What have you "herd" about brands?

What does the word “brand” mean, anyway? I’m sure almost anyone could detail a list of brand names, but most of us have a harder time defining exactly what a brand is. Is it the company name, such as Hershey’s, Campbell’s, or Kraft? Is it the logo, like McDonald’s golden arches or the Nike swoosh? According to BrandChannel’s glossary of brand-related terms, a brand is “a mixture of attributes, tangible and intangible, symbolised in a trademark, which, if managed properly, creates value and influence.”


Sounds ambiguous, doesn’t it? That’s one of the inherent struggles in defining the word “brand”: there are so many intangible elements. The Interbrand definition doesn’t even account for the fact that individual musicians, directors, and actors can reasonably be said to have their own “brands”, even without an official trademark or logo. Clearly, a brand can be conceptual as well as physical.

An exploration of etymology might clarify the origin of the word. (I promised in my first post that this would not be an academic blog, so you may take comfort in the fact that I did not verify any of the so-called facts you are about to read). Imagine for a moment that you are a cattle rancher in 1880, raising livestock in the American Midwest. Your 500 head of cattle range freely in the same unfenced grasslands that your neighbor’s cattle graze in. Since you couldn’t possibly identify each cow by appearance, you need some way to mark—or brand—the cattle as your own. So you forge a unique design out of iron, heat it up in a fire, and burn the image into the hide of your animal. Cattle identification problem solved.

What those cattle ranchers probably didn’t consider at first were the marketing implications of branding their cattle. Beef quality is not universal, and certain livestock ranchers provide better steaks and rib-eyes to the market than others. Over time, the livestock wholesalers in Chicago would come to associate a branded image with a standard quality of meat. Therefore, even though a railway car might be filled with cows of the same size and appearance, cattle with this brand:

Could fetch a higher price than cattle with this brand:

And the price premium would be determined without actually testing the beef's marbling or flavor.

Which leads me to a question for you, dear reader: why do you buy Morton brand iodized salt, instead of the unbranded generic at the grocery store? Do you, like I do, rush down the baking aisle, look for a dark purple container with the image of a girl with a yellow umbrella, and throw it into the cart without thinking? Without even knowing it, you probably have years of built-up experiences with that brand. For a fun experiment, the next time you’re at a store, try to buy the generic version of a product you regularly buy from an established brand. You’ll likely feel some inner resistance to the unbranded option. Congratulations: you are now experiencing “brand equity”.  Welcome to the herd.