What’s in a name?
Branding: what it means to you and your customer

t is quite ironic that the words ‘‘brand’’ and ‘‘branding’’ have become so widely used in the business arena over the past few decades yet so many people fail to agree on what they mean. To illustrate the point, David Haigh and Jonathan Knowles, both executives in branding, offer three of the definitions in currency:

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1. ‘‘A logo and associated visual elements.’’ This, the most focused of the definitions, sees a brand as simply the trade names, trade symbols and trademarks that a company creates and legally protects as a way of differentiating itself from its competitors within the marketplace. A logo becomes a brand when it becomes associated with positive values through the extensive provision of good products and good services.
2. ‘‘A larger bundle of trademark and associated intellectual property rights.’’ Beyond the visual elements of branding, this definition includes intangible marketing tools such as domain names, packaging, written copy, advertising and product design rights – all of which can be registered and legally protected. Further than this, though, the term
‘‘property rights’’ often also takes into account those other assets that are required to deliver the promises of the brand. These may be specific knowledge and expertise, perhaps in the form of research, data, or software, or processes such as business models, supply chain figurations and manufacturing techniques. Intangible assets may also refer to market position intangibles, which are things like licenses, contracts, government permits and production quotas. This larger bundle of property rights is included in this definition of a brand because many believe that they have a big part to play in building customer loyalty and maintaining brand quality and integrity. The brand is, then, something much