PBL5

Creating a brand strategy.

Problem: 

How to create a brand strategy?

Brand strategy is the long-term plan according to which a company develops, deploys, and leverages those intangible, equity-bearing assets called ‘brands.’


1. What is the process of a brand strategy?

1). 
Brand strategy is generating and influencing brands carefully, intentionally, thoughtfully with a corporate viewpoint.

How do you do brand strategy?
1. Engage everyone in your branding efforts. inside and outside your organization.
2. Be clear, consistent, and coherent
3. Listen to your people
4. Make sure your messages reflect reality
5. Stay foccused
6. Try to keep your brand's promise.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-RaxV2as8s


2).




Brand Positioning—or strategic business positioning—is the cornerstone of brand strategy. As Michael Porter of Harvard Business School defines it, brand positoning is ‘…the attempt to maintain sustainable competitive advantage by preserving what is distinctive about a company. [It] means performing different activities from rivals’ or performing similar ones in different ways.’ (Porter, HBR, November 1996)

To succeed in brand positioning it's necessary to analyse competitors, capabilities, resources and assets

Brand strategy determines which brand elements will be redesigned, organized, and deployed in service to the business plan and how. It touches on corporate identity, naming, nomenclature and message systems, product branding, the use brand lines, brand portfolio structure (‘architecture’), visual systems, and the myriad applications that make one’s brand public, tangible, and effective.

(Source: http://www.brandingbusiness.com/branding-services/brand-strategy-positioning)


3).

Brand sponsorship:
1. Manufacturer's brand - national brand, give own name.
2. Private brand - manufacturer sells to reseller who give a product a private brand (store/distributor brand)
3. Licensing -companies license names or symbols previously created by other manufacturers, names of well-known celebrities, or characters from popular movies and books.
4. Co-branding - two established brand names of different companies are used on the same product.


Resource: Kotler P., Armstrong G. Principles of Marketing. 2012. 14th ed.


Brand perceptions, brand positioning, competitive advantage, brand promise, consistent message

Engagement with customers - unique and different way than of competitors. Get to know your customers, understant what they are, what the are doing => create a brand they can easily relate to, get inspiration from. (http://ureadthis.com/create-brand-strategy/.)


Brand Strategy Development. 



Source: http://www.brandingbusiness.com/



2. Who implements a brand strategy?


Company's departments: marketing, branding, communication, design, IT. Basically, branding process goes within all the departments via interactions, contacts, + a continuous dialogue between customers and employees.
Branding and communications firms, advertising agencies.

The Danish toy company Lego Group, which we have spent many years researching, has recognized that its brand is not created by the marketing department, but instead by the larger organization in its interactions with customers and other stakeholders who have become part of its community. Like many other organizations, Lego built its business through a controlled approach to intellectual property. It conducted market research to understand how its customers thought about it, developed innovative products based on the information it derived, and created marketing communications campaigns to build the brand.

Source: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00041?pg=all


3. Why are there different brand architectures?


Three Brand Architecture Models

Branded House (also called a monolithic brand) emphasizes a single master brand, that sits over of the other brands within an organization.  This is a particularly good option when the products are in the same category or offer a similar set of benefits.  The basic concept is to “put more wood behind” the arrow, essentially gaining economic leverage by investing at the master brand level, and then using product names or descriptors to call out product-level attributes. BMW and Mercedes are examples of the branded house approach.

• House of Brands (also called freestanding brands)  are designed to stand entirely on their own in the marketplace.  This allows an organization to develop a portfolio of brands, each with a unique brand positioning tailored to a particular product or market segment.  General Motors — and its family of brands — is considered a house of brands example.

• Endorsed Brands fall somewhere in the middle.  Here, brands are combined in such a way that one is designed to work in concert with the other.  There are numerous examples of this strategy:  Think Courtyard By Marriott, Polo by Ralph Lauren, Microsoft Windows, and the like.  Honda Motor Company uses an endorsed brand strategy, as shown here:

Source: http://equibrandconsulting.com/services/brand-consultant/brand-architecture/examples