Brand community

A brand community is a community formed on the basis of attachment to a product or marque. Recent developments in marketing and in research in consumer behavior result in stressing the connection between brand, individual identity and culture. Among the concepts developed to explain the behavior of consumers, the concept of a brand community focuses on the connections between consumers. A brand community can be defined as an enduring self-selected group of actors sharing a system of values, standards and representations (a culture) and recognizing bonds of membership with each other and with the whole.

Building A Brand Community
Even though it may seem a simple marketing concept, building brand communities that resonate with loyal customers is indeed a Herculean task. There are four defining characteristics that allow companies to actively involve customers in creating communities around their brands. Each are essential in building brand communities.
1. Create a strong brand story/myth: Brands in today’s world are not mere inanimate ‘things’ but thriving entities with identities and personalities that allow customers to express themselves through its consumption. As such, to attract customers to it and encourage them to actively participate in varied branding activities, brands must have a strong story or myth that customers can easily identify and relate to. A story/myth not only provides authenticity to the brand but also allows customers to express their sense of self through the consumption of the brand.
2. Create a need for collaboration among consumers: For a community to be actively adopted, customers must feel a need to connect with each other in the context of the brand’s consumption. A need to connect with other brand users can arise for a number of reasons such as:
1. Sharing information – Members of many video game communities, technical products communities become members in the first instance because such communities allow members to share information with others and learn many technical details easily.
2. Validation – Members of the Nike or Louis Vuitton brand community seek validation from fellow members about their choice of the brand, its usage situations and its superiority over other brands in the market

3. To express one’s personality – Members of the Apple computer brand community feel a strong sense of expressing their unique personality by embracing Apple and rejecting the market leader Microsoft.
4. Identify with a specific segment – Members of the Samsung brand community are part of the community because of their need to be identified as part of the global ‘cool’ segment that is in tune with the latest in technology and fashion. Therefore companies should decide the main reason for which they want to build communities around their brands is in line with the segments that it wants to target.
3. Create identifiable brand elements: As with any community, brand communities must be able to offer its members unique identifiable community elements in terms of terminologies, icons, symbols and spokespersons. Such community elements will not only help the community distinguish itself from others but also offers the members tangible tools to identify themselves with the community. These community elements should be in line with the brand’s underlying identity.
4. Create a unique culture: One of the fundamental reasons for the growing popularity of brand communities is that they offer companies real time feedback about the brand. Further, brand communities allow companies to co-create value with customers on a continuous basis. As such, companies must create a culture that allows customers to interact with the brand, other users and the company simultaneously. Such an environment allows customers to experience the brand in a memorable manner as they are a part of the value creation process.

These four steps will assist a company in framing a robust structure to build a brand community. As with any business venture, the success of a brand community depends on how proactively the company engages customers on a continuous basis.

When managed properly, brand communities are proving to be an effective tool in tackling the ever-growing competition. Brand communities not only allow companies to collaborate with customers in all phases of value creation – product design, pricing, places of availability, and phases of promotion – but also provide companies an effective platform on which to engage customers and create loyalty towards the brand. The most successful will be those communities that are built on strong fundamentals centered around the brand identity and support the brand strategy.

Brand architecture

Brand architecture is the structure of brands within an organizational entity. It is the way in which the brands within a company’s portfolio are related to, and differentiated from, one another. The architecture should define the different leagues of branding within the organization; how the corporate brand and sub-brands relate to and support each other; and how the sub-brands reflect or reinforce the core purpose of the corporate brand to which they belong. According to Rajagopal Brand architecture may be defined as an integrated process of brand building through establishing brand relationships among branding options in the competitive environment. The brand architecture of an organisation at any time is, in large measure, a legacy of past management decisions as well as the competitive realities it faces in the marketplace[1].
Types of brand architecture

There are three key levels of branding:• Corporate brand, umbrella brand, and family brand - Examples include Virgin Group and Heinz. These are consumer-facing brands used across all the firm's activities, and this name is how they are known to all their stakeholders – consumers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers and other parties. These brands may also be used in conjunction with product descriptions or sub-brands: for example Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup, or Virgin Trains.

•Endorsed brands, and sub-brands - For example, Nestle KitKat, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Sony PlayStation or Polo by Ralph Lauren. These brands include a parent brand - which may be a corporate brand, an umbrella brand, or a family brand - as an endorsement to a sub-brand or an individual product brand. The endorsement should add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of consumers.

•Individual product brand - For example, Procter & Gamble’s Pampers or Unilever's Dove. The individual brands are presented to consumers, and the parent company name is given little or no prominence. Other stakeholders, like shareholders or partners, will know the producer by its company name.

Attitude branding and Iconic brands

Attitude branding is the choice to represent a larger feeling, which is not necessarily connected with the product or consumption of the product at all. Marketing labeled as attitude branding include that of Nike, Starbucks, The Body Shop, Safeway, and Apple Inc.. In the 2000 book No Logo,[9] Naomi Klein describes attitude branding as a "fetish strategy".

"A great brand raises the bar -- it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it's the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you're drinking really matters." - Howard Schultz (president, CEO, and chairman of Starbucks)

Iconic brands are defined as having aspects that contribute to consumer's self-expression and personal identity. Brands whose value to consumers comes primarily from having identity value comes are said to be "identity brands". Some of these brands have such a strong identity that they become more or less "cultural icons" which makes them iconic brands. Examples of iconic brands are: Apple Inc., Nike and Harley Davidson. Many iconic brands include almost ritual-like behaviour when buying and consuming the products.

There are four key elements to creating iconic brands (Holt 2004):
1."Necessary conditions" - The performance of the product must at least be ok preferably with a reputation of having good quality.
2."Myth-making" - A meaningful story-telling fabricated by cultural "insiders". These must be seen as legitimate and respected by consumers for stories to be accepted.
3."Cultural contradictions" - Some kind of mismatch between prevailing ideology and emergent undercurrents in society. In other words a difference with the way consumers are and how they some times wish they were.
4."The cultural brand management process" - Actively engaging in the myth-making processmaking sure the brand maintains its position as an icon.

Types of Brand Names

Brand names come in many styles.[2] A few include: Acronym: A name made of initials such as UPS or IBM

Descriptive:Names that describe a product benefit or function like Whole Foods or Airbus
Alliteration and Rhyme: Names that are fun to stay and stick in your mind like Reeses Pieces or Dunkin Donuts
Evocative: Names that evoke a relevant vivid image like Amazon or Crest
Neologisms: Completely made up words like Wii or Kodak
Foreign Word: Adoption of a word from another language like Volvo or Samsung
Founders Names: Using the names of real people like Hewlett-Packard or Disney
Geography: Many brands are named for regions and landmarks like Cisco and Fuji Film
Personification: Many brands take their names from myth like Nike or from the minds of ad execs like Betty Crocker
The act of associating a product or service with a brand has become part of pop culture. Most products have some kind of brand identity, from common table salt to designer jeans. A brandnomer is a brand name that has colloquially become a generic term for a product or service, such as Band-Aid or Kleenex, which are often used to describe any kind of adhesive bandage or any kind of facial tissue respectively.