See excellent BRANDING article in July 2003 Issue of Digital Times!
Brands are assets with value. The use of brand valuation is growing worldwide. Since 1999 U.K Companies have been able to put acquired brands on their balance sheets, due to regulation FRS 10. The Accounting Standards Board introduced this new rule expressly for the treatment of brand valuation. Brands purchased from another company will be treated as intangible assets.
Interbrand, a London-based consultancy, established that it is possible to value brands not only when they had been acquired but also when they had been created by the company itself. Interbrand found that during periods of high merger and acquisiton activity, companies were being bought not so much for the tangible assets as their intangible ones. In many of the target companies of their study of acquisitions in the l980s, they found that the greatest intangible assets were brands.
Several different brand valuation techniques have been devised. Interbrand's method assumes that the value of a brand, like that of any other economic asset, is the worth now of the benefits of future ownership of the brand. A fruitful use for brand valuation is to measure marketing performance.
Brand Finance, a marketing finance consultancy in the U.K. published "The Brand Finance Report". In 1999 66% of their sampling of analysts believed that companies should publish more information on brand values. Analysts are on a learning curve about brand valuation and have determined that "understanding all the assumptions that have gone on behind valuations is essential to getting a good picture of what the underlying business is worth".
Brand Selection
Licensing
When it comes to selecting a name for your eCommerce site, remember that generic names are not protected.
Descriptive names are wonderfully memorable and can qualify for a trademark or service mark after a secondary meaning has been established for it. Trademarks are the foundation for the protection of your "proprietary" http://URL.
Once you have the mark, build brand equity by using the label extensively online.
Apply due diligence and enforce your brand! Let third parties use your brand name only if they agree to your license terms. Complex contracts and processes undermine the
ease of doing business. Legal requirements for forming online contracts vary as much as geography, so keep it
simple.
-editor
to: brands@digitaltimes.com* ~ ~ Karaoke/Music ~ Lyrics ~ Travel ~ Kids ~ Digital Developers ~ Health ~ U.S. Military Internet Vets ~ Quote ~ Trade & Barter ~ eCommerce ~ Career ~ Business & Consumer ~ ~ *