brand+awareness

toc =Brand Identity and Awareness=

Introduction
**Brand awareness** has been a major contemporary marketing goal in the modern and current post modern society. It could be considered the successful use of brands in order to create an overarching identity for a company, fostering specific images and social memes in the minds of the public in association with a product line or company. This allows a company the power of having its name advertising its products. For instance, the average Porsche or BMW commercial hinges on the fact that viewers already understand the quality inherent in the name, and so they are often are able to execute based on this assumption. Someone who did not understand this message might have difficulty in understanding the commercial. Concretely, they often fail to actually promote the product, instead relying on the viewer to automatically fill in the product generally as of high quality, safe, or geared towards a specific market.

The Idea of Brands
Originally a brand was a mark burned into cattle in order to indicate their ownership. In situations where hundreds of horses or cows would be mingling, it was necessary in order to make sure of whose animals were whose. Firms built on this idea, creating specific marks or symbols for their products in order to differentiate them from the masses. As an example, in the pre-industrial era for instance, a manufacturer of a product would tend to manufacture as much of their product as they could, and it would then be distributed and purchased along with other manufacturers of the same product. This is known in economics as a free market situation. In this market, the idea of differentiating a product or making a brand doesn't necessarily make sense. Since levels of production were less than or equal to consumption, amount made equaled amount sold. In the industrial economy, products could start to be produced in quantities larger than immediately sellable. Let's say that a manufacturer (like Ford) introduces the assembly-line process, and the amount of products being produced is greater than immediately sellable. This means that some of the products have to be stored and efforts have to be made to sell them. The logistics of pushing sales suddenly requires arguing for the consumer to buy the product. Efforts have to be made to increase sales. In a situation where multiple sources for a similar item are available, the item being sold has to be separated from others in the industry, as salesmen convince prospective buyers that their items are better than other, essentially similar products. This leads to the creation of contemporary brands as we now know them - identifying a product by its manufacturer with the implicit suggestion that the pertinent section of the market should buy from only that source.

Brand Identity
Brand identity is the evolution of this image fostered in order to sell similar products to consumers, one that creates consumer dependency and dedication. The brand identity is the final picture a consumer has in their minds about a company. Generally the most important factors in creating this would be advertising, though in recent years other sources have been explored, such as peer use and recommendation and viral marketing techniques. Items included in this picture often include an idea of what type of person uses the product (an older, wealthy man perhaps, or a 20 year old independent woman), the quality and general price point of the product. Brand identities must be slowly created and fostered over a long period of time in order to be effective in marketing; once there, brand identities have taken the status of a sort of intangible capital, as much as buildings and would in the past. They are used to support and increase sales based on intangible ideas alone, and build strong relationships between customer and company, lowering the chance that they will move to a new, similar but cheaper product, even if it is actually of the same quality. Companies know that the brand identity will be different in the minds of consumers, but usually attempt to design and disseminate a 'perfect' identity. The more people believing in the identity, and the closer it is to the envisioned identity, the stronger the power of the brand tends to become. Because of this, uniformity in dissemination is often a key component: while some movement between target consumers is often seen, the 'feel' of the brand has to remain the same in order that they remain in control. They must not create a dissonant identity (a collection of identities that changes widely from person to person). A major issue, especially after the incredible amounts of money corporations put in to their identities, is that this or worse could occur. In an instant, an entire company image can be reversed, taken down or destroyed in the public mind; a wealth of capital is wasted. This is known as brand dissolution. Especially in the case of companies that engage in illegal or immoral practices, this can quickly become a problem. Nike is a classic example. They became the target of numerous human rights activists after it became public knowledge that they used 3rd world sweat shops to make their clothing. A group of people asked what Nike stood for might have previously said "athletic wear". Many would now include "... made at the expense of human lives", even if they still buy Nike products. It probably hurt Nike's bottom line.

Brand Awareness: The Dissemination of a Brand Identity

 * Brand Awareness: Where it stands**
 * **media (TV, Print, Online)**
 * **advertising**
 * **brand identities**

Brand Awareness is the end result of the techniques used to send out this identity for the brand, keep it intact, and strengthen it wherever possible. There are many techniques for this, and the resulting field, roughly that of advertising, is considered quite an art. The core of general advertising theory stems often from this idea of optimal results from greatest impact. To do this campaigns often encompass multiple other fields: history, philosophy, culture, art, music, video production and post production, and photography. In a lecture on advertising, [|Marcel Danesi] (Director of Semiotics and Communication Theory at University of Toronto) reported that advertising, this process of a brand awareness, was one of the few lasting arts we have today (Class CCT210, 2005). Brands, and the advertising campaigns created to disseminate them, are one of the few cultural artifacts currently being created that can be measured in terms of hundreds of years. Many pop music hits don't last more than a few weeks on the top charts. The Coca-Cola Brand is 120 years old this year according to their [|website].

= = =Works Cited=

Reiss, Eric. "Naming Brands." __E-Reiss__. 10 Aug. 2004. E-Reiss Consulting. 8 Dec. 2006 <[|http://www.e-reiss.com/Articles/Naming brands.aspx]>.

Srinivasan, V., Chan Su Park, and Dae Ryun Chang. "An Approach to the Measurement, Analysis, and Prediction of Brand Equity and Its Sources." __Management Science__ 51.9 (2005): 1433-1448. Proquest. University of Toronto Library, Toronto. 8 Dec. 2006 <[|here]>.

"The Chronical of Coca-Cola." __Coca-Cola__. 2006. The Coca-Cola Company. 8 Dec. 2006 <[|http://www2.coca-cola.com/heritage/chronicle_birth_refreshing_idea.html>.]

Villarejo-Ramos, Angel F., and Manuel J. Sánchez-Franco. "The Impact of Marketing Communication and Price Promotion on Brand Equity." 12.6: 431-445. __Proquest__. University of Toronto Library, Toronto. 8 Dec. 2006 <[|here]>.