Not that long ago someone asked me what type of brand “they” (meaning his company) should develop; this question took me by surprise because I had no idea what this person meant. I asked him what did he mean by the type of brand, and he proceeded to give me a list of brand “types” that he had read about on a blog.
He was so confused by this article that he was no longer sure if he should build the brand around a single product or if he should use the face of his CEO as a brand. It can be very confusing and some people make it even more difficult when they decide to write about a topic without even reading a single marketing book (written by an authoritative source and not some random blogger) in their whole lives.
So here is a simple, but not so short, explanation on how you can identify the type of brand that you have on your hands.
First of all, when we talk about branding in Orange County or anywhere else in the world, we don’t mean car brand, candy brand, shampoo brand, lotion brand, shoes brand, etc. Do you want to make sure that your customers know the company that makes a particular product? Or maybe you don’t care and you just want to launch a product and the company is pretty much the product? Like specialized software, for example, they can only have one product with different versions and the name of the company and the product are exactly the same.
Here is where you begin; you can either have a company brand or a product brand.
If we move on and increase the complexity level, we should talk about brands and sub-brands – but make no mistake, either you sell something or you don’t. So we can have types of brands, but not in the sense that the guy from this story had the misfortune to get all confused.
The types of brands that you can find are those that sell a product or a service (here is where you can have a corporate or a product brand, and a product can have a sub-brand), or those that belong to a non-profit organization, government brands, and personal brands.
And this is pretty much it. It can be confusing, but it is really just a matter of the type of business that we are dealing with, and any other division will fall into one of those categories.
To find out more about branding in Orange County, give us a call today. At Twelve12, we know about brands and we know how to make your brand an amazing brand!