Strategic Brand Management - The Beginner's Guide

Branding as a process is more than just designing a logo and having a catchy brand name. A branding strategy in most cases can make or break your business. Your branding strategy should involve steps to find differentiating factors between your product's promise and its advantages over that of your competitors.   It involves creating a brand message which is not only the Holy Bible for the company, but also involves communicating this message across to your consumers through advertising and promotions. Having a successful branding strategy ensures a steady growth in loyal customers and thereby translates into growth in financial returns in the long run. Below are some tips at how to formulate a good branding strategy, being a start-up. 1.      Do an exhaustive preliminary research Before you get started on creating your branding strategy, you first need to research about your target market, your competitors, their market share and the pro...

Powerful brands don’t just get created overnight. They need careful long-term planning, assessment and execution of an up-to date branding strategy. A powerful branding strategy influences the way in which your consumers think and in turn respond to your brand. Here are ten tips on how to build and communicate a good branding strategy for your business: 1.   Identify and analyze the differentiators and advantages your brand has over your competitors . The first step for a business is to identify your key strengths. Then determine the potential competitors through various internal and external researches and target-market analysis. Then list and analyze their advantages and the key features over your products and services. This will help you to get an insight about your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, how the target market perceives your competitor and the competitors’ relevance to your target segments. 2.      Evaluate yo...

Price is an important element from a brand’s point of view for building brand equity. Brands set the price of a product depending on three factors: i) the cost of production, ii) competitor’s pricing strategy, and iii) the consumer’s perception of the value of the product. What is Consumer price perception? Consumer price perception theory states that, consumers already have a predefined price range (a minimum value and a maximum value) for any product category, which is acceptable to them for purchasing a certain product. The consumers tend to correlate the quality of this product with the price of the product in the price band. Where, the price of the product is at the lower end of the price range or price band, the consumer assumes it to be of a lower quality. Whereas, if the price is at the higher end of the price band, he/ she equates it to be of superior quality. Hence you find several companies such as Procter and Gamble, Unilever Ltd., Volkswagen and...

Introduction In india, celebrities are not treated as mere mortals, they're Idolized, especially the ones from the fields of Cricket and Bollywood. Hence in India, brands go out of their way to associate themselves with such celebrities. No wonder nearly 50% of the ads in India feature a celebrity endorser. Below are some answers to the basic questions that a brand manager might come across when it comes celebrity endorsements for the brand. Why does a brand need a celebrity? Can I do without celebrity? Currently, in every category in any given market, be it urban, semi-literate or non-urban, there's a very high proliferation of local, regional and international brands, who are jostling for space, fighting to get one-up over its competitors. At such times, celebrity-brand association provides the brand to: Break the clutter, stand out visually and create a distinct differentiation Enhance or change a brand's existing positioning Gain fresh equity, credibility or ...

Diverting a bit from the usual subject that my blog usually deals with, I really wanted to cover some of the interesting social media campaigns that I read about on the web in the year 2013. Though not necessarily in any particular order, below is the list of the campaigns I put together from the web. “ Lootera ” promotional campaign  The Vikramaditya romance drama starring Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha set in the year 1953, brought a bit of the 50s era onto the social media platform by introducing Facebook apps like 'Lootera Radio', 'Vintage Camera' and 'Lootera Talkies' . Fans could listen to the film's songs by changing the frequencies on the 'Lootera Radio' app, which was designed like a Radio, which was quite a big deal in the 50s. Another app, 'Vintage Camera' let the users apply vintage filters to their images. Also, to give the fans an experience of the movie talkies of those years, another Facebook app called 'Looter...

In this post, I'm going to digress a bit from the usual topics I cover in this blog.  Every businessman, be it an entrepreneur or a veteran, at some point or another, needs a little bit of motivation and inspiration. Below is my collection of inspirational quotes by some of the well-known achievers this world has seen:  1.        “Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.” – Richard Branson 2.        “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It’s best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving other innovations.” – Steve jobs 3.        “An organizations ability to learn, to translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage” – Jack welch 4.        “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers 5.      ...