Evolution of Branding

“Brands have taken on a godlike status: Consumers find greater meaning in them and the values they espouse than in religion.”
– Young & Rubicam .

Brands are more like “best friends” – they form an important part of our lives, carry specific meaning for every individual and are accepted or rejected based on how well they keep promises. Brands are so ingrained in our daily life that we cannot do without them.

Evolution of Brand
Walking down the memory lane ‘of branding’, we can find the English artesian Josian Wedgwood building the first modern business brand. Wedgwood was able to stimulate demand for his more profitable tablewares and command premium price over comparable tableware and other products. Those were the days of the 18th century when the term branding was not known. By the 1920s branding as a discipline had emerged as one of the key tools of marketing. Pioneers in the development of this discipline were Procter & Gamble and Lever Brothers.

Goodyear* in 1996 described the evolution of brand in six stages. The first four stages represent traditional classic marketing approach where the value of brand was instrumental as it offered customers certain ends to achieve; the last two stages represent post-modern approach to branding.

Stage I: Unbranded Goods – in early days, goods were unbranded. [Products such as matchbox and paper pins still fall under such category.]

Stage II: Brand as a Reference – with the emergence of mass production, customer had a choice. This forced companies to differentiate their offerings to customers. At this stage of branding, differentiation became the driving force, which was primarily achieved through changing physical product attributes.

Stage III: Brand as a Personality – with the passage of time, it became extremely essential for companies to differentiate brands on rational or functional attributes, as many products started making the same claim. Therefore, to differentiate their product from competitors, marketers started personifying their brands. ‘Beauty soap for film star’ – Lux is the classic example of brand as a personality.

Stage IV: Brand as an Icon – marlboro represents independence; Nike stands for winning; and Rolls Royce as an epitome of luxury. All these brands are deeply rooted in consumers’ mind – they are brand icons. In this stage it appeared as if consumer owned the brands and they used it to create self-identity.

Stage V: Brand as a Company – personifying company as a brand is an ongoing change that also marks the post-modern marketing. Post-modern marketing is about consumers being proactively involved in the brand creation process. Brand as a company is a stage where a company considers strengthening the total access of information about product and services with a customer-enhancing relationship.

Stage VI: Brand as a Policy – ‘The United Colors of Benetton’ ad campaign creates an ethical unity, Body Shop and brings to light social issues like environment and treatment of third world people. Such are the examples of brands in the stage of ‘brand as a policy’. Today, only a few companies have entered this stage, wherein their brands are closely identified with ethical, social and political issues that are the constituent elements of the brand as a policy.

These six stages clearly define the development of a brand from a ‘me-too’ product to a power brand stage and beyond. Coming out of the shell of product branding today, brand managers are branding every possible thing on this earth. The practice of branding, in the changed business environment, extends across a wide spectrum, from product to companies, to CEOs, to celebrities and to the extreme end of religion. Today, anything that falls under definition of a common noun can be a brand.

* Goodyear, Mary (1996), “Divided by a common language: diversity and deception in the world of global marketing,” Journal of the Market Research Society, 38 (2), 105-122.

Elements of Branding

Brands are living components that we have been holding in our minds for years. What goes into them is both, logical and irrational. Products and services will continue to come and go but the residual experiences of customers who consume them will ultimately define the brand. These residual experiences of customers help brands develop an image.

The act of imprinting the brand image firmly in the minds of customers is a great challenge to marketers. The act of image building has two basic components, positioning and consistent delivery of quality.

Positioning a brand is about interaction with people, what they read in press, style of advertising, quality of products, and efficiency of after-sales service. Branding is nothing but positioning a product successfully in the minds of the customers. If a brand is well positioned in a customer’s mind, half the job of directing customers to buy their products or services is done. The power of a brand is all about how customers associate their feelings with the brand. Long-term customer association can be built only through building emotional associations around a product.

