Brand Name – Theory And Practice

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” The brand represents a set of elements (name, logo, sign, symbol, drawing, design) that identifies and differentiates (companies, products, services, personalities, places, and ideas) and creates various emotional, cultural and rational associations, beliefs and expectations among consumers. The brand is a promise and builds consumer associations. Apart from functional, it also has emotional features. Brand identity is everything that the company wants to present to consumers. Brand elements are all those things that serve to identify and differentiate the brand from the ones of competitors. Brand elements include name, logo, slogan, color, characters, packaging, jingle, design, and web address of the product. They must be recognizable and memorable by the consumers, easy to remember, significant, and able to remind the consumers about company and its products, as well as easily protected. Theoretically, the brand name is the central part of the brand identity on which other elements are built up. The brand name should be easily pronounced, easily remembered, short, simple, unique, associative, attractive, and portable. But does the practice confirm these theoretical views about the brand name? On contrary, the practice shows something different! The purpose of this paper is to point out the gap between theory and practice regarding the brand name.