BRAND STRATEGY

The brand is probably the most powerful communications tool, yet few organizations consciously create and use a brand identity (positioning statement, category descriptor, brand name, etc.) to market their products or services.

Brand strategy is built on brand positioning, brand mission, brand value proposition (and personality), brand promise, and brand architecture.

The first step in effectively branding an offer is to understand exactly what your customers want from you and giving it to them.

“If nothing else works then he should go to customers, tell them why you think they should buy from you, and then ask them what they think.

finding out what customers want is only the first step need to understand how people feel when they successfully use your product and exploit emotions connected to it.

“Branding alters people’s perceptions of reality.” If you can get all this in your strategy, you are on the right track.

To devise a branding strategy involves the accurate and concise interpretation of the results of the preceding brand analysis.

In addition, when determining the direction of your brand strategy, you have to assess what is feasible and affordable in the first place. And let us state it again: The leadership and management of the brand has to be backed and supported by top management, other-wise it is not possible to really push a brand strategy up to the crest of the wave. Only then can you turn to deciding upon the nature of new and existing brand elements to be applied to new and existing products or the business itself.

The brand strategy is always based on the brand core, its values, and associations. The products and services are an intrinsic part of the brand. The content and the meaning of these dimensions both change over time, and they are guided by the management and its decisions.

Consistency between the various aspects of the brand and company authenticity and the pressure from the market environment are continuously challenging the management. The need for economic viability and the investments for the brand value have to be considered in every market decision.

Mercedes-Benz New challenges appear once in a while for companies,

particularly when they become complacent or neglect their customers. This can happen to even the most prestigious brands, as it did for Mercedes-Benz in 1992. This was a year when Mercedes-Benz had to take drastic measures to get the brand for to passenger cars and trucks back on track. In contrast to the 1980swhenMercedes engineering dominated the automobile market, the 1990s saw a demand by customers for smaller, more practical cars. Unfortunately, at this time, Mercedes was developing even bigger and bigger cars, culminating in the enor-mous S-Class of 1992. The demand for its cars decreased, the com-pany failed to achieve its goals and found itself in a deep crisis.

A new CEO started a product initiative for doubling the number of products and started to listen to customers, targeted niche markets and started a branding initiative. The result was the Mercedes benzs.

New brand that emphasized the brand core with Enduring Passion, and became the most valuable achievement of the company that put everything else in line. Having moved away from the pure engineering focus of the company, not even the product design was as powerful as the brand; all advertisements and internal communication had the tagline: “The Future of the Automobile” and the passion had a future. According to the brand model by Leslie Butterfield the core brand of Mercedes-Benz is enduring passion. Brand associations, product and values.

Brand Strategy—what’s the big deal?

Brand Strategy is nothing new. Yet, the expectations consumers have for a product or service they buy is stronger than it’s ever been. This is why companies interested in long-term success must create the most promising, targeted brand experience possible.

Whether you know it or not, you already have a brand, and your customers are having a “brand experience” when they interact with you, whether it be with your products and services or the people in your company. In order to craft this “brand experience” in a calculated way that is beneficial for your company, you must have a strong understanding about what exactly a brand is.

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In other words, brand is the totality of your company and its business.

Brand is expressed through written, audio and visual content. It is interpreted through emotional filters every human being has—where anything can happen. Ultimately, you can’t control your brand. You can only hope to guide it.”

The Road to Branding Success

Building on the inherent values of a brand should be the core of any branding strategy. If they’re not clear, get a good grip on them first. For eg: Is the brand about honesty or integrity? Quality? How about excellent communication and customer satisfaction?

Knowledge of a company’s values, at least in a literal context, is typically an internal matter; yet, those values become evident to everyone in contact with the company, from customers and prospective customers to business-to-business relationships and employee relations. Consistency is the key here. If members of the organization aren’t accurately representing the values of the brand, steps must be taken to rectify the chink in the armor. And unlike a brand’s key business proposition, values should never change even though the landscape in which the company operates and even its products may.