It is true that emotions help develop an everlasting image of a brand. In fact, they help the brand develop a god-like character. There are few other elements of branding, viz., functionality, point of differentiation, and the product’s value that gives brand strength to survive in the rough corporate weather. Once a brand attains a respectable status it needs to deliver consistent positive quality. It strengthens the bond between the customer and the brand and they tend to develop strong feeling for that particular brand. With passage of time, the very same positive feeling transform these customers into brand evangelists.

There are a few brands that successfully transform their customers into brand evangelists, like Apple Computer, Linux, and Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson is a brand which is built solely on emotional association and consistent quality delivery. It is perhaps the strongest brand in the motorcycle market. The other motorcycles in the market essentially with the same engineering quality and performance are not in a position to charge even one-third of the price of Harley Davidson is able to. Harley Davidson customers are always ready to wait for months to get a motorcycle. Definitely, Harley Davidson is one among the very few cult brands the global market has. Cult branding is more than just strong branding, though not all the brands are positioned to become cult brands. A few of the well known cult brands are Oprah Winfrey, Volkswagen Beetle, Star Trek, World Wrestling Enterprise, Apple Computer, Linux, and Harley Davidson.

Building a Power Brand
In 1998, Philip Morris took over Kraft in US and Nestle bought Rowntree in Europe. Philip Morris paid four times the value of the target company’s tangible assets whereas Nestle paid over five times. Such incredible payment for names were the reflection of the value placed on the brand in terms of long-term profit expectancy. Definitely, a good brand is a great asset but it takes years of dedicated effort to build it and great care has to be taken in maintaining the brand once it is established.

Many companies believe that they have a brand but in actual sense all they enjoy is name-recognition. The name-recognition may help a company in generating onetime business. A name becomes a brand when the customer associates the name with the set of tangible benefits and other set of intangible benefits from the product or service. A brand offers a distinct value proposition and consistent quality delivery,which, in turn, provides loyal customers to the company. Philip Kotler, a leading marketing guru says, “The most enduring meanings of a brand are its values, culture, and personality. Brands give the seller the opportunity to attract a loyal and profitable set of customers and strong brands help build the corporate image, making it easier to launch new brands and gain acceptance by distributors and consumers.” Moreover, a brand simplifies the everyday choice, reduces the risk of complicated buying decisions, offers emotional benefits, and offers sense of community.

In most of the cases, journey of power brand starts with unbranded ‘me-too product.’ With effective communication, an unbranded product generates brand awareness. Brand awareness backed by strong brand promise increases brand acceptance in the market in course of time. When the market starts accepting a brand, quality control helps increase brand preference and consistent promise delivery with passage of time generates brand loyalty. Strong brand loyalty is the first step towards the development of a power brand.

A brand becomes a power brand, when it meets all the branding basics – adistinctive product, consistent delivery, alignment between communication and delivery and brand personality and presence. A power brand helps a company leverage all available business opportunities. McKinsey’s five-part approach, ‘Brand Accelerator Model’ helps marketers position their brand. It proposes to build strong brands faster than the competitors. The five steps that build a strong brand are:

• Creating a compelling brand strategy
• Delivering a consistent, distinctive and inspiring customer experience
• Building unique brand presence approach
• Leveraging the brand for growth and optimizing brand architecture
• Shifting the brand organizational development.

In fact, a power brand provides a win-win situation to the customer and the company. This is what makes branding strategy one of the crucial factors for organizational growth. Brand strategy needs a careful thought and intensive planning backed with a well-researched study of the market and its complexities. CEO of Brand Stream, Scott Bedbury emphasizes that it’s time to build a strong
brand that evokes trust from customers.

Brand: The Changing Dimensions
Branding, with time, may have changed in form but elements of branding remain unchanged. Though branding is an enticing act for most marketers and consumers to associate certain positive, and exciting feelings with the process of brand management, there is a difference between the participation level of employees and customers. For the customer, it is an act of excitement and fun, which is done for awareness development. But for marketers, the same branding exercise means not only advertising and awareness development, but also strengthening the internal as well as the external core of brand.

