Brand management

Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It
seeks to increase a product's perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand
equity. Marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from
a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product. This may increase sales by making a
comparison with competing products more favorable. It may also enable the manufacturer to charge more for
the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer.
This can result from a combination of increased sales and increased price, and/or reduced COGS (cost of
goods sold), and/or reduced or more efficient marketing investment. All of these enhancements may improve
the profitability of a brand, and thus, "Brand Managers" often carry line-management accountability for a
brand's P&L (Profit and Loss) profitability, in contrast to marketing staff manager roles, which are allocated
budgets from above, to manage and execute. In this regard, Brand Management is often viewed in
organizations as a broader and more strategic role than Marketing alone.

The annual list of the world’s most valuable brands, published by Interbrand and Business Week, indicates
that the market value of companies often consists largely of brand equity. Research by McKinsey & Company,
a global consulting firm, in 2000 suggested that strong, well-leveraged brands produce higher returns to
shareholders than weaker, narrower brands. Taken together, this means that brands seriously impact
shareholder value, which ultimately makes branding a CEO responsibility.

The discipline of brand management was started at Procter & Gamble PLC as a result of a famous memo
by Neil H. McElroy.

Principles of brand management

A good brand name should:

 be protected (or at least protectable) under Trademark law.

 be easy to pronounce.

 be easy to remember.

 be easy to recognize.

 be easy to translate into all languages in the markets where the brand will be used.

 attract attention.
 suggest product benefits or suggest usage (note the tradeoff with strong trademark protection.)

 suggest the company or product image.

 distinguish the product's positioning relative to the competition.

 be attractive.

 stand out among a group of other brands.

Functions of brand
(For consumers) Identification of source of product, Assignment of responsibility to product maker, Risk
reducer, Search cost reducer, Symbolic device, Signal of quality.

(For Manufacture)

Means of identification to simplify handling and tracing, Means of legally protecting unique features, Signal of
quality level to satisfied customers, Means of endowing products with unique associations, Source of
competitive advantage, Source of financial returns.

Brand architecture
The different brands owned by a company are related to each other via brand architecture. In "product brand
architecture", the company supports many different product brands with each having its own name and style of
expression while the company itself remains invisible to consumers. Procter & Gamble, considered by many to
have created product branding, is a choice example with its many unrelated consumer brands such as Tide,
Pampers, Abunda, Ivory and Pantene.

With "endorsed brand architecture", a mother brand is tied to product brands, such as The Courtyard Hotels
(product brand name) by Marriott (mother brand name). Endorsed brands benefit from the standing of their
mother brand and thus save a company some marketing expense by virtue promoting all the linked brands
whenever the mother brand is advertising. This is most commonly referred to as "corporate branding". The
mother brand is used and all products carry this name and all advertising speaks with the same voice. A good
example of this brand architecture is the UK-based conglomerate Virgin. Virgin brands all its businesses with its
name.

Techniques

Companies sometimes want to reduce the number of brands that they market. This process is known as
"Brand Rationalization." Some companies tend to create more brands and product variations within a brand
than economies of scale would indicate. Sometimes, they will create a specific service or product brand for
each market that they target. In the case of product branding, this may be to gain retail shelf space (and reduce
the amount of shelf space allocated to competing brands). A company may decide to rationalize their portfolio
of brands from time to time to gain production and marketing efficiency, or to rationalize a brand portfolio as
part of corporate restructuring.

A recurring challenge for brand managers is to build a consistent brand while keeping its message fresh and
relevant. An older brand identity may be misaligned to a redefined target market, a restated corporate vision
statement, revisited mission statement or values of a company. Brand identities may also lose resonance with
their target market through demographic evolution. Repositioning a brand (sometimes called rebranding),
may cost some brand equity, and can confuse the target market, but ideally, a brand can be repositioned while
retaining existing brand equity for leverage.

Brand orientation is a deliberate approach to working with brands, both internally and externally. The most
important driving force behind this increased interest in strong brands is the accelerating pace of globalization.
This has resulted in an ever-tougher competitive situation on many markets. A product’s superiority is in itself
no longer sufficient to guarantee its success. The fast pace of technological development and the increased
speed with which imitations turn up on the market have dramatically shortened product lifecycles. The
consequence is that product-related competitive advantages soon risk being transformed into competitive
prerequisites. For this reason, increasing numbers of companies are looking for other, more enduring,
competitive tools – such as brands. Brand Orientation refers to "the degree to which the organization values
brands and its practices are oriented towards building brand capabilities” .