Corporate branding or product branding

Corporate branding employs the same methodology and toolbox used in product branding, but it also elevates the approach a step further into the board room, where additional issues around stake-holder relations (shareholders, media, competitors, governments and many others) can help the corporation benefit from a strong and well-managed corporate branding strategy

It is similar to promoting the company’s strategy. The corporate brand is the overall umbrella for the

corporations’ activities and encapsulates its brand dimensions.

A corporate branding strategy creates simplicity; it stands on top of the brand portfolio as the ultimate identifier of the corporation.

The philosophy or basic direction of impact of the brand strategy has to conform to what the company is doing.

Brand positioning The next important strategic decision is what

Constantinos Markides from the London Business School calls:

“To be better or to be different.” Ideally, strong brands have a clear and unique position in

the target markets. Consider the following automobiles with well-established positions:

BMW : “The ultimate driving machine”Maruthi suzuki : “Count on us”

PRINCIPLES OF POWER POSITIONG

Positioning brands is about finding the right spot in customers’ minds in order to create the desired associations. It is therefore absolutely crucial to know who your customers are and where to find them. Positioning always comes after clarifying and segmenting the target market; you just cannot position any product or service without knowing who you are targeting.

Companies that clearly fail at it create positioning statements full of empty phrases that are nothing more than “hot air”. They not only lack substance in their positioning but usually also fail to bring their employees to act accordingly.

Applying the “hedgehog concept” of Jim Collins for the brand positioning means that, “It is not a goal to be the best, not a strategy to be the best, not an intention to be the best and not a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.”

Brand positioning should be so clear, so succinct, and so powerful that once launched, it begins to move people toward your new evolving brand. It is all about identifying the optimal place of a brand relative to its competi-tors in the consumer’s mind, and maximizing the company’s poten-tial benefit. Brand positioning is the heart of marketing strategy.

An effectively positioned brand communicates its core values to all stakeholders, internally and externally.

he ultimate task for brand positioning is to create the most power-ful position you can own and feel passionate about and to direct the passion to the most profitable customer targets. Soni Simpson illus-trates this kind of power positioning “Where deep understanding of your brand equity or essence links directly to a core consumer insight or value.

BRAND MISSION

it is essential to articulate a clear brand mission statement that is aligned with the corporate vision and mission.

The starting point of every brand strategy is to work out what the company stands for.

It has to be a clear and ambitious, yet achievable business goal.

It enables the brand to obtain authenticity. A brand mission statement is a benchmark for all management and employee decisions. Furthermore, it gives direction to customers, shareholders, and every-one else involved in the company.

PRODUCTS OFFER PROMISES AND BRAND HONOUR COMMITMENTS What does your brand promise? The brand statement, often called the brand promise or proposition,

is a derivative of branding research. It states the benefit of buying and using your company’s products or services. For clothing, it could be about style or comfort. For a car, it could be about safety or reliability. Whatever it is, it must be clear, engaging and presented in a context relevant to the customer. One example of an effective brand promise is that of BMW’s. It’s stated right in the company’s tagline: The Ultimate Driving Machine.

Your promise should be golden If your company’s products and service don’t live up to their brand

promise, new customers will become lost customers and loyal customers might leave, too. Simply put, your deliverable, what ever that is, must follow through on the promise—in fact, it would be best if it actually over-delivered.

Your promise should be unexpected, but welcome Don’t reuse something a competitor has already promised even if it

works for your product or service, and don’t be vague in trying to position your company favorably against your competitors (such as saying you’re “the best pizza in town.”). Be specific because specific is exponentially more memorable. Besides, people expect you to be good. Otherwise, they wouldn’t give you their business.

Hearts and minds first, wallets later Creating a positive emotional association in your market

for your product or service is key. It can create want and desire by the mere mention of your brand, product or service name. Needless to say, that’s powerful. For instance, the mere mention of Ben & Jerry’s conjures up images of numerous unique premium ice cream flavors and with the anticipation for your favorite (in my case, Cherry Garcia). Such positive emotional associations are built over time through good branding practice and a time-tested relationship between you and your customer based on intrigue, trust, understanding and support.