Branding as an exercise is influenced by external and internal environments. The business functions, viz., marketing, sales, finance, production, research & development, and personnel have a definite role to play in brand-building exercise. Moreover, these functions are inter-dependent and intrinsically linked with one another for better functioning of business. The other set, which constitutes the external environment, comprises customers, competitors, advertising and public relation agencies, and distribution channels.

A company can develop power brands by maintaining a right balance between the external and internal environments. Bringing this balance helps brand create value through consistent positive quality delivery and its offerings, which satisfy customers and makes them opt for the brand regularly. At the other end, it also helps build a strong marketshare, maintain good price levels and generate strong cash flows. Companies like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Intel, Nokia, Levi’s, Gillette, Disney, GE, American Express and Sony enjoy power brand status. These brands realized long back that brand management, as a function, has crossed the boundaries of marketing, penetrating into all other functions of business operations. They have also realized that the success of their business is mostly based on the success of their brands. They are experiencing brand-based business model. Sam Hill and Chris Lederer, associates of Booz-Allen & Hamilton, advocate that the next decade might see the brand-based business models becoming the dominant corporate norm. To develop a brand-based business, companies have to focus on a strong brand portfolio rather than an individual brand. To develop a portfolio of brands, it is required to classify brands of company into three groups: lead brand, strategic brand, and support brand. The lead brand is the center of brand portfolio – it carries most of the burden of the company’s sales and pulls customer to company’s product. The strategic brand lures new users to the brand portfolio. The support brands pull those customers who are on the fence, into the company’s product.

The key to the success of brand portfolio management is to think of brands as an asset and to measure the risk and return of brand. Moreover, developing a brand portfolio in this ever-dynamic business environment is not enough. Companies for sustained growth also need to convert their brand into Masterbrand, which helps create strong relationship with customers, provide direction to the employees, offer value proposition backed by entire company, help company erect greater barrier to entry, and infuse ability to innovate and change. Masterbrand also explains why a strong brand should reflect the organizational values, culture and strategy, which is very much reflected in branding strategy of global Masterbrand like American Express, AT&T, IBM, Samsung, and Sony.

Branding – A Collective Responsibility
Today, who doesn’t know of Nike and Starbucks? Sneakers were sneakers until Phil Knight came along to brand it as sports and fitness product and coffee was just a hot beverage until Starbucks created an excitement around its consumption by branding experiences. These brands stand successful even today because they consistently evoke positive feelings with each new product, services, or marketing campaign. These brands stand strong and have survived all bad and good seasons of business turmoil because they enjoy strong internal and external mix of branding.

It stands true not only for Nike and Starbucks but for any product or service offered to customers. Nike and Starbucks emerged as powerful brands because contrary to the conventional wisdom – branding stands true for external communication, its aim is to attract new customers and influence the old ones – they established their brand with the help of their employees. The old view has lost its significance in the
new market structure where companies in the midst of restructuring their business strategy need to communicate to their employees as they do with their customers.

In this new brand world, branding is not only domain of marketer but it has gone ahead to shop floor and, to the employee. In fact, brand-building exercise is the responsibility of the entire enterprise, including CEO. Most of the successful companies’ CEOs are managing branding exercise directly from most successful companies and the success stories of these companies have proved that the top boss of the companies should manage the branding exercise. Michael Dell of Dell Computer and Richard Branson of Virgin have done great job in positioning their brands globally. Richard Branson infused brand in the culture of the company and at Dell Computers brand was ingrained in the vision of company. Both these CEOs built strong relationship with the customers and employees. They have always seen brand as an important asset of company. Their initiatives helped Dell and Virgin to emerge as global companies.

Impact of Technology on Branding
The business environment in recent years has gone through a sea change in its shape. One of the key factors of the unprecedented change in shape was the result of change in technology, which has also forced companies to get rid of traditional techniques of communication. The impact of the Internet on brand strategies is enormous. It has changed the boundaries of the competitive playing field and
created a land rush to establish brand through online channel. IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola are few of the pioneers of online branding exercise. Though new branding techniques have forced companies to get rid of traditional techniques of branding, the basics of branding remain same – winning customer mind share. Dr. Paul Temporal argues that, there is no change in the way people perceive a brand, traditional or hi-tech. People go for only those brands which they feel like accepting.

