PBL 1 Brand management

• What is brand management? 

1. The process of maintaining, improving, and upholding a brand so that the name is associated with positive results. 
2. Brand management involves a number of important aspects such as cost, customer satisfaction, in-store presentation, and competition. 
3. Brand management is built on a marketing foundation, but focuses directly on the brand and how that brand can remain favorable to customers. 
4. Proper brand management can result in higher sales of not only one product, but on other products associated with that brand. For example, if a customer loves Pillsbury biscuits and trust the brand, he or she is more likely to try other products offered by the company such as chocolate chip cookies.

(Brand management. BusinessDictionary.com. Retrieved August 21, 2018, from BusinessDictionary.com website: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/brand-management.html)

• What are the brand manager’s tasks and responsibilities?

1. Brand strategy, including the setting of style guides, brand guidelines, brand vision and value proposition for short as well as long term
2. Planning and execution of all communications and media actions on all channels, including online and social media
3. Assisting with product development, pricing and new product launches as well as developing new business opportunities
4. Creating and managing promotional collateral to establish and maintain product branding
5. Managing the budget for advertising and promotional items
6. Competitor and customer insights analysis
7. Analysis of sales forecasts and relevant financials and reporting on product sales

(The role of a brand manager. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.robertwalters.com.br/en/career-advice/the-role-of-a-brand-manager.html)

• What are the steps in the brand definition process?

We define a brand’s purpose, values, personality and positioning, and the most compelling reason for customer choice: the brand proposition. 

Step 1: Understanding & Discovery (purpose)

Every branding process should include some aspect of discovery. It’s not just important for a branding consultant or agency to better understand who you are, but it’s also for you to better understand who you are, even if you think you know.

How we talk and what we assume about ourselves is frequently very different from how our customers talk about us or what they know. And ultimately they are who will define your brand, we just want to help shape it in their minds.

In addition to customer research, the discovery stage may include conducting a brand audit to benchmark your current state; and examining your corporate history and culture, industry environment, competitor landscape, reason for being (mission), and plans for the future (vision). If you have strategic documents like a business plan or results of a customer satisfaction survey, you’ll have a leg up.

Stage 2: Articulating & Clarifying (Value & Personality)

This is where the data and context you’ve gathered gets distilled and turns into words and strategy to shape where the business is now and where it is you want to go. It’s where we try to articulate “squishy” things (like values and corporate personality attributes) into real words and strategic statements, refining the choice of words to make them the most accurate and powerful.

A well-defined personality make the product relatable on a personal level—customers connect on a visceral level and have to have your product in their lives.

One way to help define your personality is to think about archetypes.

Consider these popular brands and their counter-point archetypes.

• Apple: Hipster
• Taco Bell: Happy Court Jester
• Whole Foods: Health Nut

It’s where we look at all your audiences (not just customers) and figure out what’s important to them. And it’s where we tease out our competitive advantage.

(Lake, L. (n.d.). An Overview of Brand Identity and Steps to Defining Your Brand. Retrieved from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/define-your-brand-identity-2294834)

Stage 3: Positioning & Differentiating

Look at yourself in comparison to your competitors and define your unique value proposition: the description of the unique benefit you provide. It’s what sets you apart from the competition and guides your outreach through branding, marketing, and messaging.

An articulated value proposition, along with your other strategic statements, becomes a roadmap or “true north” to guide you in business decision-making and evaluating your future opportunities.

Stage 4: Identifying & Creating

This is the “fun” and creative stage of expressing your personality and positioning. It’s no wonder most people want to jump straight here without doing the introspective homework of brand strategy (Stages 1 through 3.) But without doing the homework, what is it based on? It’s likely just an esthetic exercise.

But with the articulation, positioning, and differentiation done and consensus on what the company or organization stands for, all of these creative assets can be that much more descriptive, powerful, and strategically aligned.

The logo becomes just the tip of the iceberg of deep meaning throughout the organization; the tagline expresses a significant point of your value proposition; and the visual style and copy voice and tone are all cohesive to your values and brand personality. Everything is working together now toward a common goal. And it’s possible that your new clarity reveals that, to be true to your brand and value proposition, you need to fine-tune or even redesign some of your products and services.

