Brand Elements

Assignment 1 – brand management
By: Elizabeth Kulin
May 2009

Name Branding & EmmetLabs:

EmmetLabs is an online wiki website where users can explore or create connections

between famous individuals, historic and living. The site’s objectives are to encourage

individuals, and groups of people, such as family members, to explore and participate in

creating networks of personal connections. From a financial standpoint, the objective is

to become a popular website in order to increase advertising revenue. Strategically

branding the site can help achieve these goals. There are a number of brand elements that

a marketer can implement to brand a business. The brand name is the first branding

element that is designed. The brand name should be designed in accordance to the

brand’s objectives and ideal brand meaning. Furthermore, the brand name should, as

outlined in the name guidelines by Kevin Lane Keller in, “Strategic Brand Management;

Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity”, be critically analyzed, tested and

screened before a final name is elected to represent the brand.

According to Landor’s Brand Name Taxonomy, brand names fit into category types.

These categories, as written in “Strategic Brand Management; Building, Measuring, and

Managing Brand Equity” by Kevin Lane Keller are:

• Descriptive – function of product
• Suggestive – suggests a function of the product
• Compounds – combine two words. Hybrid.
• Classical – Latin or Greek – failure
• Arbitrary – real words that to not relate to company
• Fanciful – coined word with no obvious meaning

The name EmmetLabs is a compound of the name Emmet and word Labs. Being a

compound conveys that this site has two functions (to explore and create). However, as

the word Lab is suggestive of one of the sites function, which it does (creating content),

the name Emmet is not. Emmet is not a very common name, which could make it

difficult for the target audience to remember. Its translation, of “truth” in Hebrew, does

not offer the audience a clear explanation of the sites function. Additionally, it could be a

dangerous name for a user generated site where people can add context freely and un-

cited. Therefore, a name such as ConnectLab, BranchLabs, or JointLabs would be a

better representation of the brand. These compound brand names are more descriptive,

common and their tones are plosive (hard sounding), while still being easy to pronounce.

These characteristics increase a universal ability to understand the website’s category

placement, be more easily recalled, and add strength to the brand image.

Brand Elements:

• Name – The brand name captures the central theme and description of the product. It

also helps consumers remember the brand.

• URL – The brand’s URL must not already taken by another company. Including the

brand name can increase usability and build association to the brand.

• Logo/Symbol – A brand logo and symbol indicates origin, ownership and/or

association to the brand that can build awareness and brand equity.

• Tagline – A tagline is text that provides product/service description, category

placement, and can also convey points of difference.

• Character/spokesperson – A character is not human and a spokesperson is. This can

add imagery to a brand and create feelings among the target audience through

placement in advertising and/or on packaging.

• Slogan – A slogan is short and persuasive text phrase that is typically placed in

advertisement and/or on packing to show competitive POP and category placement.

• Jingle – A jingle is a musical piece that represents the brand and can increase memory

recall among consumers.

• Packaging – Packing is the container that a product is shipped, displayed, sold and/or

purchased in. It can represent the brand’s category while also enable transport,

storage and consumption ease.

Brand Element in EmmetLabs (Critical Analysis and Recommendations):

Chapter 4 of, “Strategic Brand Management; Building, Measuring, and Managing

Brand Equity” by Kevin Lane Keller, introduces 6 criteria for choosing brand elements.

There are 3 offensive criteria’s, which are memorability, meaningfulness and

likability/appropriateness. The additional 3 criteria are defensive in position; they are

transferability, adaptability, and protectability. A business’s cohesive brand elements

should illuminate all 3 offensive criteria, while also being carefully defensive. To

analyze the current brand elements of EmmetLabs, and critic criteria achievement, a chart

is used:

Name URL Logo/ Tagline Character Spokesperson Slogan Jingle Packaging

Symbol
Memorability No No No No N/A No N/A N/A No
Meaningfulness Somewhat Somewhat No Somewhat N/A No N/A N/A Somewhat
Likeability Somewhat Somewhat No No N/A No N/A N/A Somewhat

At this point in time the website’s brand name is EmmetLab. It is my

recommendation that this name be changed. EmmetLabs is not fully descriptive of the

sites functions, or an easy to recall name. It is important that the name illuminate the

site’s description in this young stage of brand awareness so its competitive POP is easily

understood, remembered, and hopefully liked by the target audience.

The change in brand name will require a change to additional brand elements,

such as the URL and logo/symbol. It will be necessary to change the URL,

www.emmetlabs.com, and redirect its current users to the new URL, to include the new

brand name in its address. This will enable users to easily locate the site on the web.

The brand logo/symbol should be naturally placed, as it currently is, in the upper

left hand corner of the home page. Currently, the brand’s logo/symbol is the brand name

“Emmet”. It is my recommendation that a design image, rather than text, be

implemented as the brand logo/symbol that can add to brand equity. It could also help to

increase brand awareness if the image reinforces the brand meaning. Also, at this point

the logo is a dull reddish brown color and warm font style could risk creating a feel of

bore among the user. Once the logo/symbol is finalized, the color and font should be

critically analyzed and tested to ensure it is a cohesive visual ascetic with the rest of the

site’s branding elements.

The current tagline of this website is “Explore 1358 extraordinary biographies.

264,390 fine words making the connections.” To increase brand awareness, EmmetLabs

could leverage their competitive POP with a more descriptive and persuasive tagline. The

first sentence of this tagline does describe one element of the site (exploring) however,

the second part does not. A more descriptive tagline could communicate and illuminate

the site’s dual benefits (exploring and adding content). It could persuade the interest of

multiple target audience and grow its brand awareness bandwidth.

At this point, there is no apparent character/spokesperson for EmmetLabs. The

site has a couple of options for this element. It is my recommendation, that once the site

is ready to advertise via media channels, such as television and print, a

character/spokesperson could help the website build brand awareness and create brand

equity. A character would be more fitting as it could be designed in alignment with the

brand’s meaning an also be easily transferable through future brand growth.

Also, currently the site does not have a slogan, jingle or tangible packaging. As

the site develops, and implements various marketing campaigns, slogans could be

designed to reinforce the site’s position of a wiki that is a fun lace to learn and add

context about human connections. A jingle could be developed, and used in

advertisement, to increase memorability and build brand equity. A tune that portrays the

same feeling and tone of the brand meaning would be ideal; to reinforce the brand

attributes while increasing brand awareness.

Finally, the website does not have a tangible package however; one could argue

that the web layout is its packaging. The website could be re-designed to increase

usability and visual ascetics, for instance, greater emphasis on the dual avenues that the

user can take once on the site. This re-structuring could increase user return rate, which

could lead to greater popularity and online advertisement revenue opportunities.

By strategically designing the brand elements, brand awareness can be increased

and brand imagery created. Brand identity tells the consumer audience who the brand is.

By developing more descriptive brand elements, which integrate and reinforce each

other, the EmmetLabs identity could be greater affiliated with its competitive POP and

functional POD.

Brand Elements

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