Brand-Building Implications

1. Brand building drastically reduce marketing investment-

A strong brand needs lower and lower levels of incremental investment to sustain itself over time. A new, unknown player will have to spend tow or four times the market leader to achieve the same share of mind. Given the huge difference in business volumes, the pressure of the bottom line is much higher for an un-established player.

2. Brand building facilitates long range planning-

Ask any business manager at Hindustan Liver (HLL), Nestle or even home grown organisation like Wipro, Hero Cycle, or TVS Group. In an average year his ability to target and budget primary sales would be infinitely simpler than for someone responsible for a relatively un-established brand. The latter gentlemen would be targeting merely on desired volumes-almost always dictated by top management. Strong brand always account for more stable businesses.

3. Brand Building commands a premium-

As long as there is a distinct value attach to your offering, the consumer will always be willing to pay more for it. That is the only reason why an unknown brand called Titan could command substantial premium over HMT. That is the same reason why a brand like BPL at a higher cost beat the stuffing out of companies like Akai in a T.V. wars last years.

4. Brand Building builds entry barrier-

Human being as a species love status quo. Therefore, a brand, which is entrenched in the consumers mind, is very difficult to displace. If for nothing else, the sheer inertia will override any cooing and wooing noises that the new entrant would create. This consequently implies stability of business and therefore stability of revenue.

5. Brand Building increases cash flow efficiency-

Today, an HLL distributor leaves signed cheque-books with the company to be filled in on material dispatch. This is for most brands with strong franchises even if they be in the agarbatties or Hawai chappal businesses. What more can a small business ask for?

6. Brand Building increases value of the business-

Examples abound internationally and today even in India of businesses, which were sold for several time their book value. Phillip Morris bought Kraft from General Force in 1991 for US $13 billion. More than its book value. A little later at home, Coca-Cola paid US $60 M to aquire Thumps-up from Parles. Neither Buyer had any lacunae in manufacturing, finance or human resources. They merely bought business with very powerful brand equities and therefore paid more than the net worth of the businesses.

Building a strong Brand

Building a strong brand can create significant opportunities for a company in a competitive marketplace. Once built, a strong brand can be leveraged to achieve grater market share and increased profits.
A comprehensive new approach, the customer- based brand equity (CBBE) model, lays out a series of four steps for building, maintaining and monitoring a strong brand:
(1) Establish the proper brand identity
(2) Create the appropriate brand meaning
(3) Obtain the right brand responses and
(4) Building appropriate brand relationship with customers.

Brand Identity
Salience. Achieving the right brand identity requires creating brand salience with customers. Brand salience relates to aspects of brand awareness- the customers’ ability to recall and recognize the brand.
Criteria for brand identity. Two key dimensions distinguish brand awareness—depth and the breadth. Depth of brand awareness refers to the range to how easily customers can recall and recognize the brand. Breadth refers to the range of purchase and consumption situations where the brand comes to mind. A highly salient brand is one with both depth and breadth of brand awareness.

Brand Meaning
To give meaning to a brand, it’s important to create a brand image and establish what the brand is characterized by and should stand for in customers’ minds. Brand meaning can be broadly distinguished in terms of more functional, performance-related considerations vs. more abstract, imagery related considerations. These brand associations can be formed directly from customer’s own experiences and contact with the brand through advertising or some other source of information (e.g., word of mouth).
Performance. The product is the heart of brand equity. It is the primary influence of what consumer experience, what they hear about, and what the firms tells customers about the brand.
The performance attributes and benefits making up functionality will vary by category. However, five important types of attributes and benefits often underlie brand performance:
Primary characteristics and supplementary features.
Product reliability, durability, and serviceability.
Service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy.
Style and design.
Price
Imagery. Brand meaning also involves brand imagery, which deals with the extrinsic properties of the product or service including the ways the brand attempts to meet customer’s more abstract psychological and social needs. Four categories of brand imagery stand out:
User profiles- The creation of a profile or mental image of users or idealized user based on brand imagery.
Purchase of usage situations- The formation of associations of a typical purchase situation may be based on type of channel, specific store, ease of purchase, or associated rewards.
Personality and values- The assignment of a personality to a brand, which Aaker describes in five dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness.
History, heritage, and experiences- The creation of brand association based on their past and certain noteworthy events in the brand history.
Criteria for brand meaning. Regardless of the type involved, the brand associations making up the brand image and meaning can be profiled according to three key dimensions: strength, favorability and uniqueness