Stage 5: Applying & Extending

This is where the pedal hits the metal in building out and activating your new brand. Some of the obvious applications are designed deliverables like websites, signage, business cards, and packaging. However some of the most critical to the success of your business are things like shaping employee behavior and the actual customer experience. These are things that are only tangentially affected or enhanced by your logo and color choice, but hugely impacted by your earlier articulation of core values, personality attributes, and competitive advantage. Likewise, the messaging, strategy, and content of your brand identity likely play a more powerful role in shaping word-of-mouth, video, social media, and public relations than design or your logo will.

These five stages are each critical to building your final brand strategy and brand identity. Unfortunately, most people spend much more time on the last two stages and sometimes totally ignore the truly powerful and business-shaping aspects of Stages 1 through 3. When great strategy and articulation informs creativity, and when your value proposition and messaging are designed to benefit and resonate with your customers, the light bulbs really start to go on across the organization and with strategic partners. And more importantly, with customers.

(J. (2014, August 22). Basics of Branding. Retrieved from https://gistbrands.net/basic-guide-to-branding/)

• How does the brand manager work in cooperation with the company management, the employees and external consultants? (What are their roles?)     

1. Work with the commercial and shopper teams to identify local growth opportunities: develop support plans accordingly & initiate business case for new product launches.
2. Develop the communication and innovation plan for the company portfolio, including consumer and stakeholder’s communication, collaborating with local agencies, internal specialists, PAC as well as IMC teams.
3. Implement community marketing plans in close collaboration with the other functions in the Franchise marketing team (Experiential/ sampling, Media, Asset, Digital).
4. Work with the central Marketing teams on all IMC stills charters of current and future brands. Input knowledge of local needs and environment and ensure timely implementation of all IMC toolkits from the central marketing team.
5. Lead the local implementation and amplification plans to be validated by the Franchise Marketing Director and Central marketing team.

• Analyse the brand management of a chosen company.

1. Apple's brand position has evolved, but today's brand is still consistent with these early promises.Apple's core competence remains delivering exceptional customer experience through superb user interfaces. The distinctive feature of each of Apple Pay and Apple Watch remains the customer experience of an elegant user interface and simplicity of use.
2. The Apple Brand Personality
   Apple has a branding strategy that focuses on the emotions. The starting point is how an Apple product experience makes you feel. The Apple brand personality is about lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams and aspirations; and power-to-the-people through technology.
   The Apple brand personality is also about simplicity and the removal of complexity from people's lives; people-driven product design; and about being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.

3. Apple Brand Halo Effect

   Though Apple's iPhone and iTunes music business is profitable in its own right, Apple's venture into these product areas was based on a strategy of using the music business to help boost the appeal of Apple's computing business.

   
   

   In a so-called iPod halo effect, Apple used popularity of iPod and iTunes among these new groups of customers to boost these segments' interest in Apple's computer products. Since the take-off of the iPod there has been a dramatic rise in Apple's computer sales and market share.

   
   

   Apple is employing the halo effect in its Apple Mac product strategy.

   
   

   From mid-2012 onwards, OS X (now macOS) incorporated many small changes to the Mac user interface that make the Mac's style of use much more like the iPad and iOS. By introducing such changes , Apple has clearly decided that greater volumes of Apple Mac can be sold through selling to iPad (or iPhone) users than can be generated by upgrade sales to long-term Mac users.

   
   

   Apple Re-entering the Corporate Market via the iPhone and iPad Halo Effect

   
   

   In recent years a large part of Apple's strategy seems focused on the Corporate marketplace. The company is careful to maintain its brand values as it engages with corporations:  it positions itself as facilitating the use of the individual's devices of choice (primarily iPads and iPhones) in the corporate world so that businesses can innovate and develop new ways of doing business and improving the world around them.

   
   

   (Apple's Branding Strategy. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.marketingminds.com.au/apple_branding_strategy.html)