Nagesh P. Shinde

I was wondering if brand values were created by the advertisement agencies to sell a product/service or are brand values truly created and owned by the brand?

...I guess what I'm asking is, what came first? The product or the brand image?

If market research was done well the product/service should reserve its own values. Advertising can imply one brand is better than another but even if a terrible product had really great advertising, customers would still be dissatisfied. Advertising is a way to reach out to the customers and illustrate the shared values in products/services. Gaining loyalty with the customer is extremely important for repeat business so those values must be there.

http://www.NetMBA.com/marketing/concept/
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-216337_ITM

It all starts with the product. In the process of developing that product there may be an image in mind for that developer, for example, the product's market audience. I would think I good final brand image would come from an agency using the what the product developer might like to convey in their image, and then using their talents and abilities to execute that image.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/msds-suggests-5-essentials-building/story.aspx?guid=%7BC5772BBC-47EA-4AE9-9C9C-3944CAB1DDBA%7D&dist=hppr

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2008/10/260_32742.html

The product comes before the brand image. Even though it may be created by an advertisement agency and later sold to a company for advertising purposes (as a permanent logo or temporary product logo), a brand image is simply a marketing strategy. A product or service needs to first exist in order for a designer to reflect the good features and attributes of it into the brand image. Once a strong image is designed for a company with the correct target audience, I feel that it may or may not have to ever change.
On the other hand, another marketing strategy-advertisements-are changing constantly with the consumers, time periods and variety of products and are more commonly used to actually sell a product/service simultaneously with the brand image (which by this stage can already be owned by the company).
If you think about it, sometimes it is not necessary for a product/service to have a brand image if they have established themselves in the market with great value and loyal consumers. This proves that the products/services come first, the marketing is thought of later.


http://www.bdc.ca/en/business_tools/ask_professionnal/archives/rep200211.htm?iNoC=1#73.%20Building%20brand%20awareness%20for%20your%20target%20market

I think the product came first. Although brand value is a key asset to the marketplace, the product is necessary to create that value. You need to have a product in order for your company to develop brand value. To keep its value, you need high quality products to fuel the brand. A brand works if you make great products. You may have a great brand but if you launch poor products you destroy your Brand Value. If you have a really good product and your brand is not known, you’d sell more than if your brand had a bad reputation. But if your brand value is known and highly rated in the marketplace, you could sell even more products than if your brand is not known and had a bad reputation put together.

http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/the-roi-on-brand-versus-the-value-of-brand/

I think that the product comes first. Even in class when we're thinking of what to do for products you always have to think about the subject first before how you create it. Some products even do well with little advertising, such a Wacom. They have very little advertising but it is known to be a great product so people are loyal to Wacom not because of brand identity but because of the product (I personally don't like the new Wacom logo but I love their tablets).

I do think that it is important though to have a good brand identity though. If a product is good why not improve it? By having a good identity it will draw in more loyalty and more people will talk about how great of a product it is causing more people to be interested in the product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand

This question makes me ponder the age old question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? Without a product how could there be brand value but without brand value how could a product exist in a competitve marketplace. There are multiple answers to this questions because there are multiple scenarios that need to be considered.

If there is an up and coming company with a new widget. First they will need to set up a marketing plan as to who what and where they will be selling this widget. In this case the company might not have the experience in marketing and could then hire a consultant or firm to help with marketing and promoting there new company and new widget to help grow their brand value in the product and company.

On the other hand a larger company that has already a set of loyal customers might need to just spruce up there look or identity to stay up on current trends. With that if they are a large enough company they might have their own marketing team or they would hire and bring in a team.

An example that I had found quite interesting in this consulting article relates the idea of brand value to credit cards.

As an example, two "unbranded" credit cards may deliver the exact same set of features in terms of fees structures, APR, acceptance, credit lines, etc. As long as these two products remain unbranded, they will be undifferentiated and therefore equivalent to the user/purchaser. But, if we label one of those cards "American Express" and the other "Acme" , most users/purchasers will attribute additional, intrinsic, value to the American Express product. The two branded credit cards are no longer undifferentiated. The same concept applies to service industries such as telecommunications.

http://www.sdr-consulting.com/branding3.html
http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso?article=263


An old article but interesting with regards to branding broadway.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D61330F93AA15755C0A963958260&scp=1&sq=brand%20value&st=cse

Here is an example I found that supported the idea that the product comes first and the brand image follows....

