Many people nowadays confuse the concepts of “trademark” and “brand” with each other. The former is used when referring to the latter and vice versa. The truth is, each of the terms has a totally different meaning. A trademark is a distinctive sign or indicator of some kind, which is used by an individual, business organization or another legal entity to allow consumers to uniquely identify the source of its products or services, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.
A brand is a name, logo, slogan, and/or design scheme associated with a product or service. It often includes a logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols and sounds, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas and even a personality.
In the modern world — with the fascinating advancement in the field and art of marketing — attention has been diverted to trademark that includes the materialistic and abstract components of the product and reflects its marketing capabilities, which include three major components of any product: The content, the benefits and the characteristics.
The content of a product is its value that is easily understood and evaluated by consumers. The benefits are represented in the characteristics of the product where the consumer fulfills his desires and needs. As for the characteristics, they are the materialistic features of the product that include its outer look, its packaging and after-sales services.
The brand is what explains the difference in pricing. Cars, for example, are road vehicles used for transportation. But the differences in their materialistic and abstract features are what makes prices different. In this example, we can also see variations between a trademark and a brand. The trademark of German vehicles is the famous initials BMW. Where as the brand is the car itself and what it contains of materialistic features such as the technology, the power, the luxury and the owner’s feeling as belonging to a rich level of society.
