What is the difference between Brand Image and Brand Identity

Developing a brand helps develop products and services. Later on, some successful companies can only increase their sales through brand awareness. In the context of brand development, brand identity and brand image are often confused.

Some people mistakenly consider them to be equivalent, but this is not true. In reality, these terms have differences. Let’s try to understand why they should be differentiated and what their influence is on the recognizability of any brand on the market.

Brand identity

Brand identity refers to a company’s vision of how its representatives would like the brand to be perceived by users. Therefore, identity:

Depends on how the brand is presented by the company;

  • analyzes past performance and research;
  • indicates the visible elements of the brand;
  • leads to active growth in sales and product recognition.

Identity is thus a kind of the face of the company on the market. It reflects the values, uniqueness, and main idea of the company. Brand identity can be influenced by features, attributes, quality, and speed of product performance.

Brand identity is the result of the collective work of different departments of a company, including product or service development guidelines, testing, financing, and the final release of a product to the market with the right characteristics. Identity helps to show the side of the organization that the target audience expects to recognize their product among a different assortment.

Unlike the images, an organization needs to think about strategy, branding techniques, and the marketing component of product development. With their help, the organization shows its vision to the end consumers. Already based on sales figures, the company understands if its product is properly perceived by customers in the market and can make adjustments.

Brand image

This term shows a mirror image. In other words, the brand image indicates how current and potential customers perceive the product. Through it, different perceptions, ideas, and impressions of customers of the purchased goods and services of a particular brand are evaluated. It shows exactly what the consumer thinks about the product being purchased and whether he or she is ready to buy it in the future. It also becomes clear what thoughts and emotions the brand evokes in consumers at the mere mention of it.

It is not possible to create a brand image in one day. It needs to be worked on for more than one year.  To achieve this, companies develop advertising slogans, try to influence customers directly, and make them interested in the product. In the end, the company tries to do everything possible to have only positive feedback about the brand and a favorable memory of its purchase.

The brand image helps create a kind of connection between the brand and the customer. By analyzing reactions, and connections to products, the company can plan further actions. If the brand image is positive, they will support it and try to develop it. If a negative image is formed, most likely the products in this direction will be withdrawn from sales.

What is the difference between brand identity and brand image

As it is possible to notice, these concepts differ from each other a little bit. Despite the fundamentally opposite views, both concepts have a lot in common. However, the main differences between them are:

  • identity is a company’s actions and vision for brand development, while the image is the result of their work and reaction to the brand on the part of end customers;https://www.fresconews.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=elementor
  • identity requires the company to actively intervene in the development of the product, while the brand image does not require such actions, because it is created by getting reactions from customers;
  • the identity affects the visible elements of the brands (design of style, logos, elements color scheme, and other attributes that can affect the product), while the image is affected by the quality characteristics of the product (reliability of the product, the durability of use, what materials have been used to create the brand, etc.)
  • identity shows the reality of the firm and what goals it pursues, while image helps show how the brand is perceived by customers;
  • identity will depend on how the company presented itself to the target audience, while the image shows the experience of interaction of customers with the products and the formation of opinions about it;
  • identity will help to correct mistakes made during the release of products, the image will show whether the customer is ready to return to buy the product if they have had a bad experience with a particular brand.

Thus, it can be seen that these terms have many differences and they cannot be equated to each other.

Conclusion

woman typing on her laptop

Having studied both concepts in detail, one can see that they mean completely different things. Identity shows a company’s view of its product, and what kind of reaction its representatives expect from end consumers. The image of the product shows the direct reaction of customers. So make no mistake and don’t think that if you’ve worked out the identity of the product, you’ve provided it with a positive image. Only your customer will decide in the end.

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