BRAND

REPORT CARD

by Hari Prasath

Brand equity has received a lot of attention from the managers from all kind of brand.Be it consumer or service or local or international, brand managers have realized the importance of brand in overall success.Strong equity leads to superior market performance.Brand equity generates much desired marketing outcomes like price premium, loyalty and profit.

What do strong brands do in common....?

Kevin Lane Keller suggest that the

world’s strongest brands share 10

characteristics.

Not all managers are able to assess

their brands objectively.

They have good understanding of one

or two areas of brand’s strength and

weakness, but not all.

With a partial knowledge of a brand’s area of excellence or weakness, a complete and comprehensive response is difficult to develop.

With the partial picture in mind, many areas of brand go uncared for, often causing serious damage to brand equity.

On the basis of the attributes shared by the world’s top brands, a report card could be constructed.

A brand score card can be used for analyzing a company’s brand for generating a relative picture and developing appropriate strategic response.

Ten attributes shared by the World’s Top Brands are:

•Excellent Delivery of desired Benefits.

•Staying relevant.

•Pricing reflect values.

•Proper positioning.

•Consistency.

•Brand portfolio and Hierarchy.

•Coordinated support of all marketing activities.

•Understand Brand Meaning.

•Long-term support.

•Monitoring source of equity.

1.Excellent Delivery of desired Benefits:

Customers are drawn to a product for the total package it

delivers. A product is much more than a simple collection of

attributes.

The package of a product includes offers along with other

elements like Brand image, service and other tangible and

intangible factors.

Eg:-Starbucks is not simply cup of coffee. It is much more.

It is experience for the five senses, which includes ,Aroma of

coffee beans , Rich taste ,Sight of art work ,Background

music and clean feel of table and chairs.

Strong brands offer an excellent product package to

deliver benefit s that customer want.

2.Staying relevant.

Strong brands changes with times and evolve both their

intangible and tangible aspects in line with the change in

environment.

This is how brands maintain relevance.

The products of the strong brand remain the cutting edge of

the product area.

As the technology progresses, these brands do not allow the

product to be left behind.

The intangible side of the brand is constantly monitored to fit

the mood of the times.

Changes are bought in the users imager, usage imagery,

personality, engendered feeling and the relationship brand

seeks to develop with its customers.

For instance:-

GILLETE is probably the strong brand in the razor blade category worldwide.

This brand’s product has been evolving with the time

Sensor, sensor Excel, creates image

Feelings and relationship associations to match the aspiration of the target customers.

3.Pricing reflect values:-

Strong brands enjoy a perception of good value that

match the customer expectation. But it is not so easy

to achieve.

It require perfect balancing between the product

quality, image, and the features on the other hand and

customer cost and price on the other..

Firms often pack to much for too low price, thereby the

hurting bottom-line. Or some times, they seems to

offer too less for too high price.

Strong brand’s price is based on an accurate perception

of how customers view price and value.

4. Proper positioning:-

Proper positioning in the customer’s mind is essential for brand to be successful. Strong brands enjoy distinct positions.

They achieve points of parity with composition in their areas of advantage and create points of difference to gain advantages over them.

Brands like Sony and Mercedes match competing brands to superiority of those competitors in their area of advantage in the area of product superiority over competitors to gain difference.

Eg:- HARLEY DAVIDSON & CALVIN KLEVIN

5.Consistency:-

•Brands have to strike a right balance between change

and continuity. Strong brands achieve preciously that.

•They maintain continuity in their marketing activity, yet

execute change to stay relevant with times.

•Frequent and uncalculated changes can create confusion

and soil image.

• A strong brands like MICHELOB lost ground when it was

promoted using campaigns that left the customer

confused.

•There is no consistency…………… only confusion.

6.Brand portfolio and Hierarchy:-

Most firms evolve into multi-product and multi-

brand business. When a firm has many brands

in its portfolio, each brand bearing with its

name can add to or dilute its equity.

It is for the reason that brands in the company

portfolio must form a pattern to strength

equity.

Firms often dent their equity by creating

conflicting brand structure.

There are different brand

strategies:

One brand for all offering [ NIRMA ]

Different brand for different segment

[ peter England]

Different brand in one line[ P&G, H&S]

Brands with corporate endorsement[Maruti]

Confusion brand hierarchy and portfolio create confusion

and hurt equity.

For instance:- GM’s branding that rightly started with the

proposition of “ a car for every purse and purpose”.

Thus led to creating a various divisions like:

Cadillac

Buick

Pontiac

Oldsmobile

Chevrolet. But later these lines grew to overlap each other

and marketing began to send confusion signals. This way

the brand suffered a huge loss of equity

7.Coordinated support of all marketing

activities:-

Strong brands are not created out of the support on one or

two marketing activities.

Instead they make use of all marketing activity to perform

well out roles in the branding effort.

At the basic level, branding elements like logos, symbols,

slogans, packaging are coordinated to create awareness and

the desired image.

The marketing mix elements provide product information;

they provide product usage and functions, cultivate user

associations, leverage Advertisement to generate “Pull” and

employ sales promotion to promote brand in the channels.

8.Understand Brand Meaning:-

Managers create strong brands by undertaking, conscious, deliberate brand building effort.

This requires comprehensive understanding of what customers think and feel about their brands.

What belief, images, attitude, and behavior are associated with the brands? What forms the core of the brands and what is like and dislike.

This way mangers can assess the potential effect of their decision on the equity of the brands.

Bic pioneered the concept of disposable

inexpensive pens, razors and lighters.

The brand suffered when it used the same

strategy to market perfumes in the U.S and

Europe.

Singer a powerful sewing machine in India,

ventured to market televisions, only to experience

failure.

But Singer was too closely linked to sewing

machine and over three generation of exclusive

association of the name “Singer” with sewing

machines apparently shut out all possibilities of

hasty brand extension.

Even their kitchen gadgets are not doing well.

9.Long-term support:-

Building equity required careful attention and management of issues that create strong brands.

Two things are essential.

1st Brand awareness

2nd Brand image.

To began with, a brand must have depth and breadth of awareness. It should be topped off with images, consisting of strong, favorable and unique associations.

Often brand equity suffers when managers over-invest in peripheral aspects of brand and ignore the vital aspect.

10.Monitoring source of equity:-

Brands operate in a dynamic environment. They are exposed to customers and competitor changes.

This necessitates monitoring the source of equity.

Accordingly, a strong brand deploys variety of measures to measures its health.

This includes brand audit and brand tracking studies.

The internal studies reveal how the brand has been marketing.

The external studies are aimed at capturing the

brand image and meaning that resides in the mind of

customers.

A brand’s strength lies in the mind of the customers.

Brand knowledge installed in their minds is the

foundation of the brand equity.

The ten attributes framework draws attention

to specific area where managers must seek to

performance. Sometimes it is not easy.

Improving performance in one area may

potentially decrease performance in others.

Thanking

uFor being with me.