Introduction to brand and brand management:

A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products, services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated and usually marketed. A brand name is the name of the distinctive product, service, or concept. Branding is the process of creating and disseminating the brand name. Branding can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and service names.Brands are often expressed in the form of logos, graphic representations of the brand. In computers, a recent example of widespread brand application was the "Intel Inside" label provided to manufacturers that use Intel's microchips.

A company's brands and the public's awareness of them are often used as a factor in evaluating a company. Corporations sometimes hire market research firms to study public recognition of brand names as well as attitudes toward the brands.

In marketing, brand management is the analysis and planning on how that brand is perceived in the market. Developing a good relationship with the target market is essential for brand management. Tangible elements of brand management include the product itself; look, price, the packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experience that the consumer has had with the brand, and also the relationship that they have with that brand. A brand manager would oversee all of these things.

Branding challenges and opportunities:

Brands build their strength by providing customers consistently superior product and service experiences. A strong brand is a promise or bond with customers. In return for their loyalty, customers expect the firm to satisfy their needs better than any other competitors.

Brands will always be important given their fundamental purpose – to identify and differentiate products and services. Good brand makes people’s lives a little easier and better. People are loyal to brands that satisfy their expectations and deliver on its brand promise. The predictably good performance of a strong brand is something that consumer will always value.

The challenges to brands

1) The shift from strategy to tactics: – With the increasing pressure to generate ever-improving profitability, it is often considered a luxury for managers to develop long-term strategic plans. This is further exacerbated by short-term goal setting, which is frequently designed primarily for the convenience of the financial community.

2) The shift from advertising to promotions: – As a consequence of the increasing pressure on brand manager to achieve short-term goals, there is a temptation to cut back on advertising support, since it is

viewed as a long-term brand-building investment, in favor of promotions which generate much quicker short-term results.

3) On-Line shopping: – The Internet is facilitating on-line shopping. On-line shopping is different from traditional mail order because:

• Brands are available all the time and from all over the world;

• Information and interactions are in real time;

• Consumers can choose between brands which meet their criteria, as a result of selecting information which is in a much more convenient format for them, rather than the standard catalogue format.

This poses threats to brands, some components of added value, agent or the retail outlet which originally added value by matching consumers with suppliers, may be eliminated.

4) Opportunities from technology: – Brand marketers are now able to take advantage of technology to gain a competitive advantage through time. Technology is already reducing the lead time needed to respond rapidly to changing customers need and minimizing any delays in the supply chain.

5) More sophisticated buyers: – In business-to-business marketing, there is already an emphasis on bringing together individuals from different departments to evaluate suppliers’ new brands. As inter departmental barriers break down even more, sellers are going to face increasingly sophisticated buyers who are served by better information system enabling them to pay off brand suppliers against each other.

6) The growth of corporate branding:- With media inhabiting individual brand advertising, many firms are putting more emphasis on corporate branding, unifying their portfolio of brands through clearer linkages with the corporation, which clarifies the those all the line brands adhere to. Through corporate identity program functional aspects of individual brands in the firm’s portfolio can be augmented, enabling the consumer to select brands through assessment of the values of competing firms. Firms developed powerful corporate identity programs by recognizing the need first to identify their internal corporate values, from which flow employee attitudes and specific types of staff behavior secondly, to devise integrated communication programs for different external audiences.

Brand management process:

Strategic Brand Management ProcessI've selected this topic, since it's very important to understand the various aspects in the PROCESS of strategic brand management.

The process of strategic brand management basically involves 4 steps:1. Identifying and establishing brand positioning.Brand Positioning is defined as the act of designing the company's offer and image so that it occupies a distinct and valued place in the target consumer's mind.Key Concepts:

Points of difference: convinces consumers about the advantages and differences over the competitors Mental Map: visual depiction of the various associations linked to the brand in the minds of the consumers Core Brand Associations: subset of associations i.e. both benefits and attributes which best characterize the brand. Brand Mantra: that is the brand essence or the core brand promise also known as the Brand DNA.2.Planning and Implementation of Brand Marketing ProgramsKey Concepts:

Choosing Brand Elements: Different brand elements here are logos, images, packaging, symbols, slogans, etc. Since different elements have different advantages, marketers prefer to use different subsets and combinations of these elements. Integrating the Brand into Marketing Activities and the Support Marketing Program: Marketing programs and activities make the biggest contributions and can create strong, favorable, and unique brand associations in a variety of ways. Leveraging Secondary Associations: Brands may be linked to certain source factors such as countries, characters, sporting or cultural events,etc. In essence, the marketer is borrowing or leveraging some other associations for the brand to create some associations of the brand's own and them to improve it's brand equity.

3.Measuring and Interpreting Brand PerformanceKey Concepts:

Brand Audit: Is assessment of the source of equity of the brand and to suggest ways to improve and leverage it. Brand Value chain: Helps to better understand the financial impacts of the brand marketing investments and expenditures. Brand Equity Measurement System: Is a set of tools and procedures using which marketers can take tactical decision in the short and long run.