Brand responses
To implement the CBBE model, companies must pay attention to how customers respond to
the brand, its marketing activity and sources of information. These brand responses can be
distinguish according to brand judgments and brand feeling.
Judgments. Brand judgments focus on customer’s personal opinions about the brand based on hoe they put together different performance and imagery associations. Four types of summery judgments are particularly crucial to creating a strong brand (in ascending order of importance):
1.    Quality- The brand persuades quality in the eyes of customers.
2.    Credibility- the extent to which the brand has a whole is seen as credible in terms of three dimensions: expertise, trustworthiness, and likeability
3.    Consideration- customers consideration to purchase or use the brand
4.    Superiority- Whether customers view the brand as unique as and better than other brands.
Feelings. Customers’ emotional reactions to the brand relate to the social currency the brand evokes. What feelings does the marketing program for the brand evoke? How does the brand affect customers’ feelings about themselves and their relationship with others? These feelings can be mild, intense, positive, are negative in nature.
Brand judgments and feelings can only favorably influence consumer behavior if consumers internalize or think of positive responses in any of their encounters with the brand.

Brand Relationships
Resonance. The final step focuses on the relationship and level of personal identification the customer has with the brand. Brand resonance is characterized by the depth of the psychological bond customers have with the brand as well as how much activity this loyalty engenders. Brand resonance can be broken down into four categories:
5.    Behavioral loyalty- How often do customers purchase a brand and how much do they purchase?
6.    Attitudinal attachment- How “special”- in a broader context- is a brand to customers?
7.    Sense of community- Do customers feel a kinship with other people associated with the brand?
8.    Active engagement- Do customers invest time, energy, money, or other resources into the brand beyond those expanded during purchase or consumption? Are they brand evangelists?

Four Packaging qualities

Packaging design covers a wide spectrum, from a brown box that is simply used to protect goods in transit, to a luxurious piece of structural and visual magic that conveys a strong brand personality. There are two basic types of packaging: protective packaging, which is temporary cover protecting a product like a television set and is discarded once the product is home; and there is integral packaging for FMCG, which is a product container and is used the product is finished.

Protect – implicit quality

Protective packaging is largely used for consumer durable such as televisions, toasters and telephones. Where the product is displayed on a store shelf, the packaging is usually simple box for transport. The opportunity for branding lies in reinforcing the corporate identity and confirming the contents and variant of the product inside.

Integral packaging and FMCG packaging

Most FMCG packaging must not protect the contents; it must advertise and sell the product and be used as the dispenser throughout the products life. The task of an FMCG pack is generally into two segments: the in-store purchase process, which is mainly graphic; and the in-home use experience, which is mainly, structural. Pack shape, size and color are also important to differentiate the brand proposition in store. These are not completely separate, but they do allow us to focus on different times of the process.

Identify – in store brand navigators

The role of brand packaging in a retail store is to attract the customer’s attention, identify the product brand and sell itself in an instant. The brand should guarantee the quality of the purchased product, whether it is a category leader or a ‘B brand’. A key task of FMCG packaging is to get the customer to try the brand for the first time and/ or switch from their regular brand.

Dispense – in-home branded use experience

If the role of packaging in the stores is to attract and identify the brand to potential customers, so that they try the brand, the role of the brand pack is to generate loyalty, so that trial customers become dedicated customers. Loyalty is a strong emotional connection that people feel when they have a satisfying experience.

The brand, product and pack must all live up to the customer expectations expressed by the brand personality. In the FMCG world, big money is to be made from loyal customers who continue buying your product hundreds of time in their life.

