Think of your brand as the entire identity of your business—how it looks, feels, and connects with people. It’s the overall image, reputation, and experience your customers have. Imagine a trademark as a shield protecting a specific identity piece, like your logo or a slogan. While your brand is the broad story you tell the world, trademark zeroes in on protecting the unique symbols or words that define your brand, ensuring no one else can use them. In this article, I will explain branding vs. trademark, their importance to your brand, and their features.
Key Points
- A trademark is a unique symbol, logo, design, or word that distinguishes a business or product from others and protects its interests from imitation.
- Branding is the overall image and reputation of a business, including elements like name, logo, and customer experience.
- Trademarks provide legal protection and exclusivity to specific identity features like logos and names, preventing unauthorized use.
- Branding creates emotional connections and differentiates a business through consistent elements like design, messaging, and customer experience.
- While trademarks offer legal protection and can be registered, branding encompasses a broader, evolving perception and is not confined to legal registration.
What Is a Trademark?
A trademark is a unique symbol, logo, design, or word that distinguishes a business or product from others. It not only distinguishes the product or brand but also protects the interests of the product owners and helps avoid confusion and duplicity. A trademark is a form of intellectual property that can be owned by an individual, legal entity, or company. They can be trade dresses or a specific combination of features used to identify a business, such as logos, specific combinations of colors, shapes, and design layout.
A trademark can be a word mark, design mark, or sound mark and can be registered or unregistered. It serves to prevent competitors from imitating identity features, which may cause confusion for customers. It is a special symbol, name, or logo officially registered to identify and protect a business’s products or services. Consistently using and promoting a trademark in all aspects of a business can help build a strong brand and create a memorable and reliable image for customers. Even though a trademark is similar to a copyright, they are both different in some ways.
What Is Branding?
A brand represents your reputation and business in the public eye. It is your corporate image that builds over time and reflects quality. Your brand is your image—what the public sees and thinks. It encompasses identity, image, personality, character, culture, essence, and reputation.
A brand includes registered trademarks, unregistered slogans, graphics, and images; storefront design; website design; content tone; packaging; celebrity endorsements; company culture; reputation; and social media presence. A brand name is a name that helps consumers identify products and evokes emotions. It includes character, reputation, identity, image, culture, and personality. A strong brand is essential for building customer trust, loyalty, and recognition.
Features of Branding
Here are seven features of branding with examples using Nigerian brands:
- Builds Identity: A brand creates a unique identity for a product or company, including elements like name, logo, and colors, which stamps a sense of authority in people’s minds. Example: GTBank’s distinctive logo and orange color.
- Reputation and Emotional Connection: A brand represents the reputation and image of a company in the minds of consumers, evoking emotions and creating a connection with customers by implicating values and loyalty.
- Differentiation: Brands highlight the company’s unique features, benefits, values, and selling points, differentiating themselves from competitors by communicating what sets them apart.
- Consistency: Brand consistency ensures that all brand elements and messages are unified across various touchpoints, building recognition, trust, and familiarity among consumers. Example: Dangote’s consistent branding across products and advertising.
- Brand Promise and Experience: A brand makes a promise to customers about the value and benefits they can expect, creating a positive and memorable experience at every interaction point. Example: Jumia’s promise of convenient online shopping and fast delivery.
- Brand Extension and Management: Successful brands can extend their presence into new product lines or categories by leveraging existing brand equity, with strategic brand management involving planning, positioning, communication, and monitoring to maintain a strong brand image.
To ensure a successful brand extension, use this FREE checklist:
Brand Extension Planning Checklist.PDF
Features of a Trademark
Here are the seven key features of a trademark, with some examples to help you understand them better:
- Distinctiveness: A trademark should possess distinctiveness, meaning it should be unique and distinguishable from other trademarks in the marketplace.
- Legal Protection: Trademarks are legally protected intellectual property assets, providing exclusive rights to the owner and preventing others from using similar marks. For example, the registration of the GTBank logo provides legal protection against unauthorized use.
- Identifying Source: Trademarks serve as indicators of the source or origin of goods or services, enabling consumers to identify and associate specific products or services with a particular brand or company. Example: The Dangote logo identifies the source of various products, including cement and sugar.
- Brand Recognition: Trademarks contribute to brand recognition and brand building, creating a lasting impression in the minds of consumers. Example: The Jumia logo has become synonymous with online shopping in Nigeria.
- Asset Value: Trademarks have value as intangible assets for businesses, appreciating over time as the brand reputation grows. Example: The value of the MTN trademark has grown significantly since its introduction.
- Exclusive Rights: Trademark registration grants the owner exclusive rights to use the mark in connection with designated goods or services. Example: The registration of the Pepsi logo grants the company exclusive rights to use the mark in Nigeria.
