This is critical
for services and for retailers
-- relationship is the hand-shake between the
consumer and the organization.
• Nike – provocation : “Just Do It”
• Apple – friendliness
• IBM- order setting
• Saffola- safety
 A Brand is a customer reflection
– is the consumer’s perception of what the brand stands for
Reflection :If asked for views on car brands consumers identify them on
the perceived client type: for young people, for family fathers, for
show offs…out of the communication history and most representative
products brands build an image of the buyer or user they seem to
target.
– However the reflection and the target (potential purchasers or users)
are different:
• Customer should be reflected as he /she wishes to be seen as a result
of using the brand e.g. in ready to wear the obsession of looking
younger concern’s reflection Coca Cola targets a much wider target
then 15-18 Pepsi does the same
 A Brand is a self-image
• If reflection is the target’s outward mirror (they are), self
image is the target’s own internal mirror (I am, I feel)
• Many Porsche owners in buying one want to prove to
themselves that they can do it! (Betting on their career). The
brand works like an obligation to push to the limits.
However its customer reflection was a car for show-offs.
• A user of SURF is telling herself that she is conscious of not
just price but value as well
• The internal mirror , inner reward
• Is what the consumer thinks of himself
 Brand is to be evaluated
• Physical Facet talks about what the
product is, what does it do, how does it
add value to customers, how does it fill up
the gap in the market
 Brand is to be evaluated
• Brand personality is measured using those traits/features
of consumer personality that are directly related to brands.
Proper care should be taken not to confuse it with
consumer's reflection. Brand personality is closely linked
with self image and image of the consumer. Questions to be
asked are:
• 1) What are the features of consumer personality?

• 2) What are the features of brand if it was a person? This

depends on the functional aspect of the product and the gap
it would fill.
 Brand is to be evaluated
• Brand Culture As the name signifies, it talks
about the culture of the brand. The values and the
principles will follow from the culture and it is these
values which will bind the customers. Remember
HSBC's "The World's local bank".
Questions which need to be asked:-
• 1) Is the brand's culture global?
• 2) What are the values for which the brand stands
for?
• 3) How would customers take the values of such a
brand?
 Brand is to be evaluated
Brand Relationships: No prizes for guessing what
would this be about! Yes, after all every brand has
to maintain healthy relationships with customers.
All marketing collaterals are intended to do just that.
Therefore to gauge the identity, this had to feature.
1) How would Sales describe the relationship
attributes for their customer management process?
2) How would Customer support describe their
approach to increasing customer satisfaction?
3) How does the brand want to be seen by customers
in marketing communication?
 Brand is to be evaluated
• Customer Reflection: Every product is designed to
satisfy some need of the intended customer base. A
consumer has to be reflected in a way, which would
show how he or she could image himself consuming
a particular good. For example, in India anyone
consuming Pepsi Cola would imagine himself to be
young and Thums up (another cola drink from Coke
stable) to be adventurous. For this aspect, questions
are to be put to customer experience team about
What would the users imagine while using the
product?
 Brand is to be evaluated

• Customer Self Image: Consumers get

attracted to those brands in which they see
their own traits, for example, a man who is
muscular and strong would smoke Marlboro.
This goes hand in hand with brand personality.