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Chapter 15
Closing Observations
Chapter Objectives
1. Understand the six future brand imperatives.
2. Identify the ten criteria for the brand report card.
3. Outline the seven deadly sins of brand management.
Overview
The nal chapter of the book summarizes the customer-based brand
equity framework; reviews guidelines for building, measuring, and
managing brand equity described in earlier chapters; then o'ers a
perspective on activities and attitudes that can help or hurt a brand.
A brand’s equity can be weakened by a failure to understand the full
range of associations consumers have for it, inadequate marketing
support, unwillingness to spend the time and/or money required to
build brand awareness and image, a lack of appreciation of the brand
equity concept within the corporation, or an inability to strike the
appropriate balance between maintaining consistency and
implementing change in marketing actions.
In order to maximize brand equity, rms must develop products that t
with a brand’s meaning and satisfy the needs and wants of consumers;
decide on the points of parity and points of di'erence that will result in
the best market position; provide superior delivery of benets;
maintain innovation in design, manufacturing, and marketing; be seen
as expert, trustworthy, and likable; communicate with a consistent
voice; employ a full range of complementary brand elements and
supporting marketing programs; and design and implement a brand
hierarchy and brand portfolio that establishes the optimal relationship
among the company’s o'erings.
Brand management issues related to industrial goods, high-technology
products, services, retailers, and small businesses are discussed. The
brand equity framework is compared to models developed by other
authors. The chapter and the book conclude by considering how
branding and branding principles might change over time.
Branding Brief 15-1 details the Brand Report Card. The Brand Report
Card evaluates a company’s brand management based on the
following criteria: managers understand what the brand means to
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
consumers; the brand is properly positioned; customers receive
superior delivery of the benets they value most; the brand takes
advantage of the full repertoire of branding and marketing activities
available to build brand equity; marketing and communications e'orts
are seamlessly integrated and the brand communicates with one voice;
the brand’s pricing strategy is based on consumer’s perceptions of
value; the brand uses appropriate imagery to support its personality;
the brand is innovative and relevant; for a multi-product, multi-brand
company, the brand hierarchy and brand portfolio are strategically
sound; the company has in place a system to monitor brand equity and
performance.
Brand Focus 15.0 considers specic applications of branding in
di'erent types of industries.
Branding Briefs
BRANDING BRIEF 15-1
THE BRAND REPORT CARD
The Brand Report Card can reveal how well a brand is being managed.
The brand is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = extremely poor; 10 =
extremely good) for each of the characteristics below:
Score
1. Managers understand what the brand means to consumers.
Have you created detailed, research-driven mental maps of your
target customers?
Have you attempted to dene a brand mantra?
Have you outlined customer-driven boundaries for brand
extensions and guidelines for marketing programs?
2. The brand is properly positioned.
Have you established category, competitive, and correlational
points-of-parity?
Have you established desirable, deliverable, and di'erentiated
points-of-di'erence?
3. Customers receive superior delivery of the bene#ts they
value most.
Have you attempted to uncover unmet consumer needs and
wants?
Do you relentlessly focus on maximizing your customers’ product
and service experiences?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
4. The brand takes advantage of the full repertoire of branding
and marketing activities available to build brand equity.
Have you strategically chosen and designed your brand name,
logo, symbol, slogan packaging, signage, and other brand
elements to build brand awareness and image?
Have you implemented integrated push and pull strategies that
target intermediaries and end customers, respectively?
5. Marketing and communications e'orts are seamlessly
integrated (or as close to it as humanly possible). The brand
communicates with one voice.
Have you considered all the alternative ways to create brand
awareness and link brand associations?
Have you ensured that common meaning is contained
throughout your marketing communication program?
Have you capitalized on the unique capabilities of each
communication option?
Have you been careful to preserve important brand values in
your communications over time?
6. The brand’s pricing strategy is based on consumer
perceptions of value.
Have you estimated the added value perceived by customers?
Have you optimized price, cost, and quality to meet or exceed
consumer expectations?
7. The brand uses appropriate imagery to support its
personality.
Have you established credibility by ensuring that the brand and
the people behind it are seen as expert, trustworthy, and likable?
Have you established appropriate user and usage imagery?
Have you crafted the right brand personality?
8. The brand is innovative and relevant.
Have you invested in product and marketing improvements that
provide improved benets and better solutions for your
customers?
Have you stayed up-to-date and in touch with your customers?
9. For a multiproduct, multibrand company, the brand
architecture is strategically sound.
For the brand hierarchy, are associations at the highest levels
relevant to as many products as possible at the next lower levels,
and are brands well di'erentiated at any one level?
For the brand portfolio, do the brands maximize market coverage
while minimizing their overlap at the same time?
10. The company has in place a system to monitor brand
equity and performance.
Have you created a brand charter that denes the meaning and
equity of the brand and how it should be treated?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Do you conduct periodic brand audits to assess the health of
your brands and to set strategic direction?
Do you conduct routine tracking studies to evaluate current
marketing performance?
Do you regularly distribute brand equity reports that summarize
all brand-relevant research and information to assist marketing
decision making?
Have you assigned people within the organization the
responsibility of monitoring and preserving brand equity?
BRANDING BRIEF 15-2
REINVIGORATING BRANDING AT PROCTER & GAMBLE
Already the world’s largest consumer packaged goods company, P&G
became even larger with the $57 billion acquisition of Gillette in 2005.
After struggling brie=y at the turn of the twenty-rst century, the
company regained its reputation as the =ag-bearer of marketing
innovation and excellence.
