What is a brand? In my opinion, it’s not only a trademark of some company, but the name of certain product we use every day. For example, speaking about coffee most of us say Nescafe, but not ‘coffee’. This short example also illustrates the main aim of producers — to create brand popularity, so that most of people would recognize the product among the competitors products. Advertising campaigns are launched to enhance brand awareness, that’s why sometimes brand costs more than the whole company, for example one day of advertising at Yandex website (what is called by Yandex sales managers as ‘increasing brand popularity’) costs $20,000. Recognition of a brand or, how it’s called, brand awareness helps people to find the necessary size, quantity, taste, especially, when they are in another country and don’t know the local products’ specifications. What qualities should brand name possess? First of all, it should be eye-catching.
NameLab, company, which creates brand names, gives an example of 7-Up Company, which lost $120 millions using name ‘Lyke Cola’ as a brand name first time after launching its product. Lexicon Company was more original, creating brand name ‘Pentium’ for the Intel Processor: «We’ve got ‘-ium’ from the scientific text — founder of Lexicon says, — and multiplied it with ‘pent’. It sounded very strong, like a real chemical element.» Name Sony is based on ‘son’, which means sound in most of the countries. As all brand names are registered and protected by law, no one else can produce the same product under such brand name. It’s a very hard to create a new brand name, as more than 365,000 brands were registered in October, 2000 by American Patent Organization, whereas Oxford dictionary consists of 615,100 words, so some companies use brand stretching — using a leader-brand to launch a new product in a new category, e. g. ‘Bochkarev’ chips. Brands always add value to products. That’s why branded products seem to be more expensive among other ones. But if we pay more, we pay for better quality. All in all, brands are one of the moving forces of globalisation.
