What is a Brand?
• Protection (IPR)
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or
design, or a combination of them, intended to
identify the goods or services of one seller or
group of sellers and to differentiate them
from those of competitors.
A Brand is more than just a name/symbol
It is an organization’s promise to a customer
to consistently deliver what the brand stands
for - not only functional benefits but also
emotional, self-expressive, and social benefits.
Managing a brand
Managing a brand goes beyond merely
delivering on the promise to customers - It is
also about taking them on a journey, an
evolving relationship. Creating and managing
perceptions and experiences that a customer
has every time he or she connects to the
brand.
What is/can be branded?
• Physical goods
• Services
• Retailers and distributors
• Online products and services
• People and organizations
• Sports, arts, and entertainment
• Geographic locations
• Ideas and causes
What are the benefits of ‘brand’ to a
consumer?
• Trust – reduces perceived risk
• Perceived quality
• Ease of decision making
• Prestige value (intangible benefits)
• Enhancement/modification to
personality
What are the benefits of ‘brand’ to a
business?
• Generates pull
• Creates Trust/Signifies quality
• Generates loyalty
• Secure price premium
• Distinction from competition
(competitive advantage)
• Creates barriers to entry
• Opportunities for growth
• Asset that can be leveraged
Advantages of a strong Brands
• Improved perceptions of product
performance
• Greater loyalty
• Less vulnerability to competitive
marketing actions
• Less vulnerability to crises
• Larger margins
• More inelastic consumer response
• Greater trade cooperation
• Increased marketing communications
effectiveness
• Possible licensing opportunities
• Reduces consumer risk
Strategic Brand Management
• It involves the design and
implementation of marketing
programs and activities to build,
measure, and manage brand equity.
• The Strategic Brand Management
Process is defined as involving four
main steps/stages:
1. Identifying and establishing
brand positioning and values
2. Designing brand elements and
implementing brand
marketing programs
3. Measuring and interpreting
brand performance
4. Growing and sustaining brand
equity
Criteria for selecting brand names –
• Simplicity
• Consumers should be able to
‘read’/’pronounce it’
• Sounds good over the phone (for
example, when a sales rep calls a
prospect)
• Won’t be constantly mispronounced
or misspelled, which defeats the
purpose of a name
• Isn’t confusing
• Conveys what you need it to convey
Brand Names can follow a wide variety of
styles-
• initialism: a name made of initials,
such as ‘’BMW’’ or "IBM “or ‘’IPL’’
• descriptive: names that describe a
product benefit or function, such as
"Whole Foods" or "Toys R' Us “or
"Dunkin' Donuts “
• evocative: names that can evoke a
vivid image of well-known
places/objects, such as ‘’Himalaya’’ or
"Crest “or ‘’Amazon’’ or ‘’Apple’’
• neologisms: completely made-up
words, such as "Wii" or "Haagen-
Dazs"
• founders' names: using the names of
real people, (especially a founder’s
name), such as "Hewlett-Packard",
"Dell", "Disney" or "Mars"
• geography linked: naming for regions
and landmarks like ‘’Kentucky Fried
Chicken’’ or ‘’Adyar Ananda Bhavan’’
or ‘’Delhi Durbar’’
• personification: taking names from
myths, such as "Nike"; or ‘’Venus’’ or
‘’Hercules’’, ‘’Patanjali’’
• combination: combining multiple
words together to create one, such as
"Microsoft" ("microcomputer" and
"software"), "Comcast"
("communications" and "broadcast"),
"Evernote" ("forever" and "note"),
“Vodafone" ("voice", "data",
"telephone")
Brand Equity –
Can be defined as the differential effect that
brand knowledge has on consumer response
to marketing of that brand.
• The added value endowed to
products and services.
• How consumers think, feel, and act
with respect to the brand, as well as
the prices, market share and
profitability that the brand commands
for the firm.
• An important intangible asset that has
psychological and financial value to
the firm.
• When a brand has positive/high
equity:
• Consumers react favourably
to it, compared to an un
branded product with same
attributes
• Consumers likely to be more
inclined to accepting brand
extensions
• Consumers are likely to be
less sensitive to price
changes.
Keller’s brand equity
• Also known as Keller’s Brand Equity
Model or Brand Resonance Model
• The concept behind the Brand Equity
Model is simple - In order to build a
strong brand, one must shape how
customers think and feel about the
brand. One has to build the right type
of experiences around the brand, so
that customers have specific, positive
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions,
and perceptions about it.
• When a brand has strong equity,
customers are likely to buy more of it,
recommend it to other people, be
more loyal and less likely to switch to
competitors Model is usually
represented as a pyramid
Elements of Keller’s brand equity-
• Identity: First goal is to create "brand
salience," or awareness – in other
words, one needs to make sure that
the brand stands out, and that
customers recognize it and are aware
of it.
• Meaning: Here, goal is to identify and
communicate what the brand means,
and what it stands for. "Performance"
defines how well the brand meets
customers' needs at functional level.
"Imagery" refers to how well the
 brand meets customers' needs on a
social and psychological level.
• Response: Customers respond to a
brand and form ‘’judgements’
‘according to how it makes them feel.
Brand must work towards creating
positive ‘’feelings’’ like warmth, fun,
excitement, security, social approval,
and self-respect
• Relationship: Highest level of equity is
achieved when customers feel a deep,
psychological bond or ‘’resonance’’
with a brand. (Or the customer feels
that the brand is almost like him/her)
The four steps of the pyramid represent
four fundamental questions that
customers will ask – often subconsciously
– about a brand. The four steps contain
six building blocks that must be in place
for a brand to reach the top of the
pyramid, and remain a successful brand.