Chapter 7 : Importance of secondary association for enhancing brand equity.

Creating a strong brand is not enough for the companies, but at the same time companies need to leverage it with some external associations. The possible outcome of secondary association is that they generate greater loyalty. Companies can create a substantial competitive advantage through these strategies. The main purpose of using these associations is to create a new brand association.

The first kind of association is people where you endorse your brand through celebrities and sports personalities. The best example is Rolex and Roger Federer. Since an elite watch company is endorsed by a sports person, as Wimbledon is an elite event where top-notch celebrity and royal families come to see this sports. So  Rolex has created an association with this sport.

 The second type of association is through things, events are the first type where you do public relation and organize events like charities. The second type is the third-party endorsements. Where you get yourself endorsed by an external third party to gain more trust, for example, Bahria University is endorsed by Higher education commission of Pakistan.

The third type is Places, where we endorse our product by using the name of the country or the origin of that product. For example, Loreal Paris, the major emphasis is on Paris because of its fashion and cosmetic heritage. Plus you can advertise a country by endorsing its place or a monument. When I talk about Eiffel tower, the first place comes to your mind is Paris and same goes with Statue of Liberty, we can easily recall New York.

One of the most common ways to endorse your brand is co-branding. This concept holds a good position in today's market as well. In this concept, we actually make a small duration partnership with two companies. Sony and Ericson, two different companies combined there resources and expertise for some amount of time and developed a new product, Sony Ericson. Why companies do Co-branding?. The main reasons are they needed some expertise from the other brand. More market expansion, Reduce the cost of production and combined marketing with both names combined create a huge impact. But it is not that easy as it sounds, co-branding has their de-merits as well, for example, loss of control of the power between both entities or the ambiguities of profit sharing

A special case of co-branding is the ingredient branding where a certain part is installed and is marketed with the brand. For example, Intel and Centrino created a mobile technology which was installed in PCs.

Chapter 6 : Integrated Marketing Communications

This chapter talks about creating and using Integrated marketing communications. But first, we should know about marketing communication. The main purpose is to inform, persuade and give your customer a nudging reminder about your product and services.
IMC is basically a technique where you combine different tools of communication and find the optimal mix so that your desired message can easily reach to your target market. In the previous chapter, we had discussed digitalization, so mainstream marketing techniques are cliché and companies are using digital marketing as their primary source of communication.

The first and the most renowned tool of IMC is the advertisement. The vital element which differentiates advertising from the promotion is in advertisement sponsor is identified. The controversy and the limitation of advertisement is that its effects cannot be quantified. For example, I poured 100,000 rupees on one advert, I don’t know whether and when my investment on this ad will give me revenues. Normally people see the ad and do not buy the product.

For Ideal ad campaign, your ad should be displayed at the right time to the right audience. For example, food ads before lunch and dinner. While creating an ad, make sure your product is not undermined by any celebrity or an endorser. Your ad should be easy to interpret and the customer can actually understand the intended message in it. In the end, your ad should not be only for awareness but its goal should be to make a sale. The strategies of advertisement are ATL, BTL, and TTL.

Sales promotion is a short-term tool in IMC, where you go trail of your product outside malls and stadiums. Kanas, a brand of Tehzeeb foods, when it was launched they put sales promotions in Safa Mall, Chilman restaurant and every outlet of Tehzeeb bakery.  Sales promotion are of two types; Consumer promotion, the scenario mentioned above and Trade promotions its basically b2b.

Event marketing and sponsorship is basically where companies try to create a good image out of themselves. Pakistan Tobacco company is banned from doing advertisement, so they arrange Golf Tournaments to have a good exposure for their customers. Redbull arranges sporty events and tries to endorse their brand using sports activities and celebrities.

Public relations and publicity, a concept which is synonymous to a layman person, yet they are poles apart. Public relation, a concept where companies try to defend their image by showing the positive side only. Press conferences and press releases are few tactics of public relations.  On the other hand, publicity is dual in nature where it can be positive or negative. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy recently put a publicity stunt to get on the trending list, same goes with Misha Shafi and Ali Zafar’s using #metoo as a publicity stunt.

