In today’s competitive market, a brand can only achieve success if it can connect with consumers and effectively communicate its unique qualities in a way in which they create a positive impression in the minds of consumers. The brand builder who attempts to develop a strong brand is like a golfer play ing on a course with heavy roughs, deep sand traps, sharp doglegs, and vast water barriers. It is difficult to score well in such conditions. Substantial pressures and bar riers, both internal and external, can inhibit the brand builder. To be able to develop effective brand strategies, it is useful to understand these pressures and barriers.… Read the rest
Brand Management
Advertising, Promotion and the Brand
A brand is a term used to identify its products; while branding is the practice of identifying a product or line of products by a special name or symbol. Its use goes back to the middle ages for promoting sales. It is said that Egyptians were using some or other identification to market their pottery. The continued use of brands to the present times in business has been largely due to:
- Growth in competition.
- Growth of national and local advertising.
- Growth of packaging and
- The development of consumer brand consciousness.
Such sales promotion devices are intended:
- To gain recognition for their products.
The Importance of Brand Equity
“If the businesses were split up, I would take the brands, trademarks and goodwill, and you could have all the bricks and mortar – and I would fare better than you.”
The optimism for the concept can be stated on the fact that when one would say as a predictor of future financial performance, brand equity, if reported, would be valuable for capital marketers and shareholders. Brand equity has the potential to become the set of measures of business performance that matter most. For example, Starbucks can sell its coffee at a higher price than solid market competitors because consumers associate the brand with quality and value.… Read the rest
Brand Building Process – Process of Building a Brand
The art of marketing is largely art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will probably be viewed as a commodity. Then price is the thing that counts. When price is the only thing that counts then the low cost producer wins. But just having a brand is not enough. What does the brand name mean? What associations, performances and expectations does it evoke? What degree of preferences does it create?
1. Choosing a Brand NameA brand name first must be chosen then its various meanings and promises must be built up through brand identity work. In choosing a brand name, it must be consistent with the value positioning of the brand. … Read the rest
Managing Brand Equity
Consistency is the key to successfully building and managing brand equity. Having a long-term outlook and projecting a consistent image of your brand to the customer will maximize the results of building brand equity. It is critical for managers to realize that brand equity can have positive as well as negative effects on a product or company. In the end, it is the customer that truly defines what brand equity means.
If management feels it is necessary to change the direction of a brand or change a product it must be careful not to change too quickly. There are many examples of companies that have changed a product or brand too much or too quickly.… Read the rest
An Introduction to Branding
The term brand means different things to the different roles of buyer and seller, with buyers generally associating brand with a product or service, and merchants associating brand with identity. Brand can also identify the company behind the specific product — that’s not just a biscuit, that’s Britannia biscuit. This use of brand puts a “face” behind the name, so to speak, even if the “face” is the result of advertising copy and television commercials. This use of brand also says nothing of quality, just the buyer’s exposure to the brand’s PR and media hype. For the typical merchant, branding is a way of taking everything that is good about the company — positive shopping experience, professionalism, superior service, product knowledge, whatever the company decides is important for a customer to believe about the company — and wrapping these characteristics into a package that can be evoked by the brand as signifier.… Read the rest