Your business brand is a word, name or design that represents your business. Your brand is what identifies you from your competitors, and having a strong brand can become invaluable to your business. Over time, a brand becomes much more than just a recognisable logo – it becomes a symbol for everything that your business stands for. Think of the brand BMW or Mercedes, because of past experience with these brands, they become synonymous with luxury or quality, and create a desirability. Different people will develop different emotional responses and associations with different brands. Think of the brand McDonalds – some people see fun, delicious, and affordable while others associate the brand with cheap, unhealthy, bad quality.
Through an emotional attachment to a brand, businesses can develop brand loyalty with their customers, who will continue to purchase their products or services for years and years because of their past positive experiences, or because of the things the brand represents to them. This brand loyalty can become so strong for people that they will continue to purchase from a business even if when rationally examined it doesn’t make sense (for example staying with a bank because it was the bank they used when they first purchased their home loan with, even if they have extortionate bank fees or much higher interest rates than competitors).
Over the years businesses may upgrade or change their brand in order to stay up to date with current trends, or to appeal to a different target market. McDonalds is a good example of a business that over the years has updated their branding by introducing McCafes and their “healthy” menus. Often changes will just be a more modern logo, or marketing campaign. For example over the years Starbucks has simplified and modernised their logo, as has Pepsi.