Marketing communication guidelines are critically important for companies because it helps them to develop their optimal marketing communication strategy. We will start with, you have to be analytical and deeply understand the consumer behavior model. Since everyone is different from each other so your managerial decision should develop a well-executed and researched communication strategy.
Only one-time value is not enough for your customer, you need to be curious about their changing need and demands, keeping your strategy aligned with market trends and competitors.  You cannot reach and customize your ads to the whole population.
Be single-minded and focus on your actual target market rather than focusing the whole mass. You have to be integrative which means you have to be consistent and keep reinforcing your message to your target audience. Showing one-time ad is not enough you need to keep showing them again and again until it jumps to the recall point in your brain.
Break the clutter and be creative, because a creative ad can easily be remembered because it has the element of uniqueness in it.
Observe your competitors and see what they are doing, how customers are responding to their strategies. Keeping the budget in mind, be realistic about which tool should be used and when. Lastly, be patient and trust your communication strategies. Success won’t come overnight.

Chapter 5: Marketing programs: Types of Personalize Marketing.

Marketing paradigms and parameters have changed with the passage of time. Companies are changing their marketing tactics and strategies. Through the concept of digitalization and more connectivity, the world is now shrunk due to the internet and companies are doing businesses offshore. In Pakistan, some of the U.S based companies are working because of cheap labor and fewer taxes.
Digitalization has prevailed so much that companies are now interacting with the customer directly and excluding the middleman. For example, Bahria University wants to buy Hp laptops for the faculty, they will directly contact the manufacturer rather than involving vendors and distributors. But again re-intermediaries ensure trust. E-BAY, a customer to customer e-commerce portal included Paypal, a digital bank, which ensure trust between both customers. Through digitalization, two concepts also evolved customization (you can alter a product through some extent) and customerization (where the customer can modify the whole product to his limits, for example, tailor suits or customized cakes).

The market is cluttered with non-sense ideas and conservative techniques. Firms are using a lot of "out-of-box" techniques to capture the attention of their potential customer in a very unique way. The customer wants the ownership of the products.
Remember the Global campaign by Coca-Cola “share a coke” where different names were labeled in their packaging. This was the concept of mass customization and customer felt the ownership. Because that is how you create a relationship with your customer.

Experiential marketing, a concept with a boom in the industry, talks about create an ultimate experience for the customer that they will never ever forget about it. London Olympics 2012, Samsung installed their stalls outside the stadium and they displayed their latest mobile phones so that people can experience the product before their purchase.

One to one marketing is basically you engage the customer to create value for your product. You interact with them in an individual level and engage them. But for good engagement, you first need to identify your prospect customer and treat them individually. The second step is differentiating them by segmenting them in their belonging class. Interact with them in an efficient manner and try talking to them about their need and wants. Customize their need and behavior according to your firm’s requirement and try to create value. Lastly, build a strong and everlasting relationship with your customer and try to make him your brand evangelist.

Guerilla marketing, again a new way of marketing where you advertise your product in an unconventional way where normally people were not expecting it. Like Colgate partnerships with a local ice-cream manufacturer to have their sticks shaped like toothbrush so that children can remember they have to brush their teeth after having this ice-cream.

One of the most important technique is Permission marketing, a concept given by Seth Godin. He talks about not to irritate or invade customer’s privacy and stop doing interruptive marketing. His major focus was on to develop a deep and meaningful relationship with the customers. He said we need to engage and encourage the customer to participate in a long-term marketing campaign and the customer will be given some sort of reward for it. Reward or compensation is compulsory because it can enhance the level of concentration of your customers. Permission marketing revolves around to offer an incentive to your customer so that he can concentrate on your brand. Make him understand your product. Keep giving him incentive so that his concentration level is maintained. Lastly, once his concentration is permanent, change it into sales and earn profit through it.

Retailers are customers too. Since retailer is the middleman between company and customer. The cooperative advertisement is a partnership between retailers and the company. You have seen multiple time Coca-Cola fridge in a small retail store and with their main board (brand name) you can see Coca-Cola’s name with it.

Chapter 4 : Brand Element : Choose your brand elements wisely.

In this chapter we will be discussing about brand element and the criteria of selecting brand elements. The worth of apple logo is  $39.9 billion, this worth is not created overnight. A team of well-established logo architects and designers put their mind in the creation of this logo. But again logo is a brand element, but to select this brand element we need to see the criteria’s as well. Keller defines criteria of selecting brand elements as the selective filter which is applied on each brand element. He categorized these criteria under 6 filter.

