Product brand
A product brand is a brand linked to the product and not to the corporation and
describes a situation where each individual product has its own brand. Choosing to
brand the corporation or the product is a question of brand architecture. Marketing
a product brand holds several advantages, such as the liberty to market to different
segments, the ability to close unsuccessful brands without harming the mother
corporation, etc. Product branding is compared to corporate branding in figure 5.2
in this book.
Service brand
Service brands are brands that sell services instead of products. This means that
the brand is experienced in the process of consuming the service and that the
employee delivering the service becomes a central communicator of the brand.
Service brands can benefit from all the same insights as product brands, but as
the service encounter requires dedicated employees and human interaction,
service brand managers might benefit more from the identity approach and the
relational approach (Vallaster and de Chernatony 2005, de Chernatony and
Drury 2004).
Viral branding
The term covers mechanisms where consumers help or in some cases take over the
marketing of the brand. A marketer who applies a certain amount of ‘coolness’ to
the brand often initiates viral branding, the coolness starts a process where
consumers spread the brand like a virus. Having consumers support the marketing
process, and by their autonomy giving the brand a higher level of authenticity, can
be beneficial for the marketer. Still, viral branding implies a risk of a contrary
marketing effort, where the brand is ‘hijacked’ and taken in unintended directions
through autonomous meaning-making among consumers. Even though a brand
community is a narrower concept than viral branding, the mechanisms behind the
two concepts are comparable; they are described in the community approach,
chapter 9. Another suggested read is Brand Hijack: Marketing without Marketing
by Wipperfürth (2005).
References and further reading
Aaker, D. A. (1991), Managing Brand Equity, New York: Free Press
Aaker, D. A. and Biel, A. L. (1993) Brand Equity and Advertising: Advertising’s Role in
Building Strong Brands, Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Aaker, D. A. and Joachimsthaler, E. (2002) Brand Leadership, Sydney: Free Press Business
Aaker, D. A. and Keller, K. L. (1990) ‘Consumer evaluations of brand extensions’, Journal
of Marketing, 54 (1): 27–41
Abratt, R. (1989) ‘A new approach to the corporate image management process’, Journal of
Marketing Management, 5 (1): 63–76
Key words in brand management 17