What Is a Brand?

A brand is a product, service, or concept that is publicly distinguished from other products,
services, or concepts so that it can be easily communicated. Branding is important because not
only is it what makes a memorable impression on consumers but it allows your customers and
clients to know what to expect from your company. It is a way of distinguishing yourself from
the competitors and clarifying what it is you offer that makes you the better choice

The Role of Brands

-          Identify the source or maker

-          assign responsibility for its performance

-          evaluate the identical product

-          reduce risk becomes invaluable

-          perform valuable functions

-          simplify product handling or tracing

-          help to organize inventory and accounting records

-          legal protection for unique features

What Is Branding?

Branding often takes the form of a recognizable symbol to which consumers easily identify, such
as a logo.

What Is a Brand Promise?

It is what you tell customers, either explicitly or implicitly, they can expect from business. It sets
their expectations on the quality of products or services, and gives them a feeling about brand.

Brand Map

Brand map is a visual display of data that shows customer (or potential customer) perceptions of
brands, relative to their competition.
 Brand elements

-          Brand Name: An arbitrarily adopted name that is given by a manufacturer or merchant to an

article or service to distinguish it as produced or sold by that manufacturer or merchant and that
may be used and protected as a trademark.

-          Brand Logo and Symbol: The brand symbol is part of the brand stylistics and is made up of
visual brand style elements.

Brand Tagline and Slogan: Conveys the brand's spirit in the shortest way possible.

-          Packaging: A branding strategy that contemplates the point of sale as a definitive decision point
in the purchasing process and consequently, defends the importance of packing as a guiding
element.

-          Brand Character: the set of human attributes and characteristics associated with the brand giving

it a unique personality and recognition in the market and in the minds of the consumers

-          Jingle: A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses.

-          URL:  A branded link – a shortened URL built around a brand name or related term that helps to

associate the company with the links, content, and information you share online.

Brand Element Choice Criteria

1. Memorability: Brand elements that facilitate the recognition and recall of a brand during
purchase or consumption.

2. Meaningfulness: Brand elements need to have a persuasive meaning and suggest something
about the particular benefits and attributes of the brand.

3. Likability: Brand Elements need to be inherently fun, interesting, colorful and not necessarily
always directly related to the product.

The above 3 criteria constitute the "Offensive Strategy" towards building brand equity

 
 4. Transferability: Marketer needs to keep in mind is that the brand element should be able to add
brand equity across geographical boundaries and market segment or adding new product
category.

5. Adaptability: The more adaptable and flexible brand elements are the easier it is to keep up
changing and up to date from time to time to suit the consumers liking and views.

6. Protectability: Brand elements need to be chosen in such a way, that they can be
internationally protected legally, legally registered with legal bodies. Marketers need to
voraciously defend their trademarks from unauthorized competitive infringements.

The above 3 criteria constitute the "Defensive strategy" towards leveraging and maintaining
brand equity

What Is Brand Equity?

Brand equity refers to the value added to the same product under a particular brand. This makes
one product preferable over others. This is brand equity which makes a brand superior or inferior
to that of others.

Brand Resonance Pyramid

Stage 1: Brand Identity:

-          Brand Salience: Marketers need customers to know who you are and what makes you unique.
The question to constantly ask yourself at this stage is “Who are you?”

Stage 2: Brand meaning: (What you are)

-          Brand Performance: Performance encompasses all practical areas of a product, from the ease of
purchase, reliability of the product, and customer service throughout the journey. It is considered
as a rational route of brand equity. There are two important features marketers have to focus on.
Point of Parity (POP) and Point of Difference (POD).

 
 Point of Differences are the features that are truly unique to the business and that give it a
competitive edge. When marketers are creating marketing pieces, campaigns and landing pages
the points of difference are what you want to highlight in your messaging.

Points of parity (POP) are essentially industry standards that make a business legitimate in their
field. It’s the qualities that all businesses have in order to be competitive and on par with one
another.

-          Brand Imagery: to get the answer of “How does your brand appeal to customers on an
emotional level?” is the main focus in this case.  It is considered as a rational route of brand
equity.

