BRAND MANAGEMENT
V. Govindaraj

“Building age and become dilapidated, machines wear out, people die, but what live are the brands.”
- Sir Hector Laing,
Chief Executive Officer of United Biscuits, United Kingdom.

Technology is driving the fast changing world. Today’s businesses are subjected to a great deal of turbulence and accelerating changes. Change has not shown its face to all identically. The impact of the change has led companies to catch up and overtake the competition. The companies have jumped into the bandwagon of quality programs, re-engineering, customer service and other emerging management trends. Companies are more concerned with strategic focus, concentrating on the long-term survival and profitability. Though they’re a numerous solutions available, one aspect is neglected - the creation of powerful brand.

Branding helps companies position themselves strategically for the future and compete effectively with the global giants that dominate world markets. Branding really means, the benefit it can bring especially in terms of increased corporate worth. The significant elements of change encountered over the last two decades are

The breakdown of market boundaries

Globalisation & the development of global brands

Increasing market fragmentation

Product diversity and shorter life cycle

Greater customer sophistication

Digital business

Economic instability and market volatility

The brand helps the product to survive in adverse conditions, transportability across national cultures and cross the market boundaries. Brand provide long term security, growth, higher sustainable profits and increased asset value because they achieve competitive differentiation high sales volume, economies of scale and reduced costs. When people think of product or service, they usually think of the attributes and features, and the practical benefits that the product or service will bring to consumers. But, when they think of a brand, they think beyond this and in a totally different way, because branding add an emotional dimension to the product-customer relationship. The basic function of brand is differentiation. Branding is a sophisticated process that puts together and sustains a complex mixture of attributes and values, many of which are intangible. The objective of branding is to produce a unique and attractive offering that meets both the rational and the emotional needs of customer in a better way than the competition.

The basic composition of successful brand products contains two basic constituents, namely, features & attributes and emotional benefits. The features & attributes is common to all products, but the emotional benefit is associated with brands. The secrete of branding is in adding value, especially psychological value, to products, services and companies in the form of intangible benefits - the emotional associations, belief, values and feelings that people relate to the brand.

Brand building can be done by emphasizing on functional characteristics and competencies that brand possess. Alternate approach is to center the brand around its core value, usually personality characteristics and then build product features, attributes, benefits or image around this. Companies using this approach concentrate on personality, matching the brand’s personality to those of the consumers, or giving the brand a personality that would attract people to it. The Yin-Yang model approach differs only slightly from the value-centered model, emphasizing the two sides of the branding equation well. The model states that brand success depends on both the rational and emotional sides of the brand and that both are necessary, yet must work in harmony.

The major question asked is ‘What can be branded?’ We are familiar with branded products like Pepsi, companies like Sony and services like Professional Courier, but many often forget that many things can be branded like entertainers, politicians, events, destinations / places and even nations. The success of branding depends to a certain extent on the quality of the product, service or person. However, branding should not be used as a substitute for poor quality or inferior performance. Branding creates lasting differentiation and in many cases legendry success.

Brands help people to prefer them than to ordinary product because brand

Generate choice

Simplify decisions

Offer quality assurance & reduce risk

Offer friendship and pleasure

Change is often subtle. It is rarely an all-of-a sudden epiphany. Brand stewards must respond as they see trends evolving; they must be cognizant of changes in consumer thinking and observant to even slight changes in consumer behavior. For even a small changes, over time, can accumulate to become major trends. The challenge is in identifying the change as it is happening and adjusting the brand in concert with that change.

The various levels and the trends of branding are

Product Branding

It entails giving each individual product an exclusive brand name, with the company name either totally or virtually absent. This makes it easier for the company to evaluate brand preference and worth, and allows better resource allocation decisions. Bulk of money is spent supporting the company’s products and services. The difficulties lie managing various products and its line. The major limitations ate the cost, dissonance and churn.

Corporate Branding

The company decides to promote its name as the main brand name, sometimes referred to as monolithic or umbrella branding.  The aim is to leverage the corporate identity & image.

“I have always believed that the company name is the life of an enterprise. It carries responsibility & guarantees the quality of the product”  -  Nestle.

Product-Line Branding

In this approach, product appear under the same brand name and possess the same basic identity, but with slightly different competencies.

Product Range Branding

Here the number of products or services in a brand category are grouped together under one brand name & promoted with one basic identity. This model lies between the product and the corporate branding. This enables organisation to bundle together products or services at a new level. This approach provides an opportunity to create brands that can be targeted to segment of customers and their specific needs, more effectively communicating brand benefits. Example: Microsoft has built a tire of brands that bundle together its products to aim at a specific market. MS Office was created to include Excel, Word, slide show and other business communication products.  This approach may not be ideal for all the type of organisation / product range.

NUF Branding

As marketers are focusing the NUFgen (New Urban Family Generation), companies may tend to focus to create a NUF Brand. In NUF all individual preferences are either accepted or compromised for the sake of the other members of the family. This type of branding has both the features of product branding or corporate branding. The collective acceptance of a brand is materialized based on the features and the image it projects.

Example:

Kinetic Marvel brand focus the total family features in terms of Mr. Nuffy’s economic aspects and mileage, Mrs. Nuffy’s comfort and Master Nuffy’s stylish look of the bike.

Hyundai Santro brand focuses itself in the small car segment as NUF brand. It terms itself as a Complete Family Car.

Conclusion

Today’s consumer is self reliant, demanding and skeptical. There are incredible variety of available choices, coupled with easy access to vast amounts of information, make today’s consumer much harder to reach, and much harder to retain. Brand is a promise and one must insure that the promise id fulfilled at each and every point of contact. Purchase decisions are not made only at point-of-sale, so it is critical that the brand be at customer’s subconscious.

A brand is much more than mere product it stands for. A brand is the amalgam of the physical product and the notional images that go with the brand. When we recall a brand, not only do we recall the physicality of the product but also the image it conjures. The hub of today’s advertising is to create positive image that linger in the consumer’s mind and lead to ‘brand’ building.

Brands become stronger when their scope is narrowed. The objective is not to “fit” the brand into as many categories as possible, but rather only market the brand into categories in which it can have the necessary leverage to win in the marketplace. The strength of the relationship is intricately linked to the success of the brand. Paying attention to trends as they evolve can lead to successful branding.

“……… the organisation must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers, as doing the things that will make people want to do business with it.”    -  Theodore Levitt.

Author:
V. Govindaraj
Lecturer, A.V.C College of Engineering,
Mayiladuthurai
vg_raj@yahoo.com
ph : 98430 69390

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