Brand Elements

The main brand elements

Each element does a specific job, and each tends to fail in a specific way:

Element	What it does	Common weakness
Name	Identifies the company or product in speech, writing and search	Hard to spell or pronounce in some markets; not available as a trademark or domain
Logo and wordmark	The visual signature on every item the brand produces	Too detailed to read at small sizes
Symbol or emblem	Works where the full logo does not fit: app icons, favicons, social avatars	Missing, so the full logo is squeezed into a square
Colour	Recognised at a distance, before the name is read	Not specified for print, so it varies by supplier
Typography	Gives all text a consistent appearance	The font licence does not cover web or app use
Tagline	States the brand's promise in a few words	Replaced with every campaign
Characters and mascots	Give the brand a face people remember	Hard to update without losing recognition
Sound	Sonic logo, jingle, notification sounds	Used in some videos and events but not others
Packaging and shape	Identifies the product on a shelf or in a catalogue	Changed for cost reasons without a brand review

Not every brand needs every element. Many B2B companies have no mascot or sound, but almost all need a name, a logo, an emblem for small spaces, colours and typefaces.

Six criteria for choosing brand elements

Kevin Lane Keller's textbook Strategic Brand Management proposes six criteria for judging a brand element. They work as a checklist before a new name, logo or tagline is approved:

1. Memorable. Easy to recognise and recall.
2. Meaningful. Suggests something about the category or the benefit.
3. Likeable. Appealing in its own right, apart from the product.
4. Transferable. Works in other product categories, countries and languages.
5. Adaptable. Can be updated over time without losing recognition.
6. Protectable. Can be registered and defended legally, and is hard for competitors to copy.

The first three help build the brand; the last three help defend it. A name that scores well on the first three but cannot be registered in a key market is not usable, however good it sounds in a workshop.

Protecting brand elements

Most brand elements can be registered as trademarks, which gives the owner the exclusive right to use them for the goods and services listed in the registration:

• Word marks protect a name or tagline, whatever the typeface.
• Figurative marks protect a logo or symbol as drawn.
• Colour marks protect a single colour or a combination, usually only once the public links it to the company.
• Shape marks protect a distinctive product or packaging shape.
• Sound, motion and multimedia marks protect a sonic logo or an animated logo. Since the EU trade mark reform of 1 October 2017, the EU Intellectual Property Office accepts these as audio or video files, without the drawing that was previously required.

Applications list goods and services by class under the Nice Classification, administered by WIPO, and the Madrid System allows one international application to cover several countries. For the brand team, the practical rule is to use each registered element in the form it was registered in, because a heavily altered version may not count as use of the registered mark.

Keeping an inventory of brand elements

Elements multiply over time: a campaign lock-up, a regional tagline, an anniversary emblem, an icon set made for one product. Without an inventory, retired elements stay in use for years in partner kits and old templates.

A useful inventory records, for each element:

• The owner, who approves changes.
• The approved versions and the formats each is available in.
• Where it may be used, and where it may not.
• Trademark registrations, with territories and renewal dates.
• Whether it is current or retired, and since when.

Review it once a year, or during a brand audit. The review shows which elements to retire and which lack a variant people keep improvising, such as a white logo for dark photography or a square emblem for social avatars.

Brand elements in Freedam

• The brand guide has a section for each core element: logos, emblems, colours and typography. Each logo or emblem carries a variant label (full colour, monochrome, dark, light or custom), its recommended backgrounds, its minimum and maximum size, a clear space diagram, and do and don't examples with captions.
• Typefaces are stored with their TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2 font files and a preview sentence chosen by the brand team.
• Elements without a section of their own, such as a sonic logo, mascot illustrations or packaging artwork, are stored in the asset library with their metadata and usage rights.
• Changes to the brand guide appear on the page without a publish step, so a replaced or removed variant stops being offered at once.

See brand center examples for how other brands present their elements, or create a brand center for your own.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important brand elements?

The name, the logo and the primary colour, because they appear on almost everything the brand produces. Which elements people actually recognise is a research question, and the answer differs by brand and market.

What is the difference between brand elements and brand identity?

Brand elements are the components. Brand identity is the whole system: the elements, how they combine, which one leads, and what they are meant to express.

Are brand elements the same as brand assets?

The terms overlap. Brand elements usually means the components themselves, while brand assets also covers the files that carry them. Marketing research uses "distinctive brand assets" for the elements that people link to one brand without seeing its name.