1) Memorability (Your brand element should be attention grasping and can be easily identified, for example, Mcdonalds, A big yellow “M” can be spotted miles before and can easily trigger recall and recognition.
2) Meaningfulness (brand element should be meaningful in terms of detail description of your product and benefits. Like Fair and lovely, they describe their product as a whitening cream and they put challenge in their advertisement that in just 10 days you will have fairer skin.
3) Likeability (Your brand should be aesthetically sound and appealing. Color combination used in the creation of any elements creates a big difference. See which color and design have associated feelings with your brand.
4) Transferability (You cannot stick with your brand with only one product, for more profits companies diversify their portfolio. Your brand name, logo and other elements should be made in a way that they can be easily transfer to other products in your portfolio.
5) Adaptability (Again very important because you need to adapt and adopt your brand elements with the taste and culture of your target market and continuously try to improve your brand elements by keeping in mind the element of technology.
6) Protectability (Select the brand elements which can be protected internationally in terms of copyrights and trademarks. In Pakistan, we register our company and brand under the umbrella of SECP (security exchange commission of Pakistan).

Moving towards the tactics of brand elements. These tactics are made and developed by the above-mentioned criteria’s.
The first tactic is selecting the Brand name. Since it is not easy to select a brand name. There are certain criteria’s which needs to be fulfilled like it should define your objectives, through these objectives, generate a list of brand names, screen them out on the bases of favorability and then research the final candidate nationally and internationally as well. 
Second is URL (uniform resource locator) a web name for your digital campaigns like Daraz.pk, where Daraz means closet. People normally put logo and symbol under one category, but yet they are poles apart.
A logo is a term derived from logotype which is the written part and symbol is graphics part, for example, Starbucks (the written part is the logo and the naked siren is the symbol).
Characters are the symbolic and rememberable personalities associated with a brand for e.g. Colonel Sanders of KFC, Reynold McDonalds of McDonald's.
Packaging is an important brand element because it can influence the taste (orange juice), it can change the buying behavior (orange juice as a normal drink).  And Lastly, Slogan and Taglines, the difference between both of them is slogan is for a short marketing campaign and tagline is for the company and it remains constant forever.

Why positioning is vital for companies : a case of TATA Nano.

This chapter talks about how and why positioning of a certain brand is critically important. Normally, we define positioning as the placement of a brand in consumer's mind. But it is not an easy task to do so.
Let's discuss a case about TATA Nano, a revolutionary car which was launched by TATA group in mid-2000's in India. The car was a small compressed hatchback with a 624 cc engine in it and it was priced just above iPhone. By the looks of it, it was a good value for money but yet, it was a failed product. The reason behind its failure was its positioning statement. They advertised their car with a statement “worlds cheapest car”, the word “cheapest” was its demise. People usually see this word as a negative connotation. That was the main reason behind its downfall. Customers will position negatively if there is a negative feeling in your statement.

For this, companies need to develop a competitive frame of reference. A framework which is renowned among all the marketers. For this, you need to identify your potential target market, whether you will be targeting the niche or going for undifferentiated selection of people.
Secondly, you need to focus on who are your direct and indirect competitors.  For example, if you are in a clothing business, so your direct competitors will be Khaadi or Sana Safinaz but your indirect competitors will be Hyperstar as well because they also sell clothes.
Thirdly, you have to focus on Point of parities (similarities) like to be in a category you need to have some sort of similarities among your competitors but at the same time, you also need to have differences (USP).

Brand mantra, a strategy made by companies to identify what a customer should feel about their brand. It is the mixture of both heart and soul. The sole purpose of this strategy is to have a good positioning in a consumers mind. There are three considerations regarding brand mantra: Communicate, simplify, and inspire. The three criteria or domains of this theory are Emotional modifier (feelings), Descriptive modifier (who is our target market) and lastly, Brand function (Nature of your product). For example, Nike brand mantra is (EM is Authentic), (DM is Athletic) and (BF is Performance).

A Brand audit is a phenomenon which tells us about the health of a brand. It consists of two parts, brand inventory, and brand exploratory. In the brand inventory, we discuss how to position our brand. The tools which are required in brand inventory are, creating a good brand element for e.g. Logo, slogan, taglines, jingles. Secondly, Create a good strategy for your IMC. Develop your direct competitor’s profiles and see how they are developing and using their business model. And lastly, focus on the creation of innovative brand mantra. Brand exploratory tells us how to develop your CBBE model and how the consumer will perceive your brand on the basis of brand awareness, favorability, and Unique associations.

Brand Management : Consumer based brand equity : Chapter 2

Consumer-based brand equity, a concept which is undermined by many researchers and academicians. Normally companies focus is to create brand equity to get maximum profits and gain sustainable future revenues. Kavin lane Keller, put emphasis that equity is derived from the customer and it is for the customers. He defined Consumer-based brand equity as a differential effect, it can be a USP for the customers or a unique way to showcased your brand, that a brand knowledge has on consumer response.