4. Growing and Sustaining Brand Equity:Key Concepts:

Defining the brand strategy: Captures the branding relationship between the various products /services offered by the firm using the tools of brand-product matrix, brand hierarchy and brand portfolio Managing Brand Equity over time: Requires taking a long -term view as well as a short term view of marketing decisions as they will affect the success of future marketing programs. Managing Brand Equity over Geographic boundaries, Market segments and Cultures:Marketers need to take into account international factors, different types of consumers and the specific knowledge about the experience and behaviors of the new geographies or market segments when expanding the brand overseas or into new market segments.

Developing a brand strategy:

Don’t worry: Creating a branding strategy isn’t nearly as scary or as complicated as it sounds. Here’s how

you do it:

Step 1: Set yourself apart.Why should people buy from you instead of from the same kind of business across town? Think about the

intangible qualities of your product or service, using adjectives from “friendly” to “fast” and every word in

between. Your goal is to own a position in the customer’s mind so they think of you differently than the

competition.

“Powerful brands will own a word—like Volvo [owns] safety,” says Laura Ries, an Atlanta-based

marketing consultant and co-author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand. Which word will your company own? A new hair salon might focus on

the adjective “convenient” and stay open a few hours later in the evening for customers who work late—

something no other local salon might do. How will you be different from the competition? The answers are

valuable assets that constitute the basis of your brand.

Step 2: Know your target customer.Once you’ve defined your product or service, think about your target customer. You’ve probably already

gathered demographic information about the market you’re entering, but think about the actual customers

who'll walk through your door. Who is this person, and what is the one thing he or she ultimately wants

from your product or service? After all, the customer is buying it for a reason. What will your customer

demand from you?

Step 3: Develop a personality.How will you show customers every day what you’re all about? A lot of small companies write mission

statements that say the company will “value” customers and strive for “excellent customer service.”

Unfortunately, these words are all talk, and no action. Dig deeper and think about how you’ll fulfill your

brand’s promise and provide value and service to the people you serve. If you promise quick service, for

example, what will “quick” mean inside your company? And how will you make sure service stays

speedy? Along the way, you’re laying the foundation of your hiring strategy and how future employees will

be expected to interact with customers. You’re also creating the template for your advertising and

marketing strategies.

In the LoopMany companies large and small stumble when it comes to incorporating employees into their branding

strategies. But to the customer making a purchase, your employee is the company. Your employees can

make or break your entire brand, so don’t ever forget them. Here are a few tips:

Hire based on brand strategy. Communicating your brand through your employees starts with making the

right hires. Look to your brand strategy for help. If your focus is on customer service, employees should

be friendly, unflappable and motivated, right? Give new hires a copy of your brand strategy, and talk

about it with them on a regular basis.

Set expectations. How do you expect employees to treat customers? Make sure they understand what’s

required. Reward employees who do an exceptional job or go above and beyond the call of duty.

Communicate, then communicate some more. Keeping employees clued in requires ongoing

communication about the company’s branding efforts through meetings, posters, training, etc. Never, ever

assume employees can read your mind.

Your branding strategy doesn’t need to be more than one page long at most. It can even be as short as

one paragraph. It all depends on your product or service and your industry. The important thing is that you

answer these questions before you open your doors.

Customer based brand equity:Customer-based brand equity (CBBE) is a way of assessing the value of a brand in customers' minds. Branding can increase profitability in large and small-scale businesses by filling in gaps in customers' knowledge and by offering assurances. The CBBE model centers that value in the minds of customers. It compels businesses to define their brands according to a defined hierarchy of qualitative, or common-sense, customer impressions. These impressions are often laid out in pyramid-shaped levels; they consist of salience, performance, imagery, meaning, judgments, feelings, and resonance.Equity can be considered the sum total of values associated with a brand. These might include awareness, loyalty, and recognition. The greater the equity, the more likely customers will trust and choose the company's product or service. Additionally, equity capitalizes on normal psychological tendencies, such as the sometimes longer memory about negative experiences or the cognitive laziness that creates loyalty through a customer's unwillingness to choose unfamiliar products over familiar brand products.

Brand positioning:

Brand positioning refers to “target consumer’s” reason to buy your brand in preference to others . It is ensures that all brand activity has a common aim; is guided, directed and delivered by the brand’s benefits/reasons to buy; and it focuses at all points of contact with the consumer.

Brand positioning must make sure that:

Is it unique/distinctive vs. competitors? Is it significant and encouraging to the niche market? Is it appropriate to all major geographic markets and businesses? Is the proposition validated with unique, appropriate and original products? Is it sustainable - can it be delivered constantly across all points of contact with the consumer? Is it helpful for organization to achieve its financial goals? Is it able to support and boost up the organization?

Brand Resonance:Definition: The Brand Resonance refers to the relationship that a consumer has with the product and how well he can relate with it.

The resonance is the intensity of customer’s psychological connection with the brand and the randomness to recall the brand in different consumption situations.

