ASSIGNMENT 1: SURF BRANDING

BRAND

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers “.

However Karen E. Klein showed in her article (A Practical Guide to Branding, http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2008/sb2008069_694225.htm) that brand is more than a name or a sign, in her opinion, “ brand is our personality and a lifestyle.”

Also Vincent Grimaldi de Puget said on (http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=183#author)
“ Branding is the foundation of marketing and is inseparable from business strategy. It is therefore more than putting a label on a fancy product. Nowadays, a corporation, law firm, country, university, museum, hospital, celebrity, and even you in your career can be considered as a brand. As such, a brand is a combination of attributes, communicated through a name, or a symbol, that influences a thought-process in the mind of an audience and creates value.”

In my opinion, the brand is now so multifaceted. Unifying customer, guaranteeing quality, a sign of belonging to a social group, certain products meet a great success today only because of the mark on it. For example, we can observe the number of teenager who asks their parents to buy them not a simple baordshort with a simple design, but the Joel Parkinson’s boardshort or the lastest Mick Fanning Rip curl wetsuit. Generally, we may even wonder if the professional athlete, pop star, movie actor, is not really becoming essentially in advertising. People buy brands before buying products. That’s the reason why, brand is a essential part for a surf company because it represents the lifestyle of different people. For instance, Quiksilver created a new brand named “Quiksilver for women” and they launched the brand in Europe by sponsoring Artists