I got a lot of feedback in regards to my post on the importance of categories in branding and why you need to create a new category if you really want to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack.The feedback I got was more to do about the basics of branding which I tried to explain in an earlier post. Most people understand that the company name is the brand but don’t understand that the actual product name is also a brand. So the brand is Apple, so too is iPad or iPhone, Gillette and Match 3 etc.Angry birds; strong brand name but who is the company?
What is the brand name, the company or the product? The answer, both, the question is which do you want to push more? At a strategic level the company brand might be very strong and it might give additional klout to the product name or it might actual take away from the product brand. Long story short, any name is a brand, depending on the strenght of the name and how it is perceived in the market you might want to push the company brand or the product brand more or less. Case in point, Angry Birds. What is the company brand? Rovio Mobile! I actually had to look that up. Here the product brand is much stronger than the company, this is not the case for Apple and it’s products.
So in the case of Angry Birds, it’s logical that Rovio Mobile will push the product brand and not the company’s as the company name does not add value you to the product. Another good example of this is Venus, the women’s shaving product line. Who is the company behind the products? Gillette. However, the Gillette brand is very much associated with mens shaving products so strategically it was important NOT to push the company brand and only push the product brand, Venus.
Conclusion
So both the product and company names are brands. If you are commercializing a product you will always need to push the product brand but sometimes it is also important to leverage the company brand as it can add additional value and in some cases you may wish to hide the company brand as it may not add value or even hurt the product.
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