Online brand management

Companies are embracing brand reputation management as a strategic imperative and are increasingly turning
to online monitoring in their efforts to prevent their public image from becoming tarnished. Online brand
reputation protection can mean monitoring for the misappropriation of a brand trademark by fraudsters intent
on confusing consumers for monetary gain. It can also mean monitoring for less malicious, although perhaps
equally damaging, infractions, such as the unauthorized use of a brand logo or even for negative brand
information (and misinformation) from online consumers that appears in online communities and other social
media platforms. The red flag can be something as benign as a blog rant about a bad hotel experience or an
electronic gadget that functions below expectations.

Why Branding?
External: Branding seeks to distinguish your company, product or service from the competition and create a
lasting impression in your prospect's mind.
 "People want to express themselves through brands – brands express a person's
personality and the people they like to be with."
– Jack Trout
Internal: Powerful brands increase employee satisfaction, loyalty, and achievement drive.

Brand Defined
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), brand is a "name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a
combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate
them from those of competition."Technically speaking, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol
for a new product or service, he or she has created a brand.

The Power of a Brand

Marketing is not a battle of products, it's a battle of perceptions. The power of a brand lies in what resides in the
minds of customers – what they learned, felt, seen, and heard about the brand as a result of their experiences over
time

Keys To Branding Your Growing Business

By: Jay Lipe
Shaping your brand image: To start, consider first the personality of your company. Is it sexy or sweet? Tough or
tender? Is it more like John Wayne or George Clooney or Andy Griffith? And if you think all this is hooey, consider
these questions: Do Marlboros really taste better than other cigarettes? Is H&R Block superior to the tax accountant
down the street? No, but a big reason these companies are leaders is because they have successfully built a
personality around their brands... More

Brand Equity
"Brand equity relates to the fact that different outcomes result from the marketing of a product or service because of
its brand name or some other brand element that if that same product or service did not have that brand
identification."1 It represents the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the brand and the added value endowed
to a product or service as a result of past investments in the marketing activity for a brand. "Brand equity serves as
the bridge between what happened to the brand in the past and what should happen to the brand in the future.

Brand management is
Disciplines > Brand management > Brand management is
The total approach | Creating the promise | Making the promise | Keeping the promise

The total approach

Brand management starts with understanding what 'brand' really means. This starts with
the leaders of the company who define the brand and control its management. It also
reaches all the way down the company and especially to the people who interface with
customers or who create the products which customers use.
Brand management performed to its full extent means starting and ending the
management of the whole company through the brand. It is simply far too important to
leave to the marketing department. The CEO should be (and, in fact, always is) the brand
leader of the company.

Creating the promise

Creating the promise means defining the brand. A good brand promise is memorable and
desirable. It cannot be effective if nobody remembers it, and is no good either if nobody
wants it!
A good brand promise evokes feelings, because feelings drive actions. Volvo offers feelings
of safety. Mustang offers feelings of excitement.
The promise must be unique and identified with you alone. Within an industry, promises
can be very close, but if you want any hope of success, you must stake out the very
specific territory of your promise and know clearly how it is different from the promises of
other firms.
The right promise is not just something you make up on a Friday afternoon. It comes
through a deep understanding of your marketplace and your customers. It also comes from
a deep understanding of the capabilities and motivations of the people in your company.
Creating a promise you cannot consistently keep, year after year, is plain suicide.

Making the promise

Once you have created the promise, the next (and not so trivial) step is to somehow inject
it into the minds of your customers, your staff and everyone who receives anything from
you or has any impact on what you deliver.
This is where marketing people come into their own. Although it is still not their sole
preserve, a large part of marketing, which includes advertising and PR, is about positioning
the company and its products in the minds of customers and against your competitors.

Keeping the promise

Ah, now. Creating and making the right promise is one thing, but then you have to keep it.
If you do not, you brand will still exist, but now the promise will be of slipshod products and
inconsistent delivery.
Keeping promises means managing capability. It means consistent processes that are
capable of delivering what is required. It means technology and systems which are reliable
and usable. It means motivated people who are willing and able to deliver the goods.

Brand is
Coca-cola is the most valuable brand in the world, with the name alone worth billions of
dollars. But why? What is a brand?
Brand management is a total approach to managing brands that is sometimes extended, by
those who understand the power of brands, to cover the whole approach to managing the
company.

A brand is a promise
First and foremost, a brand is a promise. It says 'you know the name, you can trust the
promise'. As all promises, it is trusted only as far as those promises are met. Trust is a
critical first step and brands aim to accelerate that step by leveraging the implied promise
of the brand.

