Branded for Life

NICHOLAS IND explores the nuances of image and advertising

Gordon Brown is a brand and so is Madonna. Manchester United is a brand, as is Spain, Ferrari and Apple. Greenpeace is a brand (although they don't like to use the word) and so is the Nobel Peace Prize (they don't like the word either). Even the University of Oxford is a brand.

When we seem able to label anything and everything a brand, we might come to question what we really mean by the word. There is a popular belief that a brand is either the visual presentation of an organisation, a person or a place or somehow connected to advertising and media manipulation. As in most popular beliefs there is an element of truth about these ideas, but if we stop for a moment and just think about the brands we might like or indeed dislike, we can see there is more to a brand than what we see in a television commercial.

Apple is a brand that comprises the design of the software and the hardware, the persona of Steve Jobs, a distinctive style of advertising, the packaging that pronounces "designed in California", the experience of the Apple store I went into in Regent Street last week, the genius bar where you can consult with Apple geniuses, and the fact that it is not Microsoft. This brand combines functional elements as well as emotional triggers that help provide me with a sense of identity - it's the reason why for the last twenty years I have never bought products made by another computer brand.

What, then, is a brand? And why is Manchester United a brand and not just a football team? The thing that converts a product into a brand is the process of branding. Branding augments the value of the physical asset. By adding relevant attributes to a base material, consumers are willing to pay more money (sometimes over a long period of time) for the experience of buying a product or seeing a football team. The United team might not like to be described as base material, but it is the experience of visiting the stadium, the strip, the symbolism, the television appearances and the merchandising that make United a brand. Among large organisations, you will find that, on average, more than 60% of the value lies in intangible assets, which is why Coca Cola's brand has an estimated value of $67 billion (Interbrand 2006). Of course, we do not pay a premium for Greenpeace products, but if the "brand" through its communications and our interactions with activists leads us to understand (and perhaps to trust) the organisation then we are more likely to support it. That trust, of course, is what Gordon Brown is also after.

While we enjoy buying brands and having brand experiences in the form of hotels, airlines and theatre visits, we might sometimes feel that brands are bad for us. The fact that brands and branding have becomes so pervasive in our lives can partly be attributed to our need to define ourselves through patterns of consumption. Just as Ian Fleming used brands to define the character of his hero, James Bond (Rolex Oyster watch, Bentley car and shaken-but-not-stirred Martini), so we use brands to define our position and personality. Yet while this drives purchase behaviour it also creates the opportunity for manipulation and is the cause of post-purchase disappointment and anxiety.

Branding is an effective exploiter of people's need for placement in a world of displacement, and is the fuel for a way of thinking that too often equates consumption with meaning. This is something that Naomi Klein in her book No Logo echoes when she argues that brands absorb cultural ideas and then present them as their own by nudging "the host culture into the background" and then making "the brand the star".

In fact, a whole populist genre of criticism has emerged that has attacked the duplicity of the brand bullies. As Naomi Klein points out, marketing techniques are clearly used in corrupting and increasingly intrusive ways to sell products and services through such mechanisms as the sponsoring of schools by commercial organisations to the use of individuals as advertisements. When almost anything can be - and is - marketed, the tendency is to greater exaggeration. As marketing noise increases, the pressure is on to shout louder; to be noticed; to be heard. The consequence is that as branding becomes more difficult, marketers become more histrionic. The writer Alan Mitchell says that "the source of marketing ineffectiveness and waste lies in its seller-centric preoccupations".

Marketers say the acid test of good value is to find out what your customer wants and needs and give it to them. When it comes to marketing communications, this is the one thing marketers do not do. Marketers seem to believe that the only people who do not need to practice what marketing preaches are: themselves. This often leads to a gap between brand promise, as defined through advertising and other mechanisms, and the reality of brand delivery. The end result of this marketing mediated world is a diminution of trust in institutions and business organisations.

Yet while it is important to understand the dangers of branding - that it can be manipulative and socially disruptive - it can also be argued that branding can be useful and also enjoyable. The key is to put branding in its place - not in the negative sense of putting it down, but in determining its appropriate role as a deliverer of value. We can criticise its social purpose but we should also recognise its potential virtue as a conveyer of information and a deliverer of experience.

As consumers we may sometimes over-estimate the meaning a brand will give us in our lives but there is still pleasure in owning a MacBook Pro or a Bang and Olufsen television, giving money to Unicef, flying Virgin Atlantic or visiting the Royal Opera House. These brands seem to have an authenticity based on the totality of what they offer. This subtly shifts the idea of brands away from the hype of advertising and promotions and towards branding as a result of the internal commitment of the employees that work for these organisations. The designers at B&O, the fundraisers at Unicef and the front of house staff at Covent Garden are among the key determinants of the image of these brands. A positive interaction with a company's employees tends to carry much more weight in our judgement of a brand image than the advertising or a logo.

So like it or not, the University of Oxford is a brand. The name and the shield convey a set of ideas to applicants, businesses, journalists and politicians. But the brand is much more than the shield. It is formed from the people that work at the university, the publications of its academics, the quality of its teaching and the word-of-mouth endorsement of its graduates. Some organisations pay people to talk up their brands, but this is no substitute for the power of a genuinely positive advocate who willingly shares a rewarding experience.

Nicholas Ind is the author of eight books including Living the Brand, Branding Governance and the authorised biography of Terence Conran. He is also a brand consultant and has worked for, among others, Greenpeace International, the Royal Opera House, The Economist and Unicef. You can read more about branding (and vote for your favourite brand) at: www.livingthebrand.org.