A brand in a networked economy can be defined using four inter-related elements satisfaction, collaboration, relationship and a story to suit the networked economy, which ultimately gives loyal customers to the company. Michael Moon and Doug Millison define it as ‘Fire brand’. A fire brand ignites the hearts and minds of customers through its interactions with the company and other customers. It unveils beginning-to-end strategies for strengthening company’s brand and building customer loyalty. A brand can become a firebrand when it fires community to action, and provides self-service satisfaction to vendors and other members of the community.

Conclusion
The new economy laced with the pace of the advancements in technology has changed the meaning of competitive advantage. Gone are the days when innovative products used to be the source of competitive advantage for a company. Today, any new invention can be copied within a matter of days. Moreover, this is the era of outsourcing, where companies can outsource all possible elements of business functions. In the age of total access, ‘brands’ are the only assets of a company that cannot be easily copied or outsourced. A strong brand is the most important asset of a company. It can be nurtured and relied upon in today’s competitive environment. So, branding is far from dead, as some experts like McKenna and Zyman have Opined. Branding is very much alive though it is changing in form and presentation.

Internet Marketing: Some Ethical Issues

Internet offers unique two-way interaction, this interactivity makes possible for the marketers to capture enormous amount of information about the customer, which can be used to customize marketing offers using appropriate data mining and CRM tools. Interactivity has also made it possible for the Internet to be used as a medium for establishing greater brand identity. In nutshell, Internet has reduced the barriers of time and distance for consumers to obtain information and for the marketer to build database. Because, very time someone gets information, he/she also leaves behind enormous data about their lifestyle, demographic details, e-mail id etc

This universal access to information has come with its own set of demerits as well. Issues of pornography, privacy, unsolicited e-mails, hacking, fraud, plagiarism, and transaction security continue to bother this emerging medium. On part of the marketers, problem started when they started looking at the information in general and customer information in particular as a marketable commodity. The very nature of the Internet increases the complexity of tackling the above problems. Internet involves diverse tools like telephone, television, print etc., and cuts across national boundaries. Hence, Internet complicates the legal, ethical, business and regulatory issues when compared to other media. Given these complexities and infancy of Internet, Bush et al. in their study, traverse through these complex legal, ethical, business and regulatory issues for Internet at three levels viz., societal, industry and company.There are not many studies that have attempted to address the issue of marketers’ perception of regulation at societal level. The present study addresses the issue by invoking the following questions.
• Has the lack of regulation on the Internet resulted in frequent ethical abuses by organizations?
• Should the Internet be regulated to insure ethical marketing?

As underlined earlier, Internet has emerged as a great source for database building. It has also emerged as a great medium for providing detailed product information, which in turn has propelled Internet as a great medium for advertising. With these backdrop, Bush et al. have raised the question, What are the ethical issues facing the use of the Internet for marketing purposes? Considerable amount of research
has been done on how to create a more ethical climate within a marketing organization. However how does it apply to Internet is something very few studies have probed. Bush et al. under Internet ethics and the organization, have addressed the following issues;
• Are ethical issues related to marketing on the Internet basically the same as ethical issues raised with other forms of marketing in organizations?
• Do companies consider ethics when planning their Internet strategy?
• Should companies have or develop a code of ethics for Internet marketing?
• Are there differences in the way the advertising agencies and advertisers perceive ethical issues surrounding marketing on the Internet?

The above questions were asked to a sample of 1250 persons drawn from commercial mailing list of advertising agency and client organizations, representing marketing community in the US. The results of the investigation are quite interesting.