Disposal – re-use or recycle and the environment

In today’s business environment it is not possible to ignore the environmental lobby. In fact many companies have been successful in harnessing green marketing. This is specially true in the packaging industry where packs can often seem wasteful and unnecessary bad for the environment.

There are two clear routes towards a more responsible packaging future. First, pack can be seen as an element of a system that can be re-used by refilling such as those available at the Body Shop, or they can be re-used in a new way. The second route to responsible packaging is to make the pack as efficient and recyclable as possible as possible.

Packaging

The original product packaging was simply for the protection and transport of goods. There were a few examples of branded packaging until the late 19^th century, when commercial competition started to grow rapidly. Companies such as Pears soap began branding their packaging to distinguish it from that of lower-quality unbranded competitors, while many goods were still packaged or wrapped in the shop, after a specific weight had been chosen.

Because of the increase in self-service retail outlet the packaging now had to do much of the work selling a brand against a large number of competitors with similar products. While this adds to the pressure on packaging design to meet customers’ expectations. Contemporary packaging design is now the crucial brand personality vehicle for most FMCG brands, particularly if they cannot support TV campaign.

A reposition requires the subtle refinement of the expression of the brand values in the pack design, possibly by making them more contemporary. This may also include shifting the balance of target customers across gender, age and political, geographic update, which is an extremely cost-effective short-term solution.

New product development allows the pack to define part of the brand personality, and this is specially true for FMCG brands. Here the new brand values can be translated into a new brand pack, whether it follows the category style or it is highly innovative. The parameters for this will be much wider. So it is important that the packaging designer and brand manager work closely together to reach a shared vision of the new brand pack.

The choice of translator of those brand values is the role of the ‘big idea’ in packaging design. This is where the brand planner starts to translate the words used in the brand proposition or personality into a series of images, metaphors and analogies that the design creative can use.

Once the big idea for the brand pack has been generated and approved by the client, the role of the brand execution becomes important. This is the style of the pack and its graphics, and again it can have a strong influence on the attraction of target audience.

The execution or style or this might be an adult cartoon, attracting younger woman, or a watercolor style attracting older woman; it may have an exclusive or value feel to it, all of which would attract different target audience.

There are four elements in the cycle of effective packaging:

1. Protect – implicit quality;
2. Identify – in-store brand navigators;
3. Dispense – in-home branded use experience!
4. Disposal – re-use or recycle and the environment.

Media type selection

Depending on the target audience, the media type will need to be selected to convey the brand-advertising message. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages that will help to make the appropriate choice. The proposed budget of advertising will also impact on the ability to use certain media types such as television. Although television advertising is highly seductive, in some cases it may not be the most appropriate tactics.

Above the line media

Five media– press, radio, television, cinema and outdoor transport – cover what has traditionally been recognized as above the line media: those that paid commission to advertising agencies. Below the line media are all other types, including direct mail, exhibitions, packaging, print campaigns, and various other media. They pay no commission, and are paid for by a percentage of the cost arrangement.

• Press – The press can be split into following groupings:

National newspapers

Local newspapers

Free newspapers

Consumer magazines

Trade magazines

Technical journals

Directories and anthologies

The press can offer detailed accounts of events, often combining many viewpoints on the same subject from either side of the issue. Magazines are particularly good at developing an enriched narrative that is often re-read many times, or even cut out and kept by the target audience.

• Radio – Radio can have a local, national and international dimension to its message delivery, helping to target specific audiences. Radio advertising delivers short messages, often for only a few seconds, so they require immediate impact. They are also delivered by the human voice, which is transitory but strongly emotional; famous voices are often used to create a positive memory effect on the listener.

• Television – Television is the most expensive way to advertising your brand message and relatively few companies can afford it. Television advertising also delivers a short message, which is repeated several times over a week. The message has to be instant, directing the consumer to other sources to discover the detail of the brand preposition, such as websites, telephone call centers, print or retail sites. Television has the advantage that it combines the element of visual action, sound and animation, all of which are highly seductive and powerfully projected into the mind of consumer.

