Brand management

Brand -- The sum total of all the characteristics, tangible and intangible, that makes a company unique.

Brand management is the application 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. 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.[1]

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 (e.g.: Easy-Off) 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.
[edit] Types of brands

>premium brand >economy brand >fighting brand >corporate branding >individual branding
>family branding >employment brand >" [2]

[edit] 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 or 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. ("Strategic Brand
Management" 3rd edition,Kevin Lane Keller)

[edit] 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 advertised.

The third model of brand architecture 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

[edit] 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”
(Bridson & Evans, 2004).

First of all there is need to understand the term “Brand Management”. Definition-: Brand management
is a process to manage popularity of “Brand”. It may be product or service. Brand Management is a
combined contribution of Advertisement Process, Marketing Process and Sales Process.

Roles and responsibilities of Brand Manager-:

1 To Advertise product at relevant media.

2 Selecting appropriate advertisement media according to the nature of product and service.
3 Make available product information within reach of Marketeers. And control rumour by passing
affirmative information.
4 Keep vigil on brand promotional activities, whether activities are being performed accordingly or not?
5 Making decisions regarding to media selection.
6 Conduct survey with competitor's service or product and collecting feedback and analysis.
7 Get information about consumer's demand and interest.
8 Collect information about area of consumers, display brand at target place.(Target place may vary
product to product.)
9 Get horizontal and vertical approach followed for brand promotion.

If you are a brand manager, you should be gotten aware with real time customers and market. Real time
market is a place where your product is consumed or can be consumed as a substitute of other, that is
already exist in market. If your product is based on web, your primary brand promotion media should be
Internet. You can choose print and electronic media, but approaches of these mediums should be close
to targeted clients and customers.
Definitions of Brand awareness

Brand awareness is a marketing concept that measures consumers' knowledge of a brand's

existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of
the brand.

A measure or indication of the readiness with which a brand springs to mind.

The extent to which the public are aware of a product, company or brand.

The likelihood that a particular brand will be thought of and recognized (favorably) when
consumers think of the product category in which the brand operates.

Measure

Brand awareness can be measured by showing a consumer the brand and asking whether or not
they knew of it beforehand. However, in common market research practice a variety of
recognition and recall measures of brand awareness are employed all of which test the brand
name's association to a product category cue, this came about because most market research in
the 20th Century was conducted by post or telephone, actually showing the brand to consumers
usually required more expensive face-to-face interviews (until web-based interviews became
possible). This has led many textbooks to conceptualise brand awareness simply as its measures,
that is, knowledge that the brand is a member of a particular product category, e.g. soft-drinks.
Examples of such measures include:

 Brand recognition - Either the brand name or both the brand name and category name are
presented to respondents.
 Brand recall - the product category name is given to respondents who are asked to recall as
many brands as possible that are members of the category.
 Top of mind awareness - as above, but only the first brand recalled is recorded (also known as
spontaneous brand recall).

Research on metrics

There has been discussion in industry and practice about the meaning and value of various brand
awareness metrics. Recently, an empirical study appeared to put this debate to rest by suggested
that all awareness metrics were systematically related, simply reflecting their difficulty, in the
same way that certain questions are more difficult in academic exams [1].

Brand recall
Brand Recall is the extent to which a brand name is recalled as a member of a brand, product or
service class, as distinct from brand recognition.

Common market research usage is that pure brand recall requires "unaided recall". For example a
respondent may be asked to recall the names of any cars he may know, or any whisky brands he
may know.

Some researchers divide recall into both "unaided" and "aided" recall. "Aided recall" measures
the extent to which a brand name is remembered when the actual brand name is prompted. An
example of such a question is "Do you know of the "Honda" brand?"

In terms of brand exposure, companies want to look for high levels of unaided recall in relation
to their competitors. The first recalled brand name (often called "top of mind") has a distinct
competitive advantage in brand space, as it has the first chance of evaluation for purchase.

Brand Recognition

Brand Recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized for stated brand attributes or
communications

In some cases brand recognition is defined as aided recall - and as a subset of brand recall. In the
case, brand recognition is the extent to which a brand name is recognized when prompted with
the actual name.

A broader view of brand recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized within a
product class for certain attributes. Logo and tagline testing can be seen as a form of brand
recognition testing. For example, if a product name can be associated with a certain tagline, logo
or attribute (safety and Volvo; "Just do it" - Nike) a certain level of brand recognition is present.

Stability of responses

While brand awareness scores tend to be quite stable at aggregate (level) level, individual
consumers show considerable propensity to change their responses to recall based brand
awareness measures. For top of mind recall measures, consumers give the same answer in two
interviews typically only 50% the time [2]. Similar low levels of consistency in response have
been recorded for other cues to elicit brand name responses [3]