Majority of the marketing professionals who participated in the study are of the opinion that absence of Internet regulations has influenced ethical abuses. However, there was lack of consensus about regulation of Internet. At this point, the authors hint at the self-regulation, akin to American Advertising Association or Direct Marketing Associations.Large portion of the respondents have said that the ethics were rarely considered while making any Internet strategy. This is something disturbing. But the fact that majority of the respondents strongly feel that companies should have or develop a code of ethics for Internet marketing
to acquire some comfort. At a macro level, the paper questions the necessity for a separate code for Internet. Since, most of the organizations as part of corporate values already have some kind of standards that guide external and internal functions. The paper also raises the question of compliance to the
code of ethics as formulation of code of ethics is easier, but how does an organization ensure compliance is a difficult question to answer.

Conclusion
Though business is unsure of whether to regulate this new medium and if so how, the fact that a great need is felt to guarantee the present and potential customers for the security of the data provided would eventually push marketers towards better business practices. Researchers are of the view that individual organizations would take lead in addressing many of these societal and industrial issues surrounding Internet. Hopefully all these would make Internet a better medium to do business.

This paper is a research summary of the study conducted by Victoria D Bush, Beverly T Venable and Alan J Bush titled “Ethics and Marketing on the Internet: Practitioners’ Perception of Societal, Industry and Company concerns.” Compiled by Jayasimha and Braj Mohan Chaturvedi in 2003.

Relationship Marketing – Not a New Concept

Relationship Marketing – Not a New Concept

Industrialization changed the marketing structure but in a small form marketing based on relationship survived and re-emerged in late eighties and early nineties of last century. To be very precise symptoms of the change in marketing structure were witnessed in late 1970s. Berry1, however, was the first one to use and thereby establish the phrase Relationship Marketing. He defined Relationship Marketing as attracting, maintaining and – in multiservice organizations – enhancing customer relationships.

There are many small stories, which describe the importance of relationship in marketing. We here have discussed a few cases in the book but to start with we shall narrate one of the incidents that took place in Ranchi, India. Ranchi is a small industrial town in India where there was a small grocery shop; small by the standards of the new mega retail formats. Shop owner knows every one in the neighborhood by name, their birthday, and anniversary. Till late eighties he was doing good business but he started losing customers in early nineties, as first generation employees of Heavy Engineering Corporation Ltd. (HEC) , started moving to suburbs on retirement.

Rabindranath Choubey, an employee of HEC and a good friend of the shop owner, discussed the latter’s problems with him once. He was losing his customers and finding it difficult to win new customers. Choubey suggested him to take the trouble of making home deliveries. The gesture though small, made a difference to all his customers – old and new, who also enjoyed a regular discount from him. His establishment today has flourished and expanded but his relationship with all the customers is still cordial. Even today he knows the needs of each individual and his/her family. This form of relationship marketing existed since ages in all part of world. It is not a new concept and has existed since the beginning of business. Everything from shopping at grocery store to enjoying a British Airways services involves a certain element of relationship.

Origin of Relationship Marketing

The year 2050 – intelligent cameras on the facade of retail outlet read the eye-prints of passersby identify them and greet them by name, giving individualized offerings and inviting them to the mall. The sales representative at the door of outlet, taking advantage of the database shared by various merchandisers offers him shoes matching the trousers he bought last month from other shopping mall. Such is the extent to which marketing capabilities might evolve by the mid-twenty-first century but in reality, it is not feasible till date. The idea behind this hypothetical development however is old – to optimize customer profitability by delivering the right messages, to the right individual customers and develop a cordial relationship. Till the hypothetical situation comes out to be true we have to focus on the basics of relationship marketing.

It was always there

Pre-industrialization marketing practices were highly individualized, relationship oriented and customized. The design of clothes, jewelries, watches, home furnishings and other consumer products were customized. Since production, those days was primarily based on customer request and demand, it did not require push form of marketing activities. The beginning of industrialization could be seen as the end of personal relationship between producers and customers. Those were the days when producers were confronted with inventories piling up that forced companies to focus on aggressive selling.

Selling, as it matured distanced the manufacturers from their customers. This situation with passage of time polarized customers and manufacturers. Customers and manufacturers in industrialization era were acting in isolation, as there was no match in customers’ demand and manufacturers’ offerings.

