All people interact with brands (marks) on a daily basis. For consumers, purchasing decisions are often influenced by brands. As a result, entrepreneurs need to understand why branding is so important to business performance.
Trademarks are also used as a way of consumer protection. When businesses take responsibility for any product or service that carries their brand, they tend to take more pride in the product. To maintain a good reputation, trademarked companies will often work harder to provide quality products and services. Below is a list of reasons why branding is important to your business.
- Brands make it easy for consumers to identify you.
◦ Trademarks help you differentiate your products and services from those of your competitors and help identify you as the source of the original product or service.
◦ Trademarks provide an indication of the quality of your products and services.
◦ However, your brand awareness and the credibility embedded within your brand can often take decades to form.
◦ The aggregate costs of advertising, promotion, marketing and sales efforts can easily run into the tens of millions or even billions of dollars, depending on the product/service.
◦ Differentiating your product/service from your competitors is increasingly difficult to achieve, especially over a long period of time.
◦ Trademarks are the most effective commercial communication tool ever created to:
- Highlight your product or service from a crowd of similar products and services.
- attract the attention of consumers; and
- Trademarks help avoid confusion in the market
◦ Trademarks protect the consumer public by preventing confusion as to the origin of goods or services.
◦ If a product manufactured under a defective brand name, the consumer has accurate information about the origin of the product and can return it to the manufacturer or supplier for a refund.
◦ Trademarks provide consumers with the ability to protect themselves by using only known product or service marks.
◦ Trademarks provide convenience to consumers by allowing consumers to identify (by words, symbols, slogans, packaging designs or other indicators of origin) which products or services they want to buy or avoid buying.
◦ Brands bring convenience to consumers by allowing consumers to make purchasing decisions based on what they have heard, read, or experienced for themselves.
◦ Brands motivate companies to provide a consistent level of quality, helping consumers decide whether to continue buying a good product or service or to avoid buying a bad product or service again.
- Trademarks are a very cost-effective communication tool
◦ Trademarks significantly reduce decision-making costs by allowing consumers to quickly choose the desired product or service among competing products.
◦ Trademarks can be encapsulated in a mark or symbol with intellectual and emotional attributes and messages about:
- Company.
- Reputation.
- Products and services; and
- Consumer lifestyles, aspirations and desires.
◦ Trademarks can effectively operate across borders, cultures and languages.
◦ Well-known marks can be recognized as trademarks even if native speakers speak a different language and read a different alphabet (i.e., McDonalds “arch” logo, NIKE “swoosh” logo).
- Your brand is your most enduring asset.
◦ Brand is one of the few assets that can give you a lasting competitive advantage.
◦ Your brand is often your only business asset that can be developed over time.
◦ Brands are scalable – they provide value beyond your core business and can pave the way for the expansion (or acquisition, if desired) of your business.
Brand extension example:
- KELLOG’S – from “instant cereal” to “fast food and breakfast bars”
- VIRGIN – from airline services to entertainment and carbonated drinks
- Strong brands support more sales, higher margins and help maintain prices
◦ It is often difficult to discern significant differences between competing products.
◦ Your brand can be an important factor in driving consumer purchasing decisions.
- Trademarks are relatively cheap to protect
◦ Once you have successfully registered a trademark, the trademark will have an unlimited lifespan with the filing of a renewal application. Renewals can be filed every 10 years.
◦ Trademarks have the same properties as other forms of property, they can be: Buy, sell, license, …
- Brands allow businesses to use the Internet most effectively
◦ Brand is often the “first priority” address for Internet users when searching for information about the company and its products/services.
◦ Higher traffic on a website translates into higher rankings on search engine results, which brings in more traffic.
◦ Given the importance of the Internet to marketing, it is important to obtain the desired domain names at the same time as applying for trademark protection.
◦ The Internet can also be a tool for the unauthorized use of a company’s trademark. This requires businesses to rationally use their trademarks and monitor and prevent trademark infringements.
- Very effective anti-unfair competition trademark
◦ Once registered at a competent state agency, an enterprise’s trademark can use legal tools to combat profiteering acts such as counterfeiting, deceiving the origin, etc…
