What is Brand Recognition?

In marketing and business, a "brand" is the name of a business or the names of the things produced or offered to customers; examples include Hilton® Hotels or Tazo® Tea. A goal in any business is making certain that these names are familiar to consumers, and this is called brand recognition. With skillful marketing, the consumer knows the name of the company or its products and services, and this may lead to increased revenue, and ultimately to other stages of association with brands, like loyalty to a specific brand.

It’s thought that consumers are more likely to choose recognized brands over unrecognized ones. Given a choice between getting coffee at a Starbucks® or a more anonymous Joe’s Coffee Shop, consumers will probably lean toward the Starbucks® unless their recognition of the brand has negative associations. Since there are several competitive coffee retailers, the goal for each one is increasing brand recognition. This can either level the playing field so both choices seem good or go beyond that and establish customer loyalty. On the other hand, being the anonymous Joe’s Coffee Shop is bad for business, and this shop must strive to become recognizable to compete more fully with the better-known brands.

There are a number of ways that companies market to achieve brand recognition. The standard way is advertisement in television ads, but newspaper, Internet, and radio ads may be effective too. Where to best place advertisements depends on determination of who is likely to purchase the brand or brand’s products. This may be variable. A local business is likely to stick to advertising on the local level, but a national or international business must market to a much bigger crowd.

Simply putting a company or product brand name out there isn’t always enough. Brand recognition is best achieved when any advertisements created are of good quality and memorable. Somehow an advertisement has to be catchy and likely to be remembered. How to achieve this is varied too. Some ads appeal to emotion, others have a simple tune that people like, and yet others rely on story or visuals to increase chances of brand recognition.

In addition to creating advertisements that will hopefully be remembered by consumers because they’re good ads, companies have to be willing to invest in sufficient advertisement space. A single play of a great advertisement isn’t likely to produce much brand recognition. Playing an ad often may help the consumer remember the brand when next they shop for the item or services associated with it. In turn, this recognition may prove vital, as customers might be more likely to choose that brand, and if it is of good quality, they may decide to repeatedly choose the brand in the future.