Brand name, Brand identity & Brand trust

Brand name

The brand name is quite often used interchangeably with "brand", although it is more correctly used to specifically denote written or spoken linguistic elements of any product. In this context, a "brand name" constitutes a type of trademark, if the brand name exclusively identifies the brand owner as of the commercial source of products or services. A brand owner may seek to protect proprietary rights in relation to a brand name through trademark registration and such trademarks are called "Registered Trademarks". Advertising spokespersons have also become part of some brands, for example, Mr. Whipple of Charmin toilet tissue and Tony the Tiger of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.

Types of brand names

Brand names come in many styles. A few includes:

• Initialization: A name made of initials such as UPS or IBM
• Descriptive: Names that describe a product benefit or function like Whole Foods or Airbus
• Alliteration and rhyme: names that are fun to say and stick in the mind like Reese's Pieces or Dunkin' Donuts
• Evocative: Names that evoke a relevant vivid image like Amazon or Crest
• Neologisms: Completely made-up words like Wii or Kodak
• Foreign word: Adoption of a word from another language like Volvo or Samsung
• Founders' names: Using the names of real people, and the founder's name like Hewlett-Packard, Dell, or Disney
• Geography: Many brands are named for regions and landmarks like Cisco and Fuji Film
• Personification: Many brands take their names from myths like Nike or from the minds of ad execs like Betty Crocker.

An Effective Brand Name

Is easy to pronounce
Is easy to recognize and remember
Is short, distinctive and unique
Describes the product, use and benefits
Has a positive connotation - A sentence with brand name
Reinforces the product image
Is legally protect-able

The act of associating a product or service with a brand has become part of pop culture. Most products have some kind of brand identity, from common table salt to designer jeans. A "Brandnomer" is a brand name that has colloquially become a generic term for a product or service, such as Band-Aid or Kleenex, which are often used to describe any brand of adhesive bandage or any brand of facial tissue respectively.

Brand identity

The outward expression of a brand – including its name, trademark, communications, and visual appearance – is brand identity. Because the identity is assembled by the brand owner, it reflects how the owner wants the consumer to perceive the brand – and by extension the branded company, organization, product, or service. This is in contrast to the brand image, which is a customer's mental picture of a brand. The brand owner will seek to bridge the gap between the brand image and brand identity.

Effective brand names build a connection between the brand personality as it is perceived by the target audience and the actual product/service. The brand name should be conceptually on target with the product/service (what the company stands for). Furthermore, the brand name should be on target with the brand demographic. Typically, sustainable brand names are easy to remember, transcend trends, and have positive connotations. Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand's differentiation from competitors.

Brand identity is what the owner wants to communicate to its potential consumers. However, over time, a product's brand identity may acquire (evolve), gaining new attributes from a consumer perspective but not necessarily from the marketing communications, an owner percolates to targeted consumers. Therefore, brand associations become handy to check the consumer's perception of the brand.

Brand identity needs to focus on authentic qualities – real characteristics of the value and brand promise being provided and sustained by organizational and/or production characteristics.


Visual brand identity

The recognition and perception of a brand are highly influenced by its visual presentation. A brand’s visual identity is the overall look of its communications. Effective visual brand identity is achieved by the consistent use of particular visual elements to create distinction, such as specific fonts, colors, and graphic elements. At the core of every brand identity is a brand mark, or logo. In the United States, brand identity and logo design naturally grew out of the Modernist movement in the 1950s and greatly drew on the principles of that movement – simplicity (Mies van der Rohe’s principle of "Less is more") and geometric abstraction. These principles can be observed in the work of the pioneers of the practice of visual brand identity design, such as Paul Rand, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Saul Bass.

Brand Trust

Brand trust is the intrinsic 'Believability' that any entity evokes. In the commercial world, the intangible aspect of Brand trust impacts the behavior and performance of its business stakeholders in many intriguing ways. It creates the foundation of a strong brand connection with all stakeholders, converting simple awareness to strong commitment. This, in turn, metamorphoses normal people who have an indirect or direct stake in the organization into devoted ambassadors, leading to concomitant advantages like easier acceptability of brand extensions, perception of premium, and acceptance of temporary quality deficiencies.

The Brand Trust Report is syndicated primary research that has elaborated on this metric of brand trust. It is a result of the action, behavior, communication, and attitude of an entity, with the most Trust results emerging from its action component. The action of the entity is most important in creating trust in all those audiences who directly engage with the brand, the primary experience carrying primary audiences. However, the tools of communications play a vital role in transferring the trust experience to audiences who have never experienced the brand, the all important secondary audience.