Manufacturers, those days, were producing what best they could and customers were left with no other option but to buy those offerings. Industrialization resulted in mass production that increased the gap between the customers and the manufacturer. The advent of mass production and mass consumption during those times led the marketers to adopt a transactional approach of marketing.

In the later part of the industrialization era, certain important developments occurred, one being the marketer’s realization that repeat-purchase by customers was critical, making it necessary to build brand loyalty. The other significant change was the development of administered vertical marketing systems whereby marketers not only gained control over channels of distribution but developed effective barriers for their competitors. This reduced the gap between the producers from the customers. However, the emphasis remained on discrete transactions. Some firms, not content with such discrete transactions, began developing long-term contracts through suppliers and service, creating ongoing interactive relationships among themselves.

The change is also observed in various other industries viz. hospitality, automobile, aviation, education. It is obvious from the changes in these mammoth industries that the phenomenon of relationship marketing has not only helped small grocery stores but also organizations with huge marketing setup.

Relationship marketing is more of use to the organizations, which have grown in operation, and whose decision makers have moved farther from the front line. Developing and sustaining long lasting one-to-one cordial relationship for the decision makers, in such organizations becomes a distant concept. Hence the onus of sustaining relationships goes down to the front line managers. Moreover environmental and organizational development factors, rebirth of direct relationships between producers and consumers are few of the factors responsible for the shift in market structure. These factors are not only instrumental in the shift in the form of marketing but also in strengthening relationship marketing.

The other factors are:
Rapid technological advancements, especially in information technology
Increased role of information technology-based interactivity
Transformation of organizations and adoption of total quality programs
Empowerment of employees
Increase in competitive intensity that shifts the focus towards customer retention
Increasing emphasis on services and service aspects of products
Focus on financial accountability and ROI on marketing initiatives
Increased emphasis on loyalty and value management
Shifts in power and control within marketing systems
Decline of traditional mass marketing techniques
Increasing focus on price, as differentiation decreases
Development of fragmented, regional, and/or global markets

Benefits Relationship Marketing
The benefit relationship marketing offers has helped it gain popularity in the recent past as an approach to develop bonding with individual constituents of the value chain of a firm operating in an industry. Players, to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly cutthroat market condition are using it as a competitive marketing weapon. Marketers are increasingly using relationship as a tool of value creation and in the process they are involving customers for their real time views on product development, designing, pricing distribution etc. It is observed that in this era of Relationship Marketing, consumers are increasingly becoming co-designers and in few cases co-producers. Let us take the instance of Texas Instruments, which established dialogue with more than 30,000 high school teachers in developing its new TI-92 calculators. In one another classic case the FMCG giant Procter & Gamble deputed 20 of its employees to live and work at Wal-Mart’s headquarters to improve the speed of delivery and reduce the cost of supplying its goods to Wal-Mart’s stores. Although some experts refer to Relationship Marketing as ‘relational relationship marketing exchange’, the actions undertaken are not always for the purpose of exchange. The parties involved cooperate to share resources for joint value creation. In certain instances, the conversations taking place may not ultimately result in a monetary exchange but may bring greater benefits to the people involved in the process. More of such instances may be found in cases like Zeppelin, the German distributor of Caterpillar that caters to the individual needs of its customers and recommends preventive maintenance, Amazon.com that maintains databases on customer preference and pro-actively advises them on purchasing books and hotels like Holiday Inn that offers customized services to customers. Relationship marketing in a few other instances brings monitory benefit to the customer without diluting the manufacturer’s profitability.

Total Brand Management – An Introduction

In late 1990s, for unknown reasons, the word `brand’ suddenly became a verb. Headlines such as A Brand New World, Brands Bite Back, Branding God, and Branding Tall were attracting marketers.