Renewed Emphasis on R&D
In the rst decade of the twenty-rst century, one of the
fastest-growing major corporations in revenue and prot was Procter &
Gamble. Fueling its growth were successful new products such as
Swi'er mop, a battery-powered Crest Spin-Brush toothbrush, Mr. Clean
Magic Eraser, and Actonel. Many of these new products re=ected
innovation in “the core”—core markets, categories, brands,
technologies, and capabilities. To reinforce its innovation, P&G also
placed a renewed emphasis on design by appointing its rst-ever chief
design oEcer in 2001 and installing a top design oEcer in each of its
global business units. To more e'ectively grow its core, P&G also
adopted a “connect and develop” model that emphasized the pursuit
of outside innovation.
New Communication Approaches
P&G has been shifting its ad budget away from TV advertising and
toward “media-neutral” advertising, which determines media spending
without bias toward any particular medium based on precedent. In
place of big television buys, P&G has pioneered the use of less
obtrusive marketing techniques such as Vocalpoint, a word-of-mouth
marketing program that enlists 600,000 mothers, among others, to
promote its brands by giving positive testimonials, samples, and
coupons to friends and neighbors. P&G still values the power of TV ads,
but it also taps into the power of the Internet at the same time.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
New Research Approaches
P&G conducts approximately 10,000 consumer research projects each
year, spending more than $100 million annually.
New Branding Philosophy
While it did launch successful new brands such as Swi'er, P&G began
pursuing a strategy with less inherent risk—leveraging existing assets
by investing in well-known “power brands.” The company now has 22
brands with more than $1 billion in annual sales and 19 with more than
$500 million. P&G went as far as resurrecting a brand and turning it
into a power brand with innovative new products. P&G often seeks to
leverage its power brands with vertical extensions into higher-margin
categories. P&G has broadened the meaning of its power brands in
more than just a product sense.
Brand Focus
BRAND FOCUS 15.0
SPECIAL APPLICATIONS
Online
Creating a brand online brings a special set of challenges. Many of the
guidelines for business-to-business, high-tech, retailing, and small
businesses identied below will apply.
Don’t forget the brand-building basics.
Create strong brand identity.
Generate strong consumer pull.
Selectively choose brand partnerships.
Maximize relationship marketing.
Industrial and Business-to-Business Products
Industrial goods and business-to-business marketing sometimes call for
di'erent branding practices.
Adopt a corporate or family branding strategy and create a
well-dened brand hierarchy.
Link non-product-related imagery associations.
Employ a full range of marketing communication options.
Leverage equity of other companies that are customers.
Segment customers carefully, and develop tailored branding and
marketing programs.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
High-Tech Products
The distinguishing feature of high-tech products is that they change
rapidly over time because of innovations and R&D breakthroughs. The
short product life cycles for high-tech products have several signicant
branding implications.
Establish brand awareness and a 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 brand extensions.
Services
The level of sophistication in service branding has greatly increased in
recent years.
Maximize service quality by recognizing the myriad ways to
a'ect consumer service perceptions.
Employ a full range of brand elements to enhance brand recall
and signal more tangible aspects of the brand.
Create and communicate strong organizational associations.
Design communication programs that augment consumers’
service encounters and experiences.
Establish a brand hierarchy by creating distinct family brands or
individual brands as well as meaningful ingredient brands.
Retailers
Retailers and other channel intermediaries can a'ect the brand equity
of the products they sell, as well as create their own brand equity, by
establishing awareness and associations to their product assortment,
pricing and credit policy, and quality of service.
Create a brand hierarchy by branding the store as a whole, as
well as individual departments, classes of service, or any other
noteworthy aspects of the retail service or shopping experience.
Enhance manufacturer’s brand equity.
Establish brand equity at all levels of the brand hierarchy by
o'ering added value in the selection, purchase, or delivery of
product o'erings.
Create multichannel shopping experiences.
Avoid overbranding.
Small Businesses
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Building brands is a challenge for small businesses because of their
limited resources and budgets. They usually do not have the luxury of
making mistakes and must design and implement marketing programs
much more carefully. Nevertheless, many entrepreneurs have built
their brands into powerhouses essentially from scratch. Because there
are usually limited resources behind a small-business brand, marketing
focus and consistency are critically important. Creativity is also
paramount for nding new ways to market ideas about products to
consumers.
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.
Design creative brand-building push campaigns and
consumer-involving pull campaigns that capture attention and
generate demand.
Leverage as many secondary associations as possible.
Discussion questions
1. What do you think makes a strong brand? Can you add any criteria
to the list provided?
2. Consider the deadly sins of brand management. Do you see
anything missing from the list of seven in Figure 15-8?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
3. Pick one of the special applications and choose a representative
brand within that category. How well do the $ve guidelines apply?
Can you think of others not listed?
4. What do you see as the future of branding? How will the roles of
brands change? What di%erent strategies might emerge as to how
to build, measure, and manage brand equity in the coming years?
What do you see as the biggest challenges?
5. Consider the trade-o%s involved with achieving marketing balance.
Can you identify a company that has excelled in achieving balance
on various trade-o%s?
Exercises and assignments
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Key take-away points
1. Brand management is an art and a science, and the purpose of the
text was to provide a number of concepts, tools, frameworks, etc.,
to help with the latter.
2. Strategic brand management includes the design and
implementation of marketing programs and activities to build,
measure, and manage brand equity.
3. Virtually all the branding concepts, tools, frameworks reviewed in
the book were relevant to any particular application. Nevertheless,
there are unique characteristics to any application that suggest
more specic guidelines.
4. The Brand Report Card or any comprehensive brand evaluation tool
is a good way to critique the brand management process.
5. The importance of branding seems unlikely to change for one
critical reason: Consumers will continue to value the functions
brands provide.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