A brand is an associated image

Most brands have a logo which acts as a short-cut to remind us of the brand promise. The
logo uses color, shape, letters and images to create a distinctive image that is designed
both to catch our eye and to guide our thoughts in the right direction. The brand may also
be associated with tunes, celebrities, catchphrases and so on.
All parts of the brand image works as a psychological trigger or stimulus that causes
an association to all other thoughts we have about the brand.

Everything and everyone is a brand

If you get down to the detail, everything is a brand, because we build our understanding of
the world by creating associations about everything. A tree has an implied promise of
beauty and shade. Even words are brands. When I say 'speed', you will conjure up images
of fast cars, etc.
People are brands, too. When people see you, or even hear your name, they will recall the
image they have of you, (which is something you can actively manage or 'let happen'). In a
company where people are visible to customers, such as a service business, the people are
very much a part the brand

Brand equity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brand equity refers to the marketing effects or outcomes that accrue to a product with its brand name
compared with those that would accrue if the same product did not have the brand name. And, at the root of
these marketing effects is consumers' knowledge. In other words, consumers' knowledge about a brand makes
manufacturers/advertisers respond differently or adopt appropriately adept measures for the marketing of the
brand. The study of brand equity is increasingly popular as some marketing researchers have concluded that
brands are one of the most valuable assets that a company has. Brand equity is one of the factors which can
increase the financial value of a brand to the brand owner, although not the only one.

Measurement

There are many ways to measure a brand. Some measurements approaches are at the firm level, some
at the product level, and still others are at the consumer level.

Firm Level: Firm level approaches measure the brand as a financial asset. In short, a calculation is made
regarding how much the brand is worth as an intangible asset. For example, if you were to take the value of the
firm, as derived by its market capitalization - and then subtract tangible assets and "measurable" intangible
assets- the residual would be the brand equity One high profile firm level approach is by the consulting firm
Interbrand. To do its calculation, Interbrand estimates brand value on the basis of projected profits discounted
to a present value. The discount rate is a subjective rate determined by Interbrand and Wall Street equity
specialists and reflects the risk profile, market leadership, stability and global reach of the brand.

Product Level: The classic product level brand measurement example is to compare the price of a no-name or
private label product to an "equivalent" branded product. The difference in price, assuming all things equal, is
due to the brand. More recently a revenue premium approach has been advocated .

Consumer Level: This approach seeks to map the mind of the consumer to find out what associations with the
brand the consumer has. This approach seeks to measure the awareness (recall and recognition) and brand
image (the overall associations that the brand has). Free association tests and projective techniques are
commonly used to uncover the tangible and intangible attributes, attitudes, and intentions about a brand.
Brands with high levels of awareness and strong, favorable and unique associations are high equity brands.

All of these calculations are, at best, approximations. A more complete understanding of the brand can occur if
multiple measures are used.
Positive brand equity vs. negative brand equity

A brand equity is the positive effect of the brand on the difference between the prices that the consumer
accepts to pay when the brand known compared to the value of the benefit received.

There are two schools of thought regarding the existence of negative brand equity. One perspective states
brand equity cannot be negative, hypothesizing only positive brand equity is created by marketing activities
such as advertising, PR, and promotion. A second perspective is that negative equity can exist, due to
catastrophic events to the brand, such as a wide product recall or continued negative press attention
(Blackwater or Halliburton, for example).

Colloquially, the term "negative brand equity" may be used to describe a product or service where a brand has
a negligible effect on a product level when compared to a no-name or private label product. The brand-related
negative intangible assets are called “brand liability”, compared with “brand equity” .

Family branding vs. individual branding strategies

The greater a company's brand equity, the greater the probability that the company will use a family
branding strategy rather than an individual branding strategy. This is because family branding allows them to
leverage the equity accumulated in the core brand. Aspects of brand equity includes: brand loyalty, awareness,
association, and perception of quality .

Examples

In the early 2000s in North America, the Ford Motor Company made a strategic decision to brand all new or
redesigned cars with names starting with "F". This aligned with the previous tradition of naming all sport utility
vehicles since the Ford Explorer with the letter "E". The Toronto Star quoted an analyst who warned that
changing the name of the well known Windstar to the Freestar would cause confusion and discard brand
equity built up, while a marketing manager believed that a name change would highlight the new redesign. The
aging Taurus, which became one of the most significant cars in American auto history, would be abandoned in
favor of three entirely new names, all starting with "F", the Five Hundred, Freestar and Fusion. By 2007, the
Freestar was discontinued without a replacement. The Five Hundred name was thrown out and Taurus was
brought back for the next generation of that car in a surprise move by Alan Mulally. "Five Hundred" was
recognized by less than half of most people, but an overwhelming majority was familiar with the "Ford Taurus"