Branding reached its peak in the beginning of the 1990s. Through advertisements, a product of a particular brand gains popularity. This blog entry entails the uprising of brands in general and how advertising took over the lead and became more important to the producers than the image of the company and the brand itself. On the the example of Google I will clarify my arguments. A brand becomes a brand, once it has become a recognisable and important aspect of a culture, society or movement. the consumers and critics make a brand to what it is.
Once a brand is established, the marketing takes over and creates advertisements in order to hold the brand on its level of popularity and to keep it in the minds of the consumers. The company’s reputation depends on the brand. Advertisements promote a product – or brand, on which I will elaborate later -, thereby rises awareness of it and get consumers to buy this particular product. However, in the mid 1990s, the advertisement has taken over the importance to the company and the product itself is not the focus anymore. The brand that is, through ads, associated with a certain lifestyle has become the most important focus in advertisement.
Since the brand is communicated to a particular audience, namely the focus group, by advertisements, the marketing sets its eyes on the ads. In marketing, the brand is only in second place. More money is being spent on adverts than on the actual products that are being sold.
In the previous post I talked about semiotics, in particular, about the term ‘iconic’. A picture, video or animation that depicts a certain object is considered an icon. However, it needs to depict a particular of the concerned object. Iconic brands however, are a bit different. Through cultural branding, an iconic brand is being established. In order to rise to an iconic brand, it is necessary for a brand to have a cultural value for a certain amount of people. this kind value, Holt (2004) calls identity value. Consumers identify themselves with a specific brand. On the example of google I will clarify what Holt is talking about when he mentions iconic brands.
From its beginning as a research project, Google has become one of the most well known brands in the world. Since 1996 its search engine, has risen to be one of the most often used search engines. The same has been noticed after google’s launch of Chrome, its own web browser. I will narrow this example down to the search engine and the web browser, since the company has many many more aspects, but is most associated with the two mentioned above.
According to Holt, iconic brands entail an identity myth. The consumers have an idea about a certain brand and create an emotional connotation to it. Often this myth has to do with the consumers image of the brand being a status symbol. This is, according to Holt (2004) often “set in a populist world” (p. 9). In my example it is the ‘all- knowing internet’ that is associated to the Google’s search engine.
As mentioned above when I talked about branding, to keep a brand in the minds of the people advertisement is both useful and necessary. This can be operated in different ways. When Google’s search engine was launched in 1996, the selection of web engines was small. It was advertised via people talking about it, therefore, other advertisement was not necessary. With the more and more developing web browsers and search engines, Google finally was in need of an advertisement and launched its first television commercial in 2010.
Google’s algorithm that worked differently and at the same time more efficiently, people tended to use it rather than other engines. Here, the identity value came into being. Google has established itself and is being incorporated into todays society to the extend that it has made its way into linguistics and the term to google is being used by many on a daily basis.