Brand value chain:The brand value chain is a structured approach to assessing the sources and outcomes of brand equity and the manner in which marketing activities create brand value. The brand value chain is based on several basic premises.The brand value creation process begins when the firm invests in a marketing program targeting actual or potential customers. Any marketing program that can be attributed to brand value development, either intentional or not, falls into this category — product research development, and design; trade or intermediary support; and marketing communications.The marketing activity associated with the program affects the customer with respect to the brand. The issue is, in what ways have customers been changed as a result of the marketing program? This mind-set, across a broad group of customers, then results in certain outcomes for the brand in terms of how it performs in the marketplace. This is the collective impact of individual customer actions regarding how much and when they purchase, the price that they pay, and so on.Finally, the investment community considers market performance and other factors such as replacement cost and purchase price in acquisitions to arrive at an assessment of shareholder value in general and the value of a brand in particular.

How to choose Branding Elements to build Brand EquityThere are 6 integral criteria for choosing your brand elements:

1) Memorability

2) Meaningfulness

3) Likability

4) Transferability

5) Adaptability

6) Protectability

1. Memorability: Brand elements that help achieve a high level of brand awareness or attention to the brand, in turn facilitate the recognition and recall of a brand during purchase or consumption.

2. Meaningfulness: Here a marketer needs to ensure that brand elements are descriptive and suggesting something about the product category of the brand. This is important to develop awareness and recognition for the brand in a particular product category.

Secondly, the brand elements also need to have a persuasive meaning and suggest something about the particular benefits and attributes of the brand. This is necessary for defining the positioning of the brand in a particular category.

3. Likability: Brand Elements need to be inherently fun, interesting, colourful and not necessarily always directly related to the product.

A memorable, meaningful and likable brand element makes it easier to build brand recognition and brand equity, thus reducing the burden on the marketer and thereby reducing the cost of marketing communications.

The above 3 criteria constitute the "Offensive Strategy" towards building brand equity

4. Transferability: is the extent to which brand elements can add brand equity to new products of the brand in the line extensions. Another point, a marketer needs to keep in mind is that the brand element should be able to add brand equity across geographical boundaries and market segments. For example, brand names like “Apple”, “Blackberry” represent fruits the world over, thus as a brand name it doesn't restrict brands and product extensions.

5. Adaptability: Consumer opinions, values and views keep changing over a period of time. The more adaptable and flexible brand elements are the easier it is to keep up changing and up to date from time to time to suit the consumers liking and views. For example, Coca -Cola has been updating it's logo over the years to keep up with the latest trends, fashions and opinions.

6. Protect ability: the final criteria in choosing a brand element is that it should be protectable legally and competitively. Brand elements need to be chosen in such a way, that they can be internationally protected legally, legally registered with legal bodies. Marketers need to voraciously defend their trademarks from unauthorized competitive infringements.

Brand elements:NameLogoURLCharacterSloganJinglePackaging

Brand Equity:

A brand's power derived from the goodwill and name recognition that it has earned over time, which translates into higher sales volume and higher profit margins against competing brands. The value premium that a company realizes from a product with a recognizable name as compared to its generic equivalent. Companies can create brand equity for their products by making them memorable, easily recognizable and superior in quality and reliability. Mass marketing campaigns can also help to create brand equity. If consumers are willing to pay more for a generic product than for a branded one, however, the brand is said to have negative brand equity. This might happen if a company had a major product recall or caused a widely publicized environmental disaster.

Integrated marketing:

Strategy aimed at unifying different marketing methods such as mass marketing, one-to-one marketing, and direct marketing. Its objective is to complement and reinforce the market impact of each method, and to employ the market data generated by these efforts in product development, pricing, distribution, customer service, etc.

Integrated marketing is a marketing strategy that stresses the importance of a consistent, seamless, multi-dimensional brand experience for the consumer. This means that each branding effort – across television, radio, print, Internet, and in person – is presented in a similar style that reinforces the brand’s ultimate message.Consider, for example, the Apple computer brand. Their advertising strategy is simple – showcase a sleek, modern product that works faster, smarter and in ways that the competitors never thought possible. This ‘no gimmick’ strategy is carried across all aspects of the Apple brand. Their products are packaged in crisp, white boxes with almost no text. Their stores are white, clean and minimalist – with products on display for intuitive use. Their commercials are stark, smart, and infectious. By branding their products as elite, intuitive, and futuristic, Apple is able to charge prices above those of their competition and still dominate the hardware market.

Product strategy:Product strategy is often called the roadmap of a product and outlines the end-to-end vision of the product and what the product will become. Companies utilize the product strategy in strategic planning and marketing to identify the direction of the company's activities.

The product strategy is composed of a variety of sequential processes to effectively achieve the vision. The company must know where they would like the product to take them in order to identify and plan

for the necessary activities to reach that destination. This is similar in nature to a strategic vision of how a company wants to achieve its goals.

Pricing strategy:Pricing strategy refers to method companies use to price their products or services. Almost all companies, large or small, base the price of their products and services on production, labor and advertising expenses and then add on a certain percentage so they can make a profit. There are several different pricing strategies, such as penetration pricing, price skimming, discount pricing, product life cycle pricing and even competitive pricing.

Activities aimed at finding a product’s optimum price, typically including overall marketing objectives, consumer demand, product attributes, competitors' pricing, and market and economic trends.

Channel strategy:A channel strategy is a vendor's plan for moving a product or a service through the chain of commerce to the end customer.