The consumer should be treated like your wife. You have to take care of them whether you like it or not. Brand knowledge is a concept where a consumer thinks or feels about a particular brand. They are the brand nodes which are linked to your brain. It has two components, firstly, brand awareness and brand image. Lastly, consumer response is how often a consumer can recall your brand when it is needed in a particular situation.

The concept of brand equity as a bridge basically shows that your past investment in a brand was not your expenses. Because revenues won’t come overnight and you need to have the stamina to bear losses for sometimes. So when you invest in something wait a while so that it can bring some profits in future.

He further put emphasis on how to create a strong brand. Firstly, you need to create a good positioning out of your brand so that consumer can easily recall good points. Secondly, A good brand meaning mean how much are you creating a value for the customers. Furthermore, through your positioning and brand meaning, drive a good consumer response and lastly convert that response into a set of good loyalty and strengthen your relationship with them.

Moving towards the most important part of this chapter which consumer-based brand equity model. The anatomy of this model is in a pyramid shape which shows that if the first level is not cleared, you can’t jump up to next stage.
The first part is a salience which tells the basic things about the brand. The two components of salience are depth (ease of recall and recognition) and breath (how and when you purchase) of a brand. In short, salience tells us about the category identification of brand. Moving up the ladder we see imagery and performance.
Imagery talks about the heritage of a brand, the experiences which are associated with a brand. And what is the purchase and usage situation of a brand.
Adjacent to it is the performance which includes features and primary characteristics of a brand. It talks about how durable and authentic a brand is.
Climbing up we can further see two adjacently marked domains. First is Feeling, which is right above the imagery part, shows that what kind of feeling a customer had when they buy your brand. Adjacent to it is Judgment part, which elaborates the quality and superiority of brand. And at the top of this, we can see the brand resonance part or the loyalty part.
This model is dissected from the middle in a way that imagery and feeling are on the right side and performance and judgment are on the left side. So that right side is the emotional part and the left side is the rational part of this model. When we combine both emotional and rational part of our body, we get loyalty.

Lastly, we will be focusing on brand building implications where will discuss what should brand do to have an optimal positioning. Firstly, consumers buy brands, not products. So they practically own the brand. Don’t ever take shortcuts with your brand, because your ultimate goal should be on the creation of loyalty and it won’t come overnight. Brand should provide value and should have a part of augmentation in it as well. It should have duality means, a brand should trigger your mind as well as your heart

Brand Management : Chapter 1

This chapter talks about what is brand management and what is branding. The historical story tells us about branding is that there were multiple farms located in one facility and when all the owners open their herds of cattle, when they come back they couldn't recognize which one was theirs. They got an idea where they make a symbol at the end of an iron rod and burnt stabbed them at their back. This can easily tell which animal was theirs. From this concept, the world picks out the concept of branding. So what is branding?, It can be a term (name), symbol, sign, color, or anything else which separates your product/service from your competitor's product or service.

So ultimately, companies should focus on creating a sold brand equity by giving them value. Aaker defined brand equity as a some of assets and liabilities associated with a current brand.

Theodore Levitt talks about the intensity of the competition. He said the real competition is not what the companies are creating in their factories but the competition lies in the augmentation in terms of packaging, add extra service and creating a mix to create a decent amount of value for the customer. The other theory which he put emphasis was on Market Myopia. A concept, where companies become profit centric and forget about their customer's actual needs and want. They don't innovate themselves and lack behind in the fierce competition. This is what happened to Nokia and Kodak.

Another famous example regarding branding is given by John Stuart, a former CEO of Quaker Oats. He said to take whatever you want from my company, my assets, my team, my resources, but I would not give you my brand name. To create a solid brand name you need to put every single smidge of your blood to make that brand popular and recognizable. But one silly mistake can ruin your brand name as well.

Importance of brand to Customers is very important because brand name gives the source of the product and can enhance trust. Ultimately, it reduces the risk for e.g. would you ever buy a bottle of water with no label, no name, no description and no brand sticker. Probably, the answer would be no because you can't risk your life with no authentication from the product.
Importance of brands to the firm talks about the legal property, influence consumers to buy your products and lastly, the most important factor is future sustainable revenues. One thing should be very understandable is that companies always think of themselves. They don't think about customers, they have to create value so that they can sustain in a market and consumer can buy their product. So all they think of is the profits.

The source of the brand strength lies in two phenomena, vision, and will. Some people have the vision that they can make a change in the world and they can do that and this, but they lack Will. Contrary people have the will to make a change but they don't have the vision to accomplish that thing. So both phenomena should be working with each other so that success can be achieved.