• Cinema – The cinema is a larger, more seductive version of the television brand media but it has special characteristics as well. The brand message is still temporary but can be longer than the 30-seconds television slot. The physical nature of cinema creates an impressive audio-visual brand experience that generates a high impact on consumers.

• Outdoor and transport – Outdoor and transport brand advertising are often used a secondary or reminder message together with advertising in another medium. The brand message is almost always read by people on the move and from a distance, so instant impact is essential.

• Public Relations – Public relation is a separate category of marketing communications and, unless you are a natural require specialist agency skills. The benefit the brand is its positive portrayal or the brand personality through press channels and live events. Good PR can help to build the brand heritage or hall of fame that captures the public’s hearts. Sponsorship of sporting events ethical concerns or industry conferences has been a successful way to use PR.

• Direct Marketing – The growth of direct marketing has been phenomenon in the past ten years allowing companies to target more preciously the groups of prospects. Sophisticated computer databases with complex algorithms offer predictive success rate of market/ lifestyle /demographic/ geo-political combinations. Of course many people still find letters purporting to the offering a personalized service. Quality of service is paramount when developing a on-to-one dialogue with the customer

Advertising effectiveness

The effectiveness of an advertisement can be measured across several vectors, using a range of research techniques. These need to be clearly stated as the target at the start of the measurement tool at the campaign, Blythe (1998) defines these as:

1. Awareness. There is a high correlation between brand loyalty and brand awareness.
2. Linking. Likeability appears to the single best predictor of sales effectiveness, since likeability scales predict 97% of sales successes.
3. Interest. This clearly relates to likeability.
4. Enjoyment. This appears to be a good indicator in advertising pretests.

The attribute of awareness is essential if customers are to learn about the brand. The likeability, interest and enjoyment attributes all relate to how the brand personality fits with the expectations of the customer. This is the role of ideas and meaning in communication.

The following sections look at how the choice of media types can help that process of communication.

To derive the maximum benefit from an advertisement, corporate identity or packaging brief, the core needs should be formulated in a SMART way:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-based

Briefings based on these criteria should create results that live up to expectations and reduce uncertainty. They make explicit the added value that the project requires and when the result will be judged to match those needs.

Advertising

The added value of Advertising

A definition from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising is: ‘Advertising presents the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects for the product or service at the lowest possible cost.’ Advertising works because the message that is created is transferred to the receiver in a format that has a shared meaning. The role of advertising in a brand management is to help generate awareness of the brand proposition and express the brand personality to a target audience for minimum cost.  This awareness may be need to:

• Launch a new brand on the market. This will express the brand personality to the targeted audience.
• Revitalize a brand that is losing marker share.
• Protect a brand against a competitor’s brand advertising efforts.
• Suggest new ways a brand might fit with a new target customer’s needs and desires.
• Reinforce a brand’s appeal in the market.
• To raise awareness of a brand for trade communication, stockholders information and investor relations.
• Remind current customers of aura – the brand personality they have purchased.

The golden rule in advertising is to make the message both simple and short; anything else will not be well received or may not even be understand by the customers. This may seem obvious, but experience suggests that too many advertisers have been asked to convey too many brand messages to too much complexity. The net result is often an incomprehensible bag a message that to not support the brand personality in the mind of the consumer.

Perceptual Grouping

Perceptual ability is our ability to make patterns out of what we see; even the information is not complete. A pattern can be based on the proximity of objects to each other: we would understand to people who are standing very close to each other as having some kind of relationship. Brand images typically and successfully place their product consistently next to another object to signify a close relationship between them. Ralph Lauren uses images of upper class society, horse riding sailing and exclusive hobbies to connote the message about his clothes via the proximity of two images. The sponsorship of events by brands is another form of proximity branding:  by a closely associating visa, Kodak or Guinness with a global sporting event, these brands are confirming their global nature to consumers.

Perceptual similarly is another type of Gestalt, where a brand portfolio might use the same pack, shape or color to signify their relationship, enabling consumers to pursue the brand collection this is also the way that the consumer pursue natural category of brand; by their visual proximity to each other.

