Which statement best explains how the concept of company branding is related to technical communication?

What’s more, informed and engaged employees are more likely to become brand ambassadors. And when it comes to employee advocacy, your internal communication is crucial.

Your employees need to have a clear understanding of the company’s vision and product to share that knowledge with their personal networks.

Your employees are the first ones to witness your brand, values, and objectives; they’re also the ones that communicate that experience to the outside world.

Related: How Your Employees Can Help You Attract the Right Talent

An effective internal communication helps business leaders keep employees informed about how the brand is evolving so they can share that information with their personal networks.

The best brands enable employees to connect with and share the vision of a company by providing clarity into goals, milestones, process changes, and other initiatives.

Related: 5 Internal Communications Best Practices for Driving Engagement [Infographic Included]

When employees feel engaged, they are much more likely to share your brand messaging. This can provide a much-needed boost for HR and recruiting staff looking to create a great employer brand and build networks of trust with candidates.

Improve Your Internal Communication with Haiilo Stories

As an internal communication practitioner, you need to adapt your internal communication strategy to your employees’ expectations.

You need to understand their needs and what they expect from you. In pother words, you need to speak their language. It’s the only way you can get their attention and get your message through.

Think about it: most employees (74%) have the feeling they’re missing out on important information such as company news. Basically, that means that the majority of the employees don’t know what’s going on in the company!

In parallel, they have to deal with overflowing inboxes (remember that 62% of the emails received by employees are not important), and they spend 2.5 hours per day looking for the information they need to do their job.

That doesn’t necessarily means that you’re sharing too much information with your employees.

A brand is a product, service or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed.

Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name, its qualities and personality. Branding could be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual products and services or concepts.

Well-known advertising copywriter and ad agency founder David Ogilvy defined a brand as: "the intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised."

How are brands identified?

Brands are often expressed in the form of logos and graphic representations of the brand.

In computers, a modern example of widespread brand application was the "Intel Inside" label provided to manufacturers that use Intel's CPUs.

A company's brands and the public's awareness of them are often used as a factor in evaluating a company. Corporations sometimes hire market research firms to study public recognition of brand names as well as attitudes toward the brands.

How are brands protected from intellectual property theft?

Brands are usually protected from use by others by securing a trademark or service mark from an authorized agency, usually a government agency. Before applying for a trademark or service mark, individuals and organizations need to establish that someone else hasn't already obtained one for that name.

Although they can do the searching themselves, it is common to hire a law firm that specializes in doing trademark searches and managing the application process, which -- in the United States -- takes about a year.

Once they've learned that no one else is using it, they can begin to use their brand name as a trademark simply by stating it is a trademark (using the "TM" where it first appears in a publication or website). After receiving the trademark, they can use the registered symbol after their trademark.

When should you trademark a brand name?

Organizations should trademark their brand name as soon as possible after beginning to use it in commerce or e-commerce.

The best way to protect a brand name is to file for a trademark before someone else does. They can use the "TM" symbol on their brand name even before they file for federal trademark protection.

If they wait to file for a trademark until after someone else has started using their brand, it can be more difficult and expensive to stop them.

It is also important to use a brand name consistently so that it becomes well-known and associated with the company or product. Inconsistent use can weaken your brand and make it more difficult to enforce trademark rights.

What are some famous brands?

Famous brands include Coca-Cola, Nike, IBM, Volkswagen and Chanel. These companies have built their brand over many years and are among the most valuable brands in the world.

The Coca-Cola brand is worth $79 billion, making it the most valuable brand in the world. Coca-Cola has been able to build such strong brand equity because it has consistently delivered a product that people enjoy.

Nike is the second most valuable brand in the world, with a brand value of $56 billion. Nike has built its brand by associating itself with some of the world's greatest athletes and using creative marketing campaigns that resonate with consumers.

These companies have all built their brand equity through a combination of great products and strong marketing.

See also: brand ambassador, brand equity, brand recognition, brandjacking, brand experience, brand essence, rebranding

Brand identity is the visible elements of a brand, such as color, design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds. Brand identity is distinct from brand image. The former corresponds to the intent behind the branding and the way a company does the following—all to cultivate a certain image in consumers' minds:

• Chooses its name
• Designs its logo
• Uses colors, shapes, and other visual elements in its products and promotions
• Crafts the language in its advertisements
• Trains employees to interact with customers

Brand image is the actual result of these efforts, successful or unsuccessful. 

