Tagged: Marketing

Despite all its problems in recent years, including bankruptcy, American Airlines has retained a certain aura. Consider every other airline brand in the world and tell me you could pick one better than American Airlines.

Then look at the graphics on airplanes of all the world’s airlines. Find one cleaner, more professional-looking than American. That silver airplane with classic Helvetica type. 

We spend our lives in a branded environment. We buy branded products and services. We work for companies that are trying to build their brands. Some of us work in a brand-building role.

At the very least, we spend our money with a keen awareness of brands.

Why? What is it about a brand that influences us so? What makes a brand worth billions? What makes one bar of soap worth twice as much as another?

The brand.

What is a brand, anyway? One word: trust. The definition of a brand is trust.

Toy-maker Fisher-Price is, in my opinion, the classic example of a company that develops new products the right way. Its customers, young kids, are said to be the most finicky of all consumers.

Fisher-Price sends its people into homes and playrooms. They want to see what play areas look like. What’s in them. How existing toys are being used. They look particularly for things that moms have adapted for children’s play. Necessity is the mother of invention, they agree, and moms are very inventive.