In order to redefine a brand as a new category it may be necessary to break with current proximity to competitors. This type of brand group is held in the consumers mind as his or her perceptual set off possible brand choices. In order for a brand to be chosen it must already be part of the perceptual set of list in the consumers mind; idly it should be at the top of that list.

Perceptual continuity can help a brand to build a brand narrative across media types and overtime, consumers can build a flowing, continues pattern from the separate elements of a brand campaign. This has been particularly successful in television advertising. The Oxo brand ran an updating family story of many years providing a sense of continuity of the brand for their consumers.

Perceptual closure allows consumers to feel in the gaps between elements of a brand presentation, even if they have not witness all of them. The long running narrative of Nescafe Gold Blend advertising allows the consumer to pick up the story again, even half a year later. This is especially useful if the target audience is likely to have variable patterns of life or moment, such as shift workers mobile workers and frequent travelers.

The final element of Gestalt perception if common fate, the sense that similar group of brand has a similar trajectory in consumer culture overtime. This can include which groups of brands are going out of fashion at any one time, or which are just coming into fashion.

Brand Perception

Psychologically speaking, perception is the translations of the signals we are receive from all out sensory organs (eyes, skin, mouth, ears, nose) into neural signals that form patterns in our brain (signifiers). These then need to be process and translated into something that makes sense and as meaning for us (signified). It is this process of translating, interpreting and organizing our perceptions that allows us to understand and navigate our world. The way we organize these perceptions is based on experience, grouping and other techniques of pattern building.

Gestalt Perception, According to Kassin (1995), is the ability to understand a larger meaning than the some of the parts. It is the ability to see a pattern of dots but understand the shape and meaning they describe if we joined a dots to make a shape or word to organize. The key elements that help our Gestalt perception are figure and background, and grouping techniques.

Figure and Background

Figure and background refers to our perception of which objects or elements are more prominent in an image we look at. They are often universal, but can be personal as well; two people do not always understand the same meaning from a single image. They may be biased or drawn to focus on different elements of an image with different meanings.

Typically consumers are more drawn to intense, unusual, loud high-contrast, dynamic and starting elements. However, when the entire groups of competitive brands on a supermarket shelf are vivid and colorful, then a quieter approach may also prove successful. Often advertisements try to attract by aggressive images and sounds but they can get lost, merging with all the other advertisement. A successful counter-attack can be to present a single quite and thoughtful approach or a comedic approach against that visual pollution.

Alternatively, brand managers should try to ensure that the viewer or listener is directed towards one intended message rather than others that may lie embedded in the image or group of images. By picking the most relevant symbolic image that corresponds closes to the consumers’ expectations; the communication is likely to be easier an d more effective.

Brand Media

Communication

Identity is only worth something to a business when it is properly communicated to its intended audience, and they recognize and acknowledge its value. This means that the process of communication plays as important a role as the image we may use. The model of communication between humans is the best analogy for developing a model of communication between businesses and consumers.

This is because people understand and use the protocols of this type of communication. They have long experience of manipulating verbal and non-verbal messages and deciphering the meaning behind those messages. They have become experts at developing a message and sending it out to the world, and at developing a message and sending it out to the world, and at receiving messages and translating them into a coherent meaning that they understand. Crucially they are experts at tow-way communication to be precise, communication must be tow-way to be considered effective, but until recently many brand communications remained unidirectional and therefore relatively ineffective.

The tow-way communication process clearly expresses the goals of excellent communication because it

• Develops overtime creating a biography of the brand.
• Encourages feedback on performance appropriateness of the message.
• Encourages listening to the consumer.
• Develops a one-to-one mentality to brand communication, increasingly personalization of the message.

The two-way communication process starts with the sender (business) determining what is the right message to send out to their consumers (this will be dealt with later in this chapter.) This means deciding on the content of the message, the personality and the channel(s) that the message will be communicated through. The message is then communicated towards the receiver (consumer). As it is communicated through medium, it becomes less controllable by the business. It then reaches the consumer, who must interpret the messages meaning.