Brand report card

1. BRAND
REPORT CARD
by Hari Prasath

2. Brand equity has received a lot of attention
from the managers from all kind of brand.
Be it consumer or service or local or
international, brand managers have realized
the importance of brand in overall success.
Strong equity leads to superior market
performance.
Brand equity generates much desired
marketing outcomes like price premium,
loyalty and profit.

3. What do strong brands do in common....?
Kevin Lane Keller suggest that the
world’s strongest brands share 10
characteristics.
Not all managers are able to assess
their brands objectively.
They have good understanding of one
or two areas of brand’s strength and
weakness, but not all.

4. With a partial knowledge of a brand’s area
of excellence or weakness, a complete and
comprehensive response is difficult to develop.
With the partial picture in mind, many areas
of brand go uncared for, often causing serious
damage to brand equity.
On the basis of the attributes shared by the
world’s top brands, a report card could be
constructed.
A brand score card can be used for analyzing
a company’s brand for generating a relative
picture and developing appropriate strategic
response.

5. Ten attributes shared by the World’s Top Brands are:
•Excellent Delivery of desired Benefits.
•Staying relevant.
•Pricing reflect values.
•Proper positioning.
•Consistency.
•Brand portfolio and Hierarchy.
•Coordinated support of all marketing activities.
•Understand Brand Meaning.
•Long-term support.
•Monitoring source of equity.

6. 1.Excellent Delivery of desired Benefits:
Customers are drawn to a product for the total package it
delivers. A product is much more than a simple collection of
attributes.
The package of a product includes offers along with other
elements like Brand image, service and other tangible and
intangible factors.
Eg:-Starbucks is not simply cup of coffee. It is much more.
It is experience for the five senses, which includes ,Aroma of
coffee beans , Rich taste ,Sight of art work ,Background
music and clean feel of table and chairs.
Strong brands offer an excellent product package to
deliver benefit s that customer want.

7. 2.Staying relevant.
Strong brands changes with times and evolve both their
intangible and tangible aspects in line with the change in
environment.
This is how brands maintain relevance.
The products of the strong brand remain the cutting edge of
the product area.
As the technology progresses, these brands do not allow the
product to be left behind.
The intangible side of the brand is constantly monitored to fit
the mood of the times.
Changes are bought in the users imager, usage imagery,
personality, engendered feeling and the relationship brand
seeks to develop with its customers.

8.  For instance:-
GILLETE is probably the strong brand in the
razor blade category worldwide.
This brand’s product has been evolving with the time
Sensor, sensor Excel, creates image
Feelings and relationship associations to match the
aspiration of the target customers.

9. 3.Pricing reflect values:-
Strong brands enjoy a perception of good value that
match the customer expectation. But it is not so easy
to achieve.
It require perfect balancing between the product
quality, image, and the features on the other hand and
customer cost and price on the other..
Firms often pack to much for too low price, thereby the
hurting bottom-line. Or some times, they seems to
offer too less for too high price.
Strong brand’s price is based on an accurate perception
of how customers view price and value.

10. 4. Proper positioning:-
Proper positioning in the customer’s mind is
essential for brand to be successful. Strong brands
enjoy distinct positions.
They achieve points of parity with composition in
their areas of advantage and create points of
difference to gain advantages over them.
Brands like Sony and Mercedes match competing
brands to superiority of those competitors in their
area of advantage in the area of product superiority
over competitors to gain difference.
Eg:- HARLEY DAVIDSON &
CALVIN KLEVIN

11. 5.Consistency:-
• Brands have to strike a right balance between change
and continuity. Strong brands achieve preciously that.
• They maintain continuity in their marketing activity, yet
execute change to stay relevant with times.
• Frequent and uncalculated changes can create confusion
and soil image.
• A strong brands like MICHELOB lost ground when it was
promoted using campaigns that left the customer
confused.
• There is no consistency…………… only confusion.

12. 6.Brand portfolio and Hierarchy:-
Most firms evolve into multi-product and multi-brand
business. When a firm has many brands
in its portfolio, each brand bearing with its
name can add to or dilute its equity.
It is for the reason that brands in the company
portfolio must form a pattern to strength
equity.
Firms often dent their equity by creating
conflicting brand structure.

13. There are different brand
strategies:
One brand for all offering [ NIRMA ]
Different brand for different segment
[ peter England]
Different brand in one line[ P&G, H&S]
Brands with corporate endorsement[Maruti]

14. Confusion brand hierarchy and portfolio create confusion
and hurt equity.
For instance:- GM’s branding that rightly started with the
proposition of “ a car for every purse and purpose”.
Thus led to creating a various divisions like:
Cadillac
Buick
Pontiac
Oldsmobile
Chevrolet. But later these lines grew to overlap each other
and marketing began to send confusion signals. This way
the brand suffered a huge loss of equity

15. 7.Coordinated support of all marketing
activities:-
Strong brands are not created out of the support on one or
two marketing activities.
Instead they make use of all marketing activity to perform
well out roles in the branding effort.
At the basic level, branding elements like logos, symbols,
slogans, packaging are coordinated to create awareness and
the desired image.
The marketing mix elements provide product information;
they provide product usage and functions, cultivate user
associations, leverage Advertisement to generate “Pull” and
employ sales promotion to promote brand in the channels.

16. 8.Understand Brand Meaning:-
Managers create strong brands by undertaking,
conscious, deliberate brand building effort.
This requires comprehensive understanding of
what customers think and feel about their
brands.
What belief, images, attitude, and behavior are
associated with the brands? What forms the core
of the brands and what is like and dislike.
This way mangers can assess the potential
effect of their decision on the equity of the
brands.

17. Bic pioneered the concept of disposable
inexpensive pens, razors and lighters.
The brand suffered when it used the same
strategy to market perfumes in the U.S and
Europe.
Singer a powerful sewing machine in India,
ventured to market televisions, only to experience
failure.
But Singer was too closely linked to sewing
machine and over three generation of exclusive
association of the name “Singer” with sewing
machines apparently shut out all possibilities of
hasty brand extension.
Even their kitchen gadgets are not doing well.

18. 9.Long-term support:-

Building equity required careful attention and
management of issues that create strong brands.

Two things are essential.
1st Brand awareness
2nd Brand image.

To began with, a brand must have depth and
breadth of awareness. It should be topped off with
images, consisting of strong, favorable and unique
associations.

Often brand equity suffers when managers over-invest
in peripheral aspects of brand and ignore
the vital aspect.

19. 10.Monitoring source of equity:-
 Brands operate in a dynamic environment.
They are exposed to customers and competitor
changes.

This necessitates monitoring the source of
equity.

Accordingly, a strong brand deploys variety of
measures to measures its health.

This includes brand audit and brand tracking
studies.

The internal studies reveal how the brand has
been marketing.

20.  The external studies are aimed at capturing the
brand image and meaning that resides in the mind of
customers.

A brand’s strength lies in the mind of the customers.

Brand knowledge installed in their minds is the
foundation of the brand equity.

The ten attributes framework draws attention
to specific area where managers must seek to
performance. Sometimes it is not easy.

Improving performance in one area may
potentially decrease performance in others.

21. Thanking
u
For being with me.