To create a brand promise that creates such emotional connections, it should be:

• 1. Grounded in the brand’s core values

• 2. Clearly relevant and engaging to your target market

• 3. Able to create some sort of positive emotional attachment beyond just being “good”

• 4. Repeated internally and externally within your organization

• 5. Adaptable to the business climate

• 6. Continually reinforced

• 7. Consistent across advertising and marketing mediums

• 8. Known and echoed by business partners

BRAND VALUE PROPOSITION Which values are so important to your company that if they

disappeared, your company would cease to exist as it is? Many companies disappear every year from the market place, so why does yours survive? Why do your customers trust you? Are you doing some-thing right that other companies are not doing in the same way? What do you stand for?

The value proposition consists of the whole cluster of benefits the company promises. It is more than the core positioning of the offering.

Basically, the proposition is a statement about the resulting experience customers will gain from the company’s market offering. The brand depends on the company’s ability to manage its value-delivery system. The delivery system includes all the experiences the customer will have using the offering.

You also can characterize this as brand personality. It describes the brand as if it was a human being. The

personality of a brand can help to provide the necessary differentiation. The personality strongly facilitates brand recognition, making it more interesting and memorable; it moreover stimulates positive attributes such as energy, youthfulness, and responsiveness, which can be very important to many brands.

SAP defines its brand personality as enjoyable, friendly and approachable, honest and responsive, listening and responding, constantly improving.

Of course this can only come to life if the customers’ perception is the same as was intended by the company.

BRAND ARCHITECTURE

The central role of branding in establishing the firm’s identity and building its position in the global marketplace among OEM, VAR (Value Added Reseller) and other market participants make it increasingly imperative for firms to establish a clear-cut brand architecture.

A key element of success is the framing of a harmonious and consistent brand architecture across countries and product lines, de-fining the number of levels and brands at each level.

Of particular importance is the relative emphasis placed on corporate brands as opposed to product level brands and the degree of integration across markets.

Focusing on a limited number of international strategic brands generates cost economies and potential synergies for the firm’s efforts in all markets. At the same time, procedures for managing the custody of these brands have to be established.

There are three major patterns of brand architecture:

CORPORATE-DOMINANT, PRODUCT-DOMINANT AND HYBRID OR MIXED STRUCTURES. Corporate-dominant architecture tended to

be most common among firms with a relatively limited range of products or product divisions, or with a clearly defined target market, e.g. IBM ,GE, Shell, Caterpillar, Atlas Copco, and Lenovo.

Product dominant architecture, on the other hand, is very rare in B2B applications. Typically, they are found among firms which emerged over time with multiple national or local brands, or firms that have expanded internationally through acquisitions or joint ventures.

Most commonly, hybrid or mixed structures can be found, consisting of a mix of global corporate, regional, and national product-level brands, or a corporate endorsement of product brands or different structures for different product divisions.

Examples are Kendrion. N. V. from the Netherlands or DaimlerChrysler Trucks with Fuso in Japan, Freightliner, Oshkosh, Dodge, and Sterling in the USA and Canada, Freightliner and Mercedes-Benz in South America and the original brand in Europe.

Both corporate and product dominant structures are evolving to-wards hybrid structures. Firms with corporate dominant structures are adding brands at lower levels, for example, the house or product level, to differentiate between different product divisions.

Product-dominant structures, on the other hand, especially companies emphasizing multiple local (national) brands are moving toward a greater integration or co-ordination across markets through corporate endorsement of local brands.

These companies also vary in the extent to which they have a clearly articulated international brand architecture to guide this evolution. Some companies have clearly laid out the different levels at which brands are to be used, the interrelation between brands at different levels, the geographic scope of each brand and the product lines on which a brand is used, while others have few or no guide-lines concerning international branding.

There are proven steps to optimize a brand architecture:Take stock of your brand portfolio from the perspective of

customers. Their view is the foundation for your strategy. Do “brand relationship mapping” to identify the relationships and

opportunities between brands across your portfolio, checking for these criteria:

The perceived or potential credibility of the brands in that space – the perceptual license

Whether or not the company currently has or can develop competencies in that space – the organizational capabilities

Whether the size and current or potential growth of the market is significant enough to merit exploitation and in-vestment – the market opportunity

Mine the opportunities where all three criteria are met or use these innovative strategies if all criteria do not intersect:

“Pooling” and “trading” Branded partnerships Strategic brand consolidation Brand acquisition New brand creation Continuously emphasize the portfolio-wide thinking and

business-wide implications of brand-oriented decisions. Consider creating a brand council.