- Renewability: Trademarks can be renewed indefinitely as long as they are actively used and maintained according to the requirements of the jurisdiction where they are registered. The Coca-Cola trademark has been renewed multiple times since its initial registration.
Differences Between Trademarks vs Branding
A trademark is a legal name that protects a brand or product’s uniqueness and prevents duplication, providing legal protection to brand owners. On the other hand, a brand is a name that gives a unique identity to a company. The key differences between trademarks and brands are:
- Scope: A branding represents the entire perception of a business, while a trademark focuses on specific symbols, names, or logos associated with products or services.
- Legal Protection: A trademark is legally registered and protected, whereas branding relies on reputation and goodwill.
- Registration: A trademark requires formal registration, whereas branding does not.
- Ownership: A trademark is owned exclusively by the entity that registers it, whereas branding is owned collectively by customers, stakeholders, and the business.
- Transferability: A trademark can be bought, sold, or licensed independently, whereas branding is difficult to transfer independently.
- Duration: A trademark is protected for a specific period and renewable indefinitely, whereas branding can evolve and change over time.
- Use in Commerce: A trademark is used to identify and differentiate products or services, whereas branding represents the overall business identity.
- Geographical Scope: A trademark’s protection is limited to registered geographical regions, whereas branding represents a broader and potentially global identity.
- Influence: A trademark is primarily influenced by legal recognition and protection, whereas branding is influenced by customer experiences, advertising, and business conduct.
Why Do You Need to Trademark Your Brand?
Protecting your brand with trademark registration provides legal authority to use your brand assets and protects against unauthorized use, certifying ownership of intangible assets like visuals, personality, and feelings associated with your company. This legal protection prevents others from using similar marks, ensuring your brand’s uniqueness and value. Trademark registration validates investment, increases brand awareness, and boosts company value, enabling global protection and recognition of your brand identity.
Registering your trademark prevents costly rebranding efforts due to unauthorized use, increases perceived value, builds trust with investors, and enhances reputation. By registering your trademark, you assure customers of unique goods or services, build trust, and prevent counterfeiting, ultimately paving the way for a resilient and successful business. Trademark registration fosters trust with customers, enhances integrity, and adds immense value to your brand as a whole, making it a crucial step in building a strong brand identity.
Protecting your brand identity goes beyond just colors and logos to include the visuals, personality, and feelings that your customers link with your company. A trademark is a legal sign that certifies that these priceless, intangible assets are owned by you. A strong trademark is a company’s best asset, validating that investment as the company grows.
First, by registering a trademark, you can bring brand awareness to new product lines or regions without any concern over brand trespass. Second, strengthening your mark will also increase your company’s perceived value. In the current market, a brand’s portfolio of intellectual properties is heavily weighted when assessing a business’s value and future income potential.
Should I Get a Trademark or a Brand First?
Whether you decide to start your trademark application process or focus on your brand first depends on your business preferences. It’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation—your trademark is part of your brand, and your brand includes your trademark. So even if you decide to register your trademark first, that’s still a branding choice.
Can I Keep My Brand Legally Protected?
Yes and no. Since branding consists of numerous and varied elements, there’s no one-size-fits-all way to legally protect your brand. This is why many businesses choose to register their trademarks, which offer legal protection over significant parts of your brand, like your logo, brand name, product names, and slogans.
What Is the Difference Between a Trademark and a Copyright?
While both protect intellectual property, the scope of a trademark and a copyright are different. A trademark helps protect a brand’s identity and helps consumers tell companies/products apart. Copyright protects individual artistic creations, like a painting, poem, novel, or recipe, as long as it is in a tangible (and therefore able to be registered) form.
Can I Trademark a Word?
Almost anything can be a trademark if it indicates the source of your goods and services. It could be a word, slogan, design, or combination of these. It could even be a sound, a scent, or a color.
Conclusion
In summary, while branding and trademarks serve different functions, they are both essential components in building and protecting your business’s identity. Branding encompasses the overall perception and emotional connection customers have with your company, shaping loyalty and trust over time.
Trademarks, on the other hand, provide legal protection for the distinct elements that represent your brand, such as logos, names, and slogans, ensuring that your unique identity cannot be replicated or misused by others. Understanding and effectively leveraging both branding and trademarks will not only enhance your market presence but also secure your business’s long-term success and reputation.
Related Articles
- Inspiring Brand Examples: Successful Strategies from Top Companies
- 5 Shocking Value Drivers That Could Double Your Company’s Worth Overnight
- The Ultimate Guide To Writing A Winning Content Brief
- How to Protect Your Brand Online & Offline (Expert Tips)
References
