Simply said, the brand depicts how a target market distinguishes one company and its values from another similar company. It represents the consumers’ feelings and perceptions towards a business, product or service.

A brand is a mixture of attributes, tangible and intangible and consistently communicates specific information about an organization, product or service. Its main aim is to generate long term value and influence.

“Value” has different interpretations:

Brands offer customers a means to choose and enable recognition within cluttered markets.

The brand architecture defines the hierarchical structure of the brands in an organization’s portfolio. In addition, it determines the relationships between individual brands, their role and positioning within the company, as well as the boundaries between the various business segments and products.

It aims to clearly emphasize relevant and unique selling propositions and to establish an assertive order of corporate, assortment, or product brands for each market or segment.

There are three main types of brand architecture system:

Simply put, the brand equity is the overall market strength of a brand. It cumulates the value of the company assets, both financially and strategically. The amount of brand qualities generates demand and brand loyalty.

Ultimately, brand equity is the brand’s value over other similar brands.

The brand experience depicts the means by which a brand is created in the mind of a stakeholder. Some experiences are controlled, such as retail environments, advertising, products and services, websites, etc. Some are uncontrolled, like journalistic comment or word of mouth.

Strong brands arise from consistent experiences which combine to form a clear, differentiated overall brand experience.

Companies have different ways to grow. Regarding brands, they have the option of building a new brand or expanding an existing brand. Because establishing a new brand is often costly, brand expansion is a popular way to take full advantage of a brand's growth potential.

In brand expansion, the reputation and credibility of an established brand are used to introduce new product lines or sub-brands and thereby expand the brand into new markets or sectors.

There are different types of brand expansion:

To find out the best way of expanding a particular brand, a systematic examination is necessary. The first step analyzes what product categories are suitable for brand expansion, so they can benefit from brand associations and positively impact them.

Brand harmonization depicts the accurate insurance that all products in a particular brand range have a consistent name, visual identity and positioning across a number of geographic or product/service markets.

Simply put, the brand identity is the way a brand presents itself to the consumer. It encloses all the fundamental means of consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand’s differentiation from competitors.

The brand identity is the unique combination of brand attributes, including its name, trademark and visual appearance.

The brand image depicts how the brand is perceived by its target audience. The way a brand appears to potential customers or clients is essential to the success of a company.

For already existing customers, the brand perception is based on practical experience of the product or service and how well it meets expectations. Potential customers create their perception of the brand based upon uninformed impressions, attitudes and beliefs.

Brand management refers to the operative maintenance and use of a brand. It focuses on the goals that were defined in the brand strategy and that must be achieved for the benefit of the company's success.

It aims to build brand equity and loyalty by maintaining the brand standards, aligning them for maximum effectiveness, ensuring that they are not compromised by tactical actions and designing appropriate brand crisis management plans.

Brands and their perception depend on a variety of interrelated factors. Even if you generally like the products or services offered by a brand, one single badly managed touch point between a customer and an employee of the company can cast the brand in a bad light.

In order to control the perception of a brand as effectively as possible, companies should consistently monitor compliance with the brand rules. This way they can be sure that the brand conveys a consistent image regarding its values at every customer interaction.

A brand personality is an expression of the fundamental core values and characteristics of a brand, described and experienced as human personality traits. It stands for the nature and identity of the brand. Its specific, unmistakable properties make the difference between one brand and another clearly recognizable. This differentiation is essential, because it gives the brand individuality, exclusivity, and clear distinction from competing brands.

Ultimately, the brand personality is the look and feel of the brand through the eyes of the consumer. It is therefore important to be aware of a brand's personality traits and to express its specific qualities, which derive from the brand values and the brand positioning, at all brand customer interactions.

The brand positioning expresses the essence of the brand strategy. It is the clearly and concisely formulated promise of a brand. It depicts the process of differentiating a product, service or company in a customer’s mind to obtain a strategic competitive advantage.

It should be future-oriented and express what the brand wants to stand for – taking into consideration its performances to date. It must be attractive to customers and other target groups, and differentiate from the competition. The given performance promise must be credible. Positioning involves the careful manipulation of every element of the marketing mix.

Simply said, branding is the comprehensive, continuous process of building a brand. Its goal is to increase the attractiveness and desirability of the brand so it can contribute as much as possible to the success of the company. Branding should always be supported by a brand strategy and a strategic brand positioning.

It finally conveys to selecting and blending tangible and intangible attributes to differentiate the product, service or business in an attractive, meaningful and compelling way.

As a verb, branding depicts the process of discovering and communicating the overall image of a brand. As a noun, it’s the brand image projected within the market to the target audience.

The success of any branding effort depends on the consistency and assertiveness of the performances and messages conveyed. This applies to all interactions between the brand and the key target groups, first and foremost among them customers and employees.

Co-Branding refers to the use of two or more brand names in support of a new product, service or venture.

Differentiation is the central principle of brand positioning. It depicts the creation or demonstration of unique characteristics in a company’s products or brands compared to those of its competitors.

The aim is to establish a unique market category to increase profit margins and avoid commoditization.

An endorsed brand is usually a product or a service brand name that is supported by a masterbrand, either dominantly or lightly.

The intangibles are the brand assets incapable of being touched. These all work together to create the essence of the brand.

Intangible assets include: trademarks, copyrights, patents, design rights, proprietary expertise, databases, etc. Intangible brand attributes include: brand names, logos, graphics, colors, shapes and smells.

A market leader is a brand that leads the market in influential ideas, not necessarily market share. It basically depicts company that has achieved a dominant position—either in scale or influence—within its field.

This leading position often comes about because the company was the first to market a certain type of product and, with the protection of a patent, has managed to consolidate its position before direct competition was possible. Alternatively, a company may overtake a previous market leader through greater efficiency and skilful positioning.

The market share is a company’s share of total sales of a given category of product on a given market. It can be quantified either in terms of volume (amount of units sold) or value (worth of units sold).

A masterbrand dominates all products or services in a range or across a business. Sometimes a masterbrand is used with sub-brands or, with alpha or numeric signifiers.

A parent brand is the original or most widely recognized in a family of bands. It acts as an endorsement to one or more sub-brands within a specific range.

The positioning statement of a brand is a written description of the position that a company wishes itself, its product or its brand to occupy in the minds of a defined target audience.

The rebranding is the process of analyzing the overall identity of a company and making certain changes or revisions to it, based on internal or external circumstances. Rebranding is often necessary following a merger, acquisition, or if the brand has outgrown its former identity or marketplace.

The ultimate aim of rebranding is of taking an existing brand and reshaping it into something different and better than before.

The repositioning process implies consistent communication activities to ensure a new position for an existing product, in consumers’ minds. Many potentially valuable products lead an obscure existence because they were launched or positioned in an inadequate manner. It is almost always possible to enhance the value of such products by repositioning them.

A sub-brand is a product or a service that has its own name and visual identity to differentiate it from the parent brand. It is usually part of a family of brands.

The tangibles are the brand assets that can be touched. Tangible assets may include: manufacturing plant, bricks and mortar, cash, investments, etc. Tangible brand attributes may include: the product and its packaging. Tangible brand values may include: useful qualities of the brand known to exist through experience and knowledge.

The trademark is the symbol used to represent a brand. Basically, it is any graphically represented sign that helps a consumer distinguish the goods or services from one provider than those from another provider.

The visual identity encloses all elements of a brand image, including, among other things, its logo, typography, packaging and literature systems.