When managed strategically and used as a structure to anticipate future business and brand needs, concerns, and issues, a clearly de-fined brand architecture can be the critical link to business strategy and the means to optimize growth and brand value.

The 12 Principles of Brand Strategy

In a situation where you’re selling to multiple personalities, it’s best to first connect everyone on a common ground then articulate clearly what’s in it for each of them.  The goal is to stimulate an engaging conversation that allows us to change perception, diagnose expectations and bring clarity to the dialogue.

That’s the essence of developing a brand strategy – the foundation of your communication that builds authentic relationships between you and your audience.  It is by defining your brand strategy that allows you to utilize marketing, advertising, public relations and social media to consistently and accurately reinforce your character.  Without defining the core strategy, all channels of communication can often become a hit and miss expense.

1. Define your brand It starts with your authenticity, the core purpose, vision,

mission, position, values and character.  Focus on what you do best and then communicated your

inimitable strengths through consistency.  There are many examples of companies acquiring other

brands but only to sell them off later because they don’t fit within the brand and its architecture. 

2.  Your brand is your business model Supports and challenge your business model to maximize the

potential within your brand. Think of personal brands like Oprah, Donald Trump, Martha

Stewart and Richard Branson. These individuals practically built their business right on top of

their personal brand; everything they offer is an extension of their brand promise.

3. Consistency, consistency, consistency Consistency in your message is the key to differentiate.  Own your position on every reference point for everything that

you do. President Obama focuses on one message only during his

campaign, change. BMW has always been known as the “ultimate driving machine.”

4. Start from the Inside out Everyone in your company can tell you what they see, think

and feel about your brand.  That’s the story you should bring to the customers as well,

drive impact beyond just the walls of marketing.  That’s example how Zappos empowers employees to

strengthen consumer perception on its brand.

5. Connect on the emotional level.

A brand is not a name, logo, website, ad campaigns or PR; those are only the tools not the brand. 

A brand is a desirable idea manifested in products, services, people, places and experiences. Starbucks created a third space experience that’s desirable and exclusive so people would want to stay and pay for the overpriced coffee.

Sell people something that satisfies not only their physical needs but their emotional needs and their need to identify themselves to your brand.

6. Empower brand champions Award those that love your brand to help drive the message, facility

activities so they can be part of the process. If your brand advocate doesn’t tell you what you should or should not

be doing, it’s time to evaluate your brand promise.  Go and talk to someone that works at the Apple retail store or an

iPhone owner and you’ll see just how passionate they are about Apple.  It’s a lifestyle and a culture.

7. Stay relevant and flexible A well managed brand is always making adjustments. 

Branding is a process, not a race, not an event so expect to constantly tweak your message and refresh your image. 

Successful brands don’t cling to the old ways just because they worked in the past; instead, they try to re-invent themselves by being flexible which frees them to be more

savvy and creative.

8. Align tactics with strategy Convey the brand message on the most appropriate media

platform with specific campaign objectives. Television may be expensive but it has a broader reach, wider

demographics and can produce instant impact.  On the other hand, social media may seem cheap but it takes time, resources and may not give you the desire outcome.

9. Measure the effectiveness Focus on the ROI (return on investment) is the key to

measure the effectiveness of your strategies.  Often times it is how well your organization can be inspired to execute the strategies.

It could also be reflected in brand valuation or how your customers react to your product and price adjustments. Ultimately it should resonate with sales and that means profitability.

10. Cultivate your community Community is a powerful and effective platform on which to

engage customers and create loyalty towards the brand.  In an active community, members feel a need to connect with each other in the context of the brand’s consumption. We all want to be an insider of something, it excites us to tell people which community we’re part of and what knowledge we posses.

11. Keep your enemies closer Even if you have the most innovative, highly desirable

product, you can expect new competitors with a superior value proposition to enter your market down the road.  The market is always big enough for new players to improve what you deliver better, faster, cheaper. Call it hyper competition or innovation economics, competition could be good for you believe it or not.  It challenges you brand to elevate the strategy and deliver more value. 

