What is Brand Management?
Brand Management is the function of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line, or brand. It seeks to increase the product’s perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity.
The process of maintaining, improving, and upholding a brand so that the name is associated with positive results.
Table of Content
What is Brand?
A brand is an identifier of the seller or the maker. Essentially, a brand is a promise of the seller to deliver a specific set of benefits or attributes or services to the buyer. Each brand represents a level of quality.
Brand Definition
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.
American Marketing Association (AMA)
What is Branding?
Branding is the business process of managing your trademark portfolio so as to maximize the value of the experiences associated with it, to the benefit of your key stakeholders, especially current and prospective.
Different Types of Brand Elements
- Brand Name
- Logo
- Theme Line
- Shape
- Graphics
- Colour
- Sound
- Movement
- Smell
- Taste
Selecting a Brand Name
Criteria for selecting a brand name:
- Easy for customers to say, spell and recall.
- Indicate products major benefits.
- Should be distinctive.
- Compatible with all products in the product line.
- Used and recognized in all types of media.
- Use words of no meaning to avoid negative connotation.
- Can be created internally by the organization, or by a consultancy.
Importance of Branding
- Reducing the Risks in Product Decisions
- Branding Gets Recognition
- Branding Increases Business Value
- Branding Generates New Customers
- Improves Employee Pride and Satisfaction
- Creates Trust Within the Marketplace
- Branding Supports Advertising
- Source of competitive advantage
Reducing the Risks in Product Decisions
A brand can reduce the risks in product decisions:
- Functional risk: The product does not perform up to expectations.
- Physical risk: The product poses a threat to the physical well-being or health of the user or others.
- Financial risk: The product is not worth the price paid.
- Social risk: The product results in embarrassment from others.
- Psychological risk: The product affects the mental well-being of the user.
- Time risk: The failure of the product results in an opportunity cost of finding another satisfactory product.
Branding Gets Recognition
Branding is important because it helps the consumer to identify the source of the product and because of the past experience and its marketing program over the time, consumer find out which brands satisfy their needs and which ones do not.
Branding Increases Business Value
Branding is important in generating future business by establishing the brand and give the company more leverage in the industry.
Branding Generates New Customers
Strong brand value reflects that company really provide the customer value which helps in word of mouth and referral to other customers. Brands may be particularly important signals of quality and other characteristics to consumers for these types of products.
Improves Employee Pride and Satisfaction
An employee will be more satisfied with their job and have a higher degree of pride in the work when they associate themselves with a strong branded company and truly stands behind the brand.
Creates Trust Within the Marketplace
Brands can reduce the risks in product decisions and build trust in the marketplace. A company with well-strategised branding and with a professional appearance will help the company build trust with consumers, potential clients and customers.
Branding Supports Advertising
Advertising strategies will directly reflect the brand and its desired portrayal. Advertisement is one the component of branding.
Source of competitive advantage
Brand loyalty provides security and predictability of demand for the firm and creates barriers of entry for other firms in the market.
Read: Consumer Behaviour – Classification, Importance, Stages
Branding Challenges and Opportunities
- Savvy Customers
- Brand Proliferation
- Media Fragmentation
- Increased Competition
- Increased Costs
- Greater Accountability
Savvy Customers
With the advancement of technology and the internet has made consumers and business more experienced with marketing and more knowledgeable about how it works.
Many believe that it is more difficult to persuade consumers with traditional communications than it was in years gone by. One of the key challenges in today’s marketing environment is the vast number of sources of information consumers may consult.
Brand Proliferation
Another important change in the branding environment is the proliferation of new brands and products, by the rise in line and brand extensions. As a result, a brand name may now be identified with a number of different products of varying degrees of similarity.
Procter & Gamble’s original Crest toothpaste has been joined by a series of line extensions such as Crest Mint, Crest for kids, Crest Baking Soda, Crest Multi care Advanced Cleaning.
Media Fragmentation
Another impact in the marketing environment is the fragmentation or erosion of traditional advertising media and the rise of interactive and nontraditional media, promotion, and other communication alternatives.
In its place, marketers are spending more on nontraditional forms of communication and on new and emerging forms of communication such as
- interactive digital media
- sports and event sponsorship
- in-store advertising
- mini-billboards in transit vehicles
- parking meters, and other locations
- product placement in movies
Increased Competition
Both supply-side and demand-side factors have contributed to the increase in competitive intensity. A marketer has been forced to use so many discount and other incentives in the competitive environment.