BP (better petroleum) formally known as British Petroleum has undergone major branding changes in the past century. It started as just another oil company and grew into a green-movement pioneer. In 1997, BP's CEO (Lord John Brown) gave a speech that acknowledged the potential risk of global warming. Lord Brown wanted to rethink corporate responsibility and the next year BP set a goal to reduce their emissions 10% lower then they had been in 1990. They projected this goal would take 10 years to achieve but astonishingly BP did it in 2001. Just a year before this, BP joined with Amoco, Arco, and Castrol to form a new company with the Green initiative. A new brand was born and they called themselves Better Petroleum BP. The logo was a green, yellow, and white sunburst called the Helios which stood for the brand values put into practice years before. BP is an example of how a good product can be outstanding by itself but better with a brand image.

Here is a look at a cool sustainable gas station BP built
http://www.laist.com/2007/02/23/the_poshest_gas_station_in_los_angeles.php

and here is the site i got my info from
http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=10&contentId=7036819

I believe that the product is the essential backbone to success, but I also believe it is extraordinarily important to have a quality brand in order to connect the consumer to the product. Having a consistent and original style can creating a powerful lasting relationship with the consumer and the product. So, I guess it is difficult to say whether the brand or the product should come first. If you don’t have a good product and an effective brand, consumers will be disappointed; however, if you have a quality product but a ineffective brand, you will also fail.

In this article, it tells a story about how a company had an amazing chocolate company, and didn’t become a successful company until they had a successful brand. They need to work together to be triumphant.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/which-came-first-the-packaging-or-the-advertising_1

I think that in most cases the product comes first. The brand is what brings out the desirable qualities of the product. Without a strong brand, I think it is hard for a new product to be successful. Some products with weaker branding do continue to do well because users have developed a bond to it in some other way. As stated in USA Today, smaller businesses often pass off the importance of strong branding, thinking it's reserved for the "big boys."

Brands continuously develop products and add them to the overall branding. New products come and go and must be worked into the branding to give the customer the clearest message. I would say that most companies started with at least one product or had a product in mind before they came to the branding process. I think you need selling qualities within a product in order to develop a strong brand. Yeah, the product could look cool, or have cool packaging, but if it doesn't work or isn't what customers expect, eventually people will stop buying it.

I agree with Diana, both the product and the brand need to be established and work together to make the most out of the company. When the product works with the branding, the customer will be getting a clear message.

I like how it is stated in an article I found on AIGA, "...is what brands are ideally, names with substance behind them." There must be more than just the brand. The article also talks about the value of a name. A name can influence perception and experience. With this argument, it seems that the product should come first unless there is already a very strong brand in place. If this brand is already established, it must be adaptable as the company or product line grows.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/noahs-archive-name-brands

I agree with most of the responses thus far. In most situations, it is the product that comes first. The specific product becomes the foundation of the branding. All focus on the branding should be in regards to the target audience, the product being advertised, and the emotions or ideas that the company wants to portray through their branding system. However, without a strong branding system, the product will not survive and attract consumers. The product is the basis of the two, but without a successful branding system it will fail.
I would think about it as a building-- any building needs a strong foundation to begin (the product), and whatever is added to the foundation of a building needs to be upright and sturdy. The product and branding need to be equally strong to succeed.
As Cara stated above, if both of them work together- then new products can be born from that successful branding. And the process keeps revolving.

I would say that before a company can exist a product idea must exist. A company is created around a product idea. In order for the product to succeed in a competitive market, strong branding is essential. Therefore, the product idea came before the creation of the company followed by the actual product finished off with strong branding. Often times, a company continues to expand it's products but base those upon the branding already in existence.

A product and a brand go hand in hand when introduced. I agree with Cara as well as in this fact. For a product to succeed, strong branding is what will attract the customer and the quality of the product is what will keep the customer coming back for more.

For the company to succeed with the introduction of additional products the brand must be able to tie itself to the new products. For growth the branding must be functionally adaptive to separate products that can stand alone and amongst the other products of the company.

Any product on the market today can heighten its success with the right branding. For a product to be truly successful though, the product and brand image must emerge simultaneously. Obviously you have to have an idea for a product to begin with. However, the branding will not only shape the future of that single product, but set the standard for every product that follows. When a company makes design a built in value from the outset, the results are dramatic. This instantly makes me think of Apple and this quote by Steve Jobs:

"When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop....

But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem—and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.

That's what we wanted to do with Mac."

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/prove-it-why-design-sells