Brand Management :creating and evaluating

Hello friends, today our topic for discussion is brand and branding strategy: Modern day brand play

 
What is a brand?

 A logo?

 A theme line?

 A promise?

 A way of doing business?

 A relationship?  With whom?

 Advertising?

 Or, is it simply reputation?

                
These questions should be kept in mind before creating or evaluating a brand. The strategy should be   rooted in the brand's vision and driven by the principles of differentiation and sustained consumer appeal. 

The true brand is the sum total of the perceptions of all the constituencies which contribute to revenues and profits. There should be a vision, a clean articulation of strategic, financial; brand goals that management has created for the brand.

A first step to strategic success as to where the brand can & cannot go. Generally it provides a vision that forces management to articulate what they want the brand to do for the organization over the next five years, relative to brand value, revenue & profit contributions.

Here comes the matter of place, where we actually want to build our house?

The place in the consumer’s mind that you want your brand to own –the benefit you want them to think of when they think of your brand. A strong position means the brand has a unique, credible, sustainable, & valued place in the customer’s mind. 

These companies are well established in the global arena, because of their brand positioning –they exactly know these 3 things

A clear definition of the target market (TG) they wish to pursue

A definition of business their company is in or the industry or category it competes in.

A statement of  point of difference & key benefits

Following are some of the burning examples of brand positioning, the real effort of the company

out sourced chart on branding

Google – simplicity
Toyota -- reliability 
Disney-  family fun  entertainment
Wall – Mart – low price & good value
McDonalds – food & fun
Apple – innovation 

The result came from the branding strategy only; it’s the application of sound research into brand communications, analytical techniques, and the development of an improved strategy for your brand. Here the term “Strategy” is all about brand positioning. We'll identify the key elements of your corporate or product brand and develop a branding action plan to implement it.

There are four types of branding strategies viz. Product branding, Product-line branding, Product-range branding, Corporate branding.(which I will discuss in my next blog post.) .

If you has already created a brand(entrance level),then try to Distinguishing it from others –through  value proposition and keep in mind that BRAND  promise must match brand delivery. Otherwise it will take one more decade to recover from the loss.

Finally, while keeping all such things simple, modern definition of “BRAND” refers to the sum of all product characteristics and feelings, both real and perceived, that creates an impression and makes a promise.

It was just an introduction to the brand management, we will discuss briefly about it in our next post.