Strategic Brand Management Insights: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity

1. CHAPTER 15: CLOSING OBSERVATIONS Lecture 29

2. Brand Knowledge Structure • Brand awareness, depth, and breadth • Brand associations

3. Summary of Customer-Based Brand Equity Framework • Sources of brand equity • Strength • Favorability • Uniqueness • Outcomes of brand equity • Greater loyalty • Less vulnerability to competitive marketing actions • Less vulnerability to marketing crises • Larger margins • More inelastic consumer response to price increases • More elastic consumer response to price decreases • Greater trade cooperation and support • Increased marketing communication effectiveness • Possible licensing opportunities • Additional brand extension opportunities

4. Tactical Guidelines • Building brand equity • Through the initial choice of the brand elements making up the brand • Through marketing activities and the design of the marketing program • Through the leverage of secondary associations that link the brand to other entities

5. Guidelines for Building Brand Equity • Mix and match brand elements • Create a rich brand image and high perceived quality • Adopt value-based pricing strategy • Consider a range of distribution options • Mix marketing communication options • Leverage secondary associations

6. Importance of Complementarity and Consistency • Complementarity means choosing different brand elements and supporting marketing activities so that the potential contribution to brand equity of one compensates for the shortcomings of others. • A high degree of consistency across these elements helps to create the highest level of awareness and the strongest and most favorable associations possible.

7. Guidelines for Measuring Brand Equity • Formalize the firm’s view of brand equity • Conduct brand inventories • Conduct consumer tracking studies • Assemble results of outcome measures • Establish a department to oversee the implementation

8. Guidelines for Managing Brand Equity • Define brand hierarchy • Create global associations • Introduce brand extensions • Clearly establish the roles of brands in the portfolio • Reinforce brand equity over time • Enhance brand equity over time • Identify differences in consumer behavior in different market segments

9. Characteristics of Strong Brands Managers • Understand brand meaning and market appropriate products in an appropriate manner • Properly position the brand • Provide superior delivery of desired benefits • Employ a full range of complementary brand elements and supporting marketing activities • Embrace integrated marketing communications and communicate with a consistent voice • Measure consumer perceptions of value and develop a pricing strategy accordingly • Establish credibility and appropriate brand personality and imagery • Maintain innovation and relevance for the brand • Strategically design and implement a brand hierarchy and brand portfolio • Implement a brand equity management system to ensure that marketing actions properly reflect the brand equity concept

10. Seven Deadly Sins of Brand Management • Failure to understand the full meaning of the brand • Failure to live up to the brand promise • Failure to adequately support the brand • Failure to be patient with the brand • Failure to adequately control the brand • Failure to properly balance consistency and change with the brand • Failure to understand complexity of brand equity measurement and management

11. Industrial and B2B Branding • Adopt a corporate or family branding strategy • Link non-product-related imagery associations • Employ full range of marketing communication options • Leverage equity of other companies that are customers • Segment markets carefully and develop tailored branding and marketing programs

12. Guidelines for High-Tech Branding • Establish brand awareness and rich brand image • Create corporate credibility associations • Leverage secondary associations of quality • Avoid overbranding products • Selectively introduce new products as new brands and clearly identify the nature of brand extensions

13. Guidelines for Service Branding • Maximize service quality • Employ a full range of brand elements to enhance brand recall • Create and communicate strong organizational associations • Design corporate communication programs that augment consumers’ service encounters and experiences • Establish a brand hierarchy using distinct family or individual brands as well as meaningful ingredient brands

14. Guidelines for Branding Retailers • Create a brand hierarchy consisting of the store as a whole as well as individual departments • Enhance the manufacturer’s brand equity by communicating PODs • Establish brand equity at all levels of the brand hierarchy • Create multichannel shopping experience • Avoid overbranding

15. Guidelines for Small Business Branding • Emphasize building one or two strong brands • Focus the marketing program on one or two key associations • Employ a well-integrated set of brand elements that enhances both brand awareness and image • Design creative brand-building push campaigns • Leverage as many secondary associations as possible

16. Guidelines for Online Branding • Don’t forget the brand building basics • Create strong brand identity • Generate strong consumer pull • Selectively choose brand partnerships • Maximize relationship marketing

17. Future Brand Priorities • How will branding change in the coming years? What are the biggest branding challenges? What will make a successful “twenty-first-century brand”?

18. Building Brand Equity • Brand elements • In a cluttered, competitive marketplace, the brand elements that make up the brand will have to do more and more of the selling job. • Marketing programs • Strong brands in the twenty-first century also will rise above others by better understanding the needs, wants, and desires of consumers and creating marketing programs that fulfill and even surpass consumer expectations.

19. Measuring Brand Equity • Marketers of successful twenty-first-century brands will create formalized measurement approaches and processes that ensure they continually monitor their sources of brand equity and those of competitors.

20. Managing Brand Equity • It will be essential in building strong twenty-first-century brands to align internal and external brand management. • Internal brand management ensures that employees and marketing partners appreciate and understand basic branding notions and how they can affect the equity of brands. • External brand management requires understanding the needs, wants, and desires of consumers and creating brand marketing programs that fulfill and even surpass consumer expectations. • Companies must also align bottom-up and top-down marketing management .

21. Achieving Marketing Balance • The most fundamental challenge of marketing and brand management is reconciling the many potential trade-offs in marketing decisions • There are three means or levels of achieving marketing balance, in increasing order of potential effectiveness: • Alternate • Divide • Finesse