12. Practice brand strategy thinking IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown calls design thinking “

a process for creating new choices.” Essentially it means to not just settle for the choices currently available but to think outside the box without being limited.  This concept actually applies to your brand strategy creation process that I called brand strategy thinking.  It’s always easier to execute tactics than coming up with a strategy because it implies the possibility of failure.

BRANDIND PRINCIPLES

Brands are created by organisations and supply chains and not marketing departments.

Everyday operational excellence is key. Before you can establish a relationship with a customer, you have to be a company the customer wants to have a relationship with.

Branding demands and delivers accountability. Brands must establish relationships with five core constituencies:

customers, investors, employees, suppliers and media/analysts. Brands are defined by customers and other core constituencies, not

“positioned” by companies. Without customer economic or psychic value, there is no brand. Brands are created through unified emotion experiences and

functionally across all media and channels. Brands require an international perspective Products offer promises. Brands honor commitments. Customer equity is more important than branding equity.

Branding's Dirty Little Secret by Nick Wreden

Branding has a dirty little secret. It doesn't know how to count. The common branding goals. 'Awareness'. 'Visibility'. 'Impact'.

'Image'. These cannot be measured well, and no two measurements of the same goal will generate the same number. Without accurate measurement, there is no accountability. Without accountability, profitability is not assured. Without accountability, brand sustainability is threatened.

Marketers are painfully aware of this fact, especially when they are asked to justify budgets. As a result, they grasp at anything that can communicate solid 'measurement'. Unfortunately, these measurements have little relevance to CEOs and CFOs.

Finally, and most important, brand equity is irrelevant to customers. In the history of the world, only two things have never happened. No one has washed a rental car. And no one has bought anything based on brand equity. Customers buy on value, service, price or other issues, but never purchase based on the relative brand equity of two offerings.

10 Branding and Marketing Trends for2010

Niels Bohr once noted that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," but then he didn't have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.

Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success - or failure – of next year's branding and marketing efforts.

1) Value is the new black

Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This spells trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

2) Brands increasingly a surrogate for "value"

What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what's wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for. Why J Crew instead of The Gap? J Crew stands for a new era in careful chic --being smart and stylish. The first family's support of the brand doesn't hurt either.

3) Brand differentiation is Brand Value

The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to plague the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, and differentiation will be critical for success --meaning sales and profitability.

4) "Because I Said So" is so over Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they

must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can't just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.

5) Consumer expectations are growing

Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations now. Every day consumers adopt and devour the latest technologies and innovations, and hunger for more. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive - and prosper.

6) Old tricks don't work/won't work anymore In case your brand didn't get the memo here it is -consumers

are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim "we're all in this together" when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies.

The same is true for insincere celebrity pairings: think Seinfeld & Microsoft or Tiger Woods & Buick. Celebrity values and brand values need to be in concert, like Tiger Woods & Accenture. That's authenticity.

7) They won't need to know you to love you As the buying space becomes even more online-driven and

international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right street cred can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation. After all, everybody knows GM, but nobody's buying their cars.

8) It's not just buzz Conversation and community is all; ebay thrives based on

consumer feedback. If consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. Not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care.

9) They're talking to each other before talking to the brand

Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook Connect to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money on the Internet than those who don't tweet.

10) Engagement is not a fad; It's the way today's consumers do business

Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods including Platform (TV; online), Context (Program; webpage), Message (Ad or Communication), and Experience (Store/Event). But there is only one objective for the future: Brand Engagement. Marketers will continue to realize that attaining real brand engagement is impossible using out-dated attitudinal models.

Accommodating these trends will require a paradigm change on the parts of some companies. But whether a brand does something about it or not, the future is where it's going to spend the rest of its life. How long that life lasts is up to the brand, determined by how it responds to today's reality.

The take away: Having a brand strategy will bring clarity and meaning to your brand so you can focus on making, creating, and selling things that people actually care about.  If you could do that, your brand would be unique and memorable on its way to become an esteemed brand.

THANK YOU

BY AMINA 09/CM/105SWATI 09/CM/106ANUBHA 09/CM/107PAVITRA 09/CM/108JABBAMALAI 09/CM/102DIVYA 09/CM/121SUDHA 09/CM/137