• Brand identity is the visible elements of a brand, such as color, design, and logo that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers' minds.
• Consistent marketing and messaging lead to consistent brand identity and, therefore, consistent sales.
• Building a positive brand image can bring in consistent sales and make product roll-outs more successful.
• Building a positive, cohesive brand image requires analyzing the company and its market, and determining the company's goals, customers, and message.
• Social media is a powerful driver of brand awareness.

Brand identity in many ways is the visual (symbol or illustration) aspect of a brand. Think of the Nike 'swoosh' or Apple's apple—those are two instances where the identity of a brand is connected with a symbol or visual aspect. Building brand identity must have a strong visual image to link the brand. A brand identity is compiled of various branding elements. When you put them together, the identity in many ways is the mascot of your brand. It is how a company expresses and describes itself from the images on its marketing materials, the colors that represent the brand, and how a company markets itself on social media. A strong brand identity strengthens a company's popularity and presence in a competitive market.

Beyond saving the company money on promotion, a successful brand can be one of the company's most valuable assets. Brand value is intangible, making it difficult to quantify. Still, common approaches take into account the cost it would take to build a similar brand, the cost of royalties to use the brand name, and the cash flow of comparative unbranded businesses.

Nike, Inc., for example, owns one of the world's most instantly recognizable logos, the "swoosh." According to Forbes' "The 2020 World's Most Powerful Brands" report, the Nike brand ranked 13 with an estimated brand value of $39.1 billion, even though, in a world devoid of brand perception, taking the swoosh off of Nike's shoes and apparel would change nothing about their comfort or performance. The top brand on the 2020 list was Apple, with an estimated brand value of $241.2 billion.

The steps a company should take to build a strong, cohesive, and consistent brand identity will vary, but a few points apply broadly to most:

1. Analyze the company and the market. A complete SWOT analysis that includes the entire firm—a look at the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—is a proven way to help managers understand their situation to determine better their goals and the steps required to achieve them.
2. Determine key business goals. The brand identity should help fulfill these goals. For example, if an automaker is pursuing a niche luxury market, its ads should be crafted to appeal to that market. They should appear on channels and sites where potential customers are likely to see them.
3. Identify its customers. Conducting surveys, convening focus groups, and holding one-on-one interviews can help a company identify its consumer group.
4. Determine the personality and message it wants to communicate. A company needs to create a consistent perception rather than trying to combine every conceivable positive trait: utility, affordability, quality, nostalgia, modernity, luxury, flash, taste, and class. All brand elements, including copy, imagery, cultural allusions, and color schemes, should align and deliver a coherent message.
   

Building a brand identity is a multi-disciplinary strategic effort, and every element needs to support the overall message and business goals.

National, religious, guild, and heraldic symbols, which we might see as analogous to modern branding, go back millennia. The modern practice dates to the industrial revolution; however, when household goods began to be produced in factories, manufacturers needed a way to differentiate themselves from competitors.

Thus, these efforts evolved from simple visual branding to advertisements that included mascots, jingles, and other sales and marketing techniques. Many companies claim to have the oldest trademarked brands: Twinings Tea, Stella Artois, and Levi Strauss.

Building a brand identity is a multi-disciplinary strategic effort, and every element needs to support the overall message and business goals. It can include a company's name, logo, and design; its style and the tone of its copy; the look and composition of its products; and, of course, its social media presence.

Apple founder Steve Jobs famously obsessed over details as small as the shade of gray on bathroom signs in Apple stores. While that level of focus may not be necessary, the anecdote shows that Apple's successful branding results from the intense effort, not just luck. But building brand identity isn't just for the big leagues. All companies, both small and mid-sized businesses, should build a strong brand identity.

Brand identity matters because without it, customers are not able to recognize a brand easily. A strong brand may helps sell a company to consumers.

A good brand has a clear focus, strong visuals, is familiar with its target audience (family versus mature audience, for example) and is easily recognizable in a sea of similar brands.

Nike, Mcdonald's, Apple, Google, Disney, and Amazon have some of the most recognizable and valuable brands.