Increased Costs
As the competition is increasing, the cost of introducing a new product has also increased. It makes it difficult to match the investment and level of support that brands were able to receive in previous years.
Greater Accountability
Stock analysts value strong and consistent earnings reports as an indication of the long-term financial health of a firm. As a result, marketing managers may find themselves in the dilemma of having to make decisions with short-term benefits but long-term costs.
Moreover, many of these same managers have experienced rapid job turn over and promotions and may not anticipate being in their current positions for very long.
Functions of Brand Managers
- Long-term Strategy
- Sales forecast budget
- Work with Ad Agencies
- Support from SalesForce and Trade
- Gather intelligence on brand performance
- Identify opportunities to improve
Long-term Strategy
Develop a long-range competitive strategy for the success of the brand. All tactical moves that form part of the strategy are formulated for execution by relevant personnel of the company.
Sales forecast budget
Prepare in coordination with sale personnel sales forecast and dovetail the same into marketing plans and budgets.
Work with Ad Agencies
Work with the advertising and other related agency (promotional, research) to develop advertising copy, communication strategy and plans for execution of advertising and promotional campaigns.
Support from SalesForce and Trade
Stimulate support of the brand among the sales force and trade members (distributors, wholesaler and retailers) through communicating lucidly all the rationale for brand plans.
Gather intelligence on brand performance
Gather intelligence on the brand’s performance to see how the brand stacks up against the competition, customer and trade attitude develop and change and new problems and the opportunity arises.
Identify opportunities to improve
Meet changing market needs to improving and initiating new product you brand this function is an extension of preceding pressed proceeding one and as mentioned cannot form convincingly unless problem problems are identified and changing need pinpointed.
Case Study: Unilever’s ‘project Sunlight’ Shines With Millions of Youtube Views
Project Sunlight is Unilever’s long-term initiative to encourage customers to live more sustainable lives. To help people understand the necessity of the problem, the brand TrueView has developed a YouTube campaign in which pregnant couples see a picture depicting a promising future.
Through the Command Center, which brings together all its media partners, Unilever has been able to estimate user response to video in five countries and create responses on a real-time basis to deliver exceptional engagement levels, thereby achieving the goal of creating awareness and increase engagement at Unilever’s “Project Sunlight”.
There is a natural tension in the sustainability campaign of a company that produces millions of consumer products every day and bases its growth strategy on reaching “more customers, more often.” But with the launch of a new website and social engagement platform called Project Sunlight on November 20, Unilever is tapping into some of that tension in a new marketing campaign that highlights consumer actions to create a more sustainable mode of global consumption.
The Anglo-Dutch company launched a company-wide sustainability campaign in 2010, shortly after Paul Polman joined as CEO. Polman has been one of the most outspoken top advocates of promoting more sustainable business practices and setting ambitious goals for Unilever: doubling revenues to `80 billion by 2020, while halving its environmental impact.
The company employs a “profitable volume growth” strategy, focusing more and more on achieving its 2020 revenue targets and increasingly focusing on the nearly unlimited consumer growth potential of major emerging markets such as India, China, and Turkey, which now account for 55 percent of Unilever’s revenue. It reports that 2 billion people (almost 30 percent of the world’s population) will use at least one Unilever product during any given day. The Project Sunlight site consists of digestible content about Unilever’s sustainability programs as well as simple incentives to promote Eco-friendly consumer behaviour.
Mathieu sees marketing as a mechanism that can truly help people and points to Unilever’s roots in pushing hygiene habits with its products in Victorian England, where dirt and disease were commonplace. Interestingly, Unilever does not have a separate corporate social responsibility. The department was incorporated into the marketing and communications wing of the sustainability department, as many large companies do.
“My ultimate goal is to make marketing and sustainability two sides of the same coin,” said Mathieu. He refers to Project Sunlight as a “behaviour modification program” that rethinks the way companies engage with consumers. Unilever is not telling people to reduce consumption per se, it is telling them to think more consciously about the resources used and how to use them.
Products are procured and created. Mathieu notes that while there are very serious issues facing society, public speaking about big-picture environmental, economic, and social justice issues can be so negative that it is “paralysing.”
Unilever’s marketing team chose to approach these issues “on the positive side”, highlighting advances in science and technology that can help society adapt to a better future. “It’s about changing the conversation,” he said, and he understood “how consumption can be made more sustainable.”
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