Define your Brand and determine its value

Strong Brands help companies communicate why their products & services are uniquely able to satisfy customer needs"

How do you define a brand?

Defining what is constitutes a brand is not easy. A "Brand" can be defined at three different levels - each level satisfies a category of brands.

Level-1: Brand is a logo and associated visual elements.

This definition holds good from a legal point of view. The logo design, logotype, and other visual elements can be registered and are associated with the product. Eg: Intel Logo, Golden Arches of McDonald’s.

Level-2: Brand is a bundle of a logo, associated audio/visual elements, registered trademarks, and other intellectual property rights.

This is a wider view of a brand. Often a branded product includes several intangibles such as patents, business process knowledge, market knowledge etc. Intangibles such as business knowledge, market knowledge, customer relationships adds a value to the product. For example Pentium-4 processor would not be successful without the intangible assets which was used to design & build it.

Level-3: Brand represents the company or the entire organization

This holistic view of a brand includes the logo, audio/visual elements, patents, trademarks, intellectual properties, intangible knowledge and the organization: its people, culture and management. All this has to be put together to create a brand. When taken as a whole, the brand represents a specific value proposition and create strong customer relationships.
This view of a brand ties up the company, its reputation and its brands. This is correct, because if there is a damage to a brand - it will affect the company reputation also. For example, Ford Explorer fiasco affected Ford Motor company too.

Financial Impact and Value creation

It is a well accepted idea that brands play an important role in generating and sustaining financial performance of branded products. But the impact of brands on corporate performance is more subtle as the value creation by a brand is often difficult to measure.

There are several ways of measuring a brand value in dollar terms, such as Book to market value multiples, Net present value of the premiums which customers are willing to pay for a branded product over an unbranded product, price a competitor is willing to pay for a brand etc. In this article, I will refrain from discussing how the brands are valued. Instead lets take a look at how brands create value.

Value Creation
Brands create financial value in several ways which is illustrated below.

Improved Brand Equity	Affects Audience Behavior	Increases Financial Value
Customers	Increased buying rates Buying more quantity Paying a premium Price	Increased Revenue
Suppliers	Better terms of Business Bigger discounts	Savings on direct costs
Employees	Better/lower cost of hiring Lower employee turnover Improved productivity	Savings on operational costs & Overheads
Financial	Reduces cost of equity Reduces cost of debt	Better returns to Investors

Closing Thoughts

Brands create value to the shareholders. The exact dollar value of a brand cannot be easily fixed, yet companies must invest in building brands.