However, branding as a phenomenon started way back in the 18th century, when the English artisan Josiah Wedgwood [1730-95] built the first modern business brand1. Wedgwood was able to stimulate demand for his more profitable tablewares and command premium price over comparable tableware and other products. Post-industrialization corporate world felt the need of branding. Companies across industries were trying out the best possible ways to brand their products.
Irrespective of the theories of the origin of branding and its evolution, academicians and marketers unanimously agree that in the beginning the market was commodity driven. Everything offered in the market was the base commodity – rice, lentil, sugar, coffee, tea, steel, plastic and a host of other basic items – that served our daily life purpose. But the customers were not happy with the base commodities and they wanted something else with which they could associate as the best product available in the market. It is natural tendency for the people to desire for newer products and also seek the best. This latent desire of possessing the best in the world could be seen as the driving force behind branding. Procter & Gamble [P&G] is one of the first companies to identify the latent desire of customers and address it.
In 1931, Neil McElroy, P&G’s marketing manager, devised specialized marketing strategies for each brand. In May 1931, Neil presented a three-page internal memo and argued that P&G should shift to brand-based management. This is how P&G’s brand management system was born. He rose to head P&G in 1948, and his memo became the guiding rule for companies, including P&G, to manage brands. The case “P&G’s Brand Management System” discusses P&G’s brand management system, its evolution and growth.
Seven decades since Neil presented his famous memo, the corporate world still abides by it. With increasing competition, the importance of branding has increased over the years and companies across industries globally are consistently looking for innovative ways to brand their products and services.
Importance of branding in the last two decades has increased in the light of realization that brand drives nearly two-thirds of customer purchases and impacts nearly every functional area of the business.2 Branding has gained prominence in market with the evolution of increasingly complex new business models, challenging organizations to revisit the brand-customer relationship.
Basics of Branding

Branding, for years, played an important role in establishing the product’s [in few cases even firm's] reputation in the marketplace, among customers, retailers and other market players. Today, it has become extremely important for management to attract attention of supply chain partners, media, the stock market, venture capitalist, and other investors.
Though the dimensions of branding and strategy of developing a successful brand have changed in recent years, the basics of brand remain unchanged. A brand needs well-defined brand architecture. It defines and structures the relationship among brands, the corporate entities, and families of products and services. The key drivers that affect brand architecture are – the pace of technological change, the ever-increasing channels of communication, and the growing sophistication in the way companies view brand equity and manage their brand development.
The brand architecture of an organization at any given point is based on a legacy of past management decisions and the competitive realities it faces in the marketplace. Brand architecture is the way in which companies organize, manage and market their brands. It is often seen as the external face of business strategy and must align with, and support, business goals and objectives. The success of brand architecture is also based on well-established brand position, brand image, brand personality, brand loyalty, brand strategy, brand activation and brand valuation.

Brand Positioning
The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already there in the mind of customers and to strengthen the connections that already exist. Positioning is an act of seeking, placing and optimizing something in relation to the competition in surrounding environment. For example, Volvo is synonymous with safety and Ivory Soap with purity.
The leader owns the high ground – the No.1 position in the prospective customer’s mind, the top rung of the product ladder. To move up the ladder, management must follow the rules of positioning. Basic qualities of brand positioning include: relevance, clarity, distinctiveness, coherence, commitment, patience, and courage3.
Relevance: Positioning of brand must focus on benefits that are important to people or reflect the character of the product.
Clarity: Brand should be positioned in such a way that it is easy to communicate and quick to comprehend.
Distinctiveness: In current market situation there are reasonably good number of players vying for a share in the market, forcing them to compete on the basis of price or promotion. To overcome such a situation, company needs to offer distinctiveness in its products or services.

