Brand association and brand identity- A lasting relationship

"NOBODY EVER BORED ANYBODY INTO BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS."

Brands are the source of promises to consumers. They promise relevant differentiated benefits. They can make these promises because they are the personifications of products, services, organizations or other entities. Brands have personalities, they possess character and they can stand for something. It is contended that not only can companies and their products and services be branded, but so also can colleges and universities and museums and other not-for-profit organizations and municipalities and countries and musical groups and yes, even individuals. While most people do not need to be personified, some arguably do. Indeed, many celebrities are packaged as brands. The trick is to draw out a person's authentic brand, one that is true to him or her. The same is true with all other brands. The role of the brand marketer is to accentuate the positive attributes, especially those that will give the brand an advantage in the marketplace. People are brands. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, etc. These names stand for something specific in the minds of consumers. Furthermore, brand names can be leveraged across a number of generations. Some people are brands because they build powerful reputations in their field of endeavor. Steve Jobs is a brand at Apple. Michael Dell at Dell. DeBackey in heart surgery. But most never quite get to that status. The brand ambassador is a marketing model that employs trusted, credible personalities to promote and give greater visibility to its brand products. But outside of the traditional, big money advertising world, where famous actors or sport stars are utilized as "ethical" promotional promoters of unique events or services, the idea of a new kind of brand ambassador, a grassroots conceived-one, has yet to trickle down the marketing strategies adopted by successful companies. Realizing the importance of brand ambassadors, the paper attempts to find out the opinion of the respondents about various personalities.