Stage 3: Brand Response (What about you)

-          Brand Judgement: Consumers are constantly making judgments about your product or service
throughout the customer journey. They base these judgments on if your product is high-quality,
meets their specific needs, and if it’s better or worse than competitor products, along with many
other factors.

-          Brand Feelings: consumers are basing their purchasing decision on how your product makes
them feel, both in terms of the product itself and how it reflects on them. Will spending money
on your product make a consumer feel excited and happy with their purchase? Or will they feel
disappointed and embarrassed about buying a sub-par product?

Stage 4: Brand Relationship (What about you and me)

-          Brand Resonance: Customers who reach this stage value your brand above all other
competitors, would not consider buying from another brand, and actively recommend
your brand to other consumers.

Branding Name Decision

-          Individual Names: Under this strategy, different brand names are used for different products
offered by a single company in the market.

-          Blanket Family Names: Blanket family branding refers to the use of same brand name for all the
products.
-          Corporate name combined with individual product names: Under this strategy, the advantages
of corporate branding and individual branding are joined together.

-          House of brands or branded house

Unilever adopts the house of brands theory with products having their own names and
characteristics that are very distinct from the custodians of the brand independently representing
themselves in the market to the customers who buy these products based on their trust not in the
mother company but the brand itself.

Apple as an example chooses the branded house theory to promote its iMAC, IPhone, etc. The
company has a very close relationship with its offerings yet each has his own characteristics and
represents a different segment that has loyalty to the custodians as an approach to buy for
believing in the quality and usability of the products.

Managing Brand Equity

Managing brand equity involves reinforcing brands or, if necessary, revitalizing brands.

Brand reinforcement:  This strategy majorly focuses on maintaining the Brand Equity by

keeping the brand alive among both the existing and new customers. This can be done through
consistently conveying the meaning of brand in terms of:

-          What are the products under the brand? What are its core benefits and how it satisfies the
demand?

-          How is the brand different from other brands? How it enables a customer to make a strong,
unique and favorable association in their minds?  

Brand revitalization: It is the marketing strategy adopted when the product reaches the maturity
stage of product life cycle, and profits have fallen drastically. It is an attempt to bring the product
back in the market and secure the sources of equity

Brand –Product Portfolio:

-          Line extension: extending the existing line of product under same brand name

-          Brand Extension: include new product line under the same brand name

-          Multi brand: include in brand under same product line.

-          New Brand: include new product line in new brand name.

Brand extensions 

Pros:

a. It increases brand image.

b. The risk perceived by the customers reduces.

c. The likelihood of gaining distribution and trial increases. An established brand name
increases consumer interest and willingness to try new product having the established brand
name.

d. The efficiency of promotional expenditure increases. Advertising, selling and

promotional costs are reduced. There are economies of scale as advertising for core brand and its
extension reinforces each other.

e. Cost of developing new brand is saved.

f. Consumers can now seek for a variety.

g. There are packaging and labeling efficiencies.

h. The expense of introductory and follow up marketing programs is reduced.

Cons:

a.      Brand extension in unrelated markets may lead to loss of reliability if a brand name is extended
too far. An organization must research the product categories in which the established brand
name will work.

b.      There is a risk that the new product may generate implications that damage the image of the
core/original brand.

c.      There are chances of less awareness and trial because the management may not provide enough
investment for the introduction of new product assuming that the spin-off effects from the
original brand name will compensate.

d.      If the brand extensions have no advantage over competitive brands in the new category, then it
will fail.

Rebranding

Rebranding is the process of changing the corporate image of an organization. It is a market

strategy of giving a new name, symbol, or change in design for an already-established brand. The
idea behind rebranding is to create a different identity for a brand, from its competitors, in the
market.

Relaunching

The term brand relaunch describes the restart or repositioning of a brand. Its purpose is the
brand's strategic re-alignment. A relaunch serves to charge a brand with fresh energy by means
of a revised brand strategy. The brand is positioned in the market with more focus and addresses
a more specific target group.