advertising, brandMarketing material (advertisements, summaries, etc) targeting companies often explain how they can do great things for “your company”. Since a few years, I see more and more enterprise advertisement talking about how they can do great things for “your brand” instead. Even when the targeted customers are companies that do not really have a brand as their main asset.
For instance, one of our competitors is (like us) selling internal enterprise software, and their clients are companies. But their advertisements say:
[We] provide [software] to some of the most recognizable brands, including T-Mobile, Konami, the U.S. Army […]”.
The sold product has nothing to do with branding or marketing, it is just boring internal calculation software.
I have seen several such examples. Maybe I am just unlucky and stumbled upon a few examples of erroneously-worded advertising that I should ignore?
If not, what are the benefits of saying “brand” instead of just “companies” or “organizations” when advertising something that has nothing to do with branding?
Note: Several answers just explain the general differences between “company” and “brand”. My question is actually: When advertising something that has nothing to do with branding, what are the benefits of referring to my potential enterprise customer as a “brand”?
First, let's cover the basic semantics: A company owns (zero or more) brands. A company is a type of organization, but an organization does not necessarily have to be a company. So I guess you could say in order of greatest to least specificity, you have 1. brand, 2. company, 3. organization.
Using "brand" has a few advantages. First, brands are specifically designed to be the public-facing image an organization's project. The brand could represent a product, service, or some other activity or grouping. The brand is meant to be something people can easily recognize and associate meaning with. A brand is the "face" of an organization's project. For some organizations like Netflix, the brand represents the entire company. For others, like Procter & Gamble, the organization is a relatively unknown parent to many well-known brands. Of course some brands, like the United States Marines, Notre Dame Football, or the Franciscan Friars are "projects" within governments, schools, or other organizations, and are not necessarily a business at all. So a "brand" can do a good job easily describing a wide range of recognizable projects owned by various types of organizations.
Brands are easier to recognize as they do not have to represent huge organizations. For example, the United States Marines are a small portion of the enormous United States Government. It is a nice, recognizable byte, rather than an organization so massive or so unknown it's hard to comprehend.
There are some advantages to using a company name rather than a brand. For example, if the audience is a government taxing authority or an investor, they may be better off knowing the legal name of a business than its brand(s). However, for marketing purposes, a brand is probably the best representation to use.
To address your specific example of business software marketing: I think it's important to realize the people making purchasing decisions are also consumers who recognize popular brands much more easily than the owning organizations of those brands. While many purchasers may have an intimate knowledge of the underlying companies competing in their industry, most people (except maybe active investors of a wide range of corporate securities) don't have a strong knowledge of the underlying corporations and organizations that exist across various industries simply because they don't market themselves using their legal names; they use their brands. In short, it is less likely someone in an unrelated field is familiar with the corporation Alphabet, even though practically everyone knows the brand Google.
Personal opinion: I would use the word "company" but refer to brands. The word "brand" just feels too marketing-geeky to me. It's my opinion that "company" sounds more natural. However, since brands themselves are more recognizable, I would use brands to represent companies. So I'd say "Companies such as [Brand A], [Brand B], and [Brand C] . . ." I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with this approach even though it might be technically incorrect. But ultimately, it's your sales material so you need to make your own choice.
I think in this example Brand is just a synonym of company. If I understand your question correctly, you would like to know, “Why would the advertisement use the word brand rather than a company?” and your asking because your software has nothing to do with branding. If this is right, I agree that using “companies” may actually be better than “brands”. I would say that “brand” has more to do with perception, where as company has more to do with identity. But it may not amount to a hills beans of difference because the reader’s primary focus on the Names, “US Army” and “T-Mobile”
But, could it be that the word was used without a thought?
Or that “brand” is a more popular buzz word currently. Notice Brand being used to discuss people, companies, products, etc.
Chrysler - “Dad Brand” marketing campaign
Brand Competition - Verizon vs AT&T vs T-Mobile
In simple terms, there is a difference between company and brand. Company refers to the organization that markets or produces products or services; brand refers to the image and “personality” a company applies to its products. In reality, the two can overlap.
Think of the company as a tree, and a brand as a branch.
A marketing company will confuse an audience if the message is not clear. Thus, selecting a single product and packaging it under a brand makes one message to a specific group easier. I suspect some of the marketing material you have read was targeted at a different audience (other than you).
They promote the brand because over the long term, the familiarity creates equity.
Google parent company is now called Alphabet because most folk just associate them with search, yet they make their profits from advertising and marketing, and they are leaning towards maps, navigation, driverless cars, phones, youtube and tv players. Each one of these product lines direct themselves to a different audience.
Hoover make more than vacuum cleaners. Coke sell more than coca-cola.
Brands have value because they can be easily packaged and sold off either into separate companies or entities later.
If Google were to sell it’s maps unit for example, the buyer would have to go to the trouble of introducing itself to a new audience with a new (possibly unknown or less well known name) and explain that they were formerly Google Maps.
Or if Coke had called Sprite “Coke Lemonade” and later sold that unit, few buyers since buying “Coke Lemonade” leaves them to create a new name and spend heavy to introduce it to an audience who is familiar with the product, just not the name. It would be easier however for someone to buy Sprite (making it an attractive asset and creating value for Coke in the process).
I was in the advertising industry for a couple years.
The two are sort of like separate mental-folders that hold different sets of associations.
For example—
Volkswagen’s as a brand is the ‘quirky under-dog’ that does the opposite of what’s trendy in the auto industry. Ads for the Beetle said stuff like “Think small” (as opposed to ‘think big’), or “It makes your house look bigger.” That all gets mentally filed away as endearing emotional associations. It’s sort of like an ongoing character development for the product.
Volkswagen as a company is completely different.
That mental-folder is looking at how Volkswagen is performing as a business. And right now that folder holds a lot of negative associations. The company just went through ‘dieselgate’, where it was discovered that certain models were using software to trick emissions tests. Then there are also grumbles over how the executive bonus systems are rewarding bad behavior in the company.
But in the end— emotional associations are typically stronger than logical associations. Emotionally people still love Volkswagen as a brand, even though they may hate the actions of the company.
Hope this helps
It comes down to understanding your target customers. Not the organization, company, brand or however they mentally segment themselves, but the people sitting in the chairs that you are trying to reach. Depending on who your target, how you term prospective customers may or may not be a big deal. I target marketing managers of consumer brands. The people I am attempting to reach respond best to brand. For your market, perhaps another term would perform better. Depends not only what industries you target, but also what department within an organization you are targeting. Accounting staff may think firm or entity or organization regardless of industry. Using the wrong term can undermine your campaign as the marketing message may not be received as well if you aren’t speaking your customer’s language.
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