Coherence: A brand should speak with one voice through all the elements of the marketing mix.
Commitment: Management should be committed to the position it has adopted. Once a position is adopted, it takes commitment to see it through.
Patience: Patience plays an important role in the success of brand as branding is not a one-day wonder – it takes years to position a brand in consumers’ mind.
Courage: Adopting a strong brand position requires courage as it is much easier to defend an appeal rather than generate sales pitch.
To achieve the benefits of brand positioning, it is necessary to identify the market position of the brand. Management must understand that not all brands, present in the market, are competitors. A consumer may be presented with a dozen brands and he may consider only three out of them as a purchasing choice.
Brand Identity
The journey of Malboro’s cowboy, the most valuable brand identity ever created, started years back with a name, logo and slogan, and developed trust and long-term brand equity. Brand identity is a unique set of associations that the brand strategist aspires to create or maintain. These associations represent what the brand should stand for and imply a potential promise to customers. It is marketers’ perspective of how to project brand publicly. Brand identity offers a point of differentiation. It is an attempt to make brand unique so that people readily identify what the brand stands for and what they are purchasing.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is a crucial goal and is a result of successful marketing programs, sales initiatives and product development efforts. Moreover, brand loyalty is the consumer’s conscious or unconscious decision, expressed through intention or behavior to repurchase a brand continually. It occurs because the consumer perceives that the brand offers the right product features, image, or level of quality at the right price. It is a strongly motivated and long standing decision to purchase a particular product or service.
Brand Extension
Brand extension is not a new phenomenon. It gained importance in the 1980s when more than half of the brands marketed were extensions of existing products that marketed under existing product names. The phenomenon of brand extension gained momentum with success of extensions like Diet Coke, Dove Haircare, Caterpillar Clothing & Footwear, Gillette Deodorant, and Mars Ice Cream. The 1990s were the heydays for brand extension. Eighty-one percent of new products [launched in market] were extensions.4 Brand extension is a strategy of using a successful brand name to launch a new or modified product in a new category.
Brand extension makes great sense to customers and companies. Firms use it as a tool to develop a positive association, and save promotional cost, while customers see it as delivery of the same emotional benefits in another category. For example, the famous soap brand, Dove, extended its presence to hair care. Lever Faberge launched a hair care variant of Dove in January 2002, supported by £ 35million campaign. At the end of three months period, it gained 10.3% share of shampoo market. The success of the Dove shampoo could be attributed to the fact that it piggybacked on the established brand Dove soap. By piggybacking on the Dove, Dove shampoo moved beyond the realm of functional product to the realm of values. Virgin started its journey as a music record shop and today it is a multi-product brand.

Brand Valuation
Nestlé took over Rowntree Macintosh by paying three times its market value. The purchase price was twenty-six times the earnings generated by Rowntree Macintosh. The reason behind such a deal was high brand valuation.
Brand value is closely associated with brand strength that is derived from brand identity, brand personality and brand image. Ford, for instance, paid Euro 6.2 billion for the Jaguar brand. The high brand value established by IBM, Nike, and GM can only be enjoyed by a company that enjoys brand identity and motivates consumers to accept a higher price, remain loyal to the brand, and recommend it to others. The case “Building Brand Equity in Wine Industry” discusses brand equity methods – dollarmetric approach, conjoint analysis and multiple regressions. It also explains entire process of branding in wine industry.
Total Brand Management
Brand in the new millennium is viewed as an asset, some of the Indian and global companies that take brand as an asset, viz., Kodak, BMW, Coca-Cola, and ICICI. Branding strategy in the new market structure has changed. Today, brand strategies may focus on three key dimensions: developing superior product through continuous innovation; creating, building, maintaining and delivering consumer values that cannot be matched by others; and emphasizing on strong positioning.
Branding in recent years has emerged as central to a company’s overall business strategy. It has taken the form of business systems and is no more proprietary to marketing managers. It has implications across functions and business processes and is central to a company’s overall business strategy. For companies to survive in the changed business scenario, total brand management is a must.
Total Brand Management can assume a variety of forms – brand extension beyond the actual product, well-crafted umbrella brand, and entire retail system as a brand. They also recommend that companies for success of total brand management must concentrate on three key activities:
Maximizing synergies across a coherent brand portfolio
Strengthening brand portfolio through innovation
Securing brand through close relationships with customers and trade.

Total brand management is a way to leverage success, expand marketshare, and drive down competition. Indeed, companies with established brands often penetrate markets or defend core markets.