Show "Select a ..."on dropdown menu - php

Question

I have a dropdown menu created with the code below which fetches all brands from a brands table. It uses a while loop thus showing all on the menu starting alphabetically (i.e., Adiddas and so on). Therefore I don't list them as individual <options> line by line.
echo "<form action=\"type.INC.php\" method=\"get\">\n";
echo "<select name=\"brand\">\n";
$stmt = mysqli_stmt_init($hook);
if($stmt=mysqli_prepare($hook,"SELECT brandid, brandname FROM brands WHERE brandid "));
{
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt,"i", $brandid);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
mysqli_stmt_bind_result($stmt, $brandid, $brandname);
while(mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt))
{
$brandname = htmlspecialchars($brandname, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo "<option value=\"$brandid\">$brandname </option>";
}
echo "</select>\n";
echo "<input name=\"submit\" type=\"submit\" id=\"brandid\" value=\"submit\" />\n";
echo "</form> \n";
How can I show the sentence "SELECT A BRAND" to appear as the default first value? Should I just enter "SELECT A BRAND" into my brands table and assign a primaryID of zero to it?
Any better way to do this?
All of my searches regarding this question result in topics relating to the 'select=selected attribute'.
Thanks,
Jen

Answer 1

Just add it manually before the loop:
echo "<form action=\"type.INC.php\" method=\"get\">\n";
echo "<select name=\"brand\">\n";
// Select a brand, empty value:
echo "<option value=\"\">(SELECT A BRAND)</option>";
$stmt = mysqli_stmt_init($hook);
if($stmt=mysqli_prepare($hook,"SELECT brandid, brandname FROM brands WHERE brandid "));
{
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt,"i", $brandid);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
mysqli_stmt_bind_result($stmt, $brandid, $brandname);
while(mysqli_stmt_fetch($stmt))
{
$brandname = htmlspecialchars($brandname, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo "<option value=\"$brandid\">$brandname </option>";
}
echo "</select>\n";
echo "<input name=\"submit\" type=\"submit\" id=\"brandid\" value=\"submit\" />\n";
echo "</form> \n";

Answer 2

Add
echo "<option>SELECT A BRAND</option>";
as the third line of your code.