On brands

The brand

A brand refers to a set of features that differentiate one vendor's offerings from another vendor with similar offerings. A vendor does not necessarily need to offer products and/or services in exchange for money, but can also exchange for some non-monetary reward or return.

A brand could merely consist of a set of symbols with colours (and shades thereof). So, this could tend towards the monochromatic and minimalist, or involve some elaborate "design system", up to its own language and culture:

• an image of a simple red "mollusk" on a yellow background
• the silhouette of an apple on electronic devices
• a slogan describing the vendor's offerings as a textual example
• an elaborate coat-of-arms

The coat-of-arms actually exemplifies the historical take on an elaborate branding strategy from centuries past. Furthermore, nation-states could also have their ethnolinguistic cultural backgrounds as brands.

So, brands can consist of more than just logos or slogans. Brands also include an ability to expand beyond the seller's current offerings.

The "niche" brand

The niche tries to promise us one thing and one thing only. That tells us that they try to stay laser-focused on doing that thing extremely well. Varying degrees of the niche exist.

Usually, a niche tries to zoom into a specific product offering, such as "Jon's Coffee", but could later "branch out" and rebrand as simply "Jon's". This brings forth the other kind of brand: the big tent.

The "big tent" brand

The big tent refers to something that tries to become “all things to all people”. We know that nothing can please everyone. Some of us can’t even please a few people. Even more humorously, pleasing ourselves can, more often than not, fall short! Big tents often seem "too big to fail" but they do fail and when they fail, they upset a large sector of the population. Just when they seemed poised to become "all things to all people", they fell hard and had to leave its loyalists hanging.

Something that egregiously tries to do everything for everyone, often ends up in deep excrement. Any given random person can have an overly unique combination of desires that would not match up with “the solution”. That solution may contain great things for most aspects of that person's life, but that solution can also come at the detriment to some aspects of the same person's life. We can sense this in many things these days: party politics, “package deals”, newspapers, pre-determined systems and more.

Big tents have desired and undesired flavours:

The desired big tents

The hypermarket provides a lot of things but promises nothing. We go into a hypermarket because it has a plethora of items to offer. It hopes that we find at least one thing. We then hope that one thing leads to another. The hypermarket also hopes that we return on another occasion because of its multitude of offerings.

So, the hypermarket has something for most, if not all, of our living needs. The hypermarket may suggest to us other things to procure, but it doesn’t necessarily make us do so.

While the offerings of a hypermarket may fall short of our desires, we got what we selected and what we thought would meet our needs. We did not get anything else that we did not choose to get.

The undesired big tents

Recall that the “big tent” imposes on us an excess of components. We may not only have no need for those components, but we may actually despise them. Regardless of which, political parties fail because they try to (or have to) address a whole suite of issues, most of which might not affect us at all.

Package deals, such as guided vacation itineraries, will take us to some random “filler” places with little to no personal value.

Periodical clearinghouses (and their modern counterpart, the paywall-ridden news websites) have “sports” or “entertainment” sections that we may not care about. Yet, it comes with the subscription price.

Pre-determined systems often contain so many different components. Many of these components will remain unused and feel “bloated”. Software brands try to advertise a bunch of features but most of us will never use them.

Summary

Brands consist of what they offer:

• niche brands focus on a simple core offering
• hypermarkets can offer
  • separable varieties so that the client can pick and choose
  • imposed varieties such as the package deal

Niches that become successful often gradually become hypermarkets. The hypermarket that tries to do everything too quickly will fail, especially one that imposes varieties.

Granted with a world of so many possibilities, a vendor that become a hypermarket at first often runs into difficulties. Hypermarkets find it much more difficult at finding the source of their difficulties. Starting out as a niche allows a more laser-focused approach to their processes and problems.