What is a brand? It is a way of creating an identity for a product, which is like identifying a specific person within a large crowd. A quick example that comes to mind is Amitabh Bachchan whose name evokes a certain identity. When you think of Amitabh Bachchan you automatically identify him through certain characteristics and qualities which make him distinguishable from the other stars. A better example is the SUN. There are millions of stars but when we talk of the SUN, we immediately know which star we are referring to. This is the identity we are talking about. Similarly, when we want to sell or buy a product, we do not think in terms of the product in general – we are required to identify the particular brand within the entire product range which we like. For example when we go to buy a packet of tea, we do not ask for any packet of tea, we ask for a specific, i.e., Lipton’s Green Label or Brooke Bond’s Red Label.

             Is it as simple as that? Of course not. It has taken a lot of time and effort to become the ‘Big B’ as we know him today. That is how a brand is built.

            A brand is essentially the sum total of the particular satisfaction that it delivers to the customer who buys that specific brand. This sum total relates in its integrality to its name, ingredients, price, packaging, distribution, reputation and ultimately to its performance.

             We, therefore, relate to brands. As consumers, we can remember some brands with which we are familiar and, therefore, we expect certain standards of quality from these brands.

 

Brand Equity

 

              Brand Equity comprehends a set of assets linked to a brand’s name and symbol that adds to the value provided by a product or service to a company’s customers. There is always the underlying expectation that the brand will deliver the satisfaction it has promised. A consumer expects a certain standard of quality and the manufacturer has to make sure that the product lives up to that expectation, otherwise the consumer will stop buying the brand. Simply speaking, brand identities primarily exist in the minds of its consumers. A brand is his or her evaluation of the performance of that brand. And if this evaluation is positive the customer is willing to pay more for one particular brand over another similar product. This is the strength of Brand Equity.

             One may well ask why there is such fascination with brands, and what are they worth? The reasons are many. Firstly, it is because brands create Trust, and trust is the basic precondition to Loyalty. Ultimately it is loyalty that ensures sustainable income to the companies that own these brands. It is this relationship, born out of loyalty, that ensures continuous sales, and therefore profit to the company. Secondly, it is because brands can be shown to be valuable to the shareholders.

             So why is Brand Equity important? It is important because a strong Brand Equity enables the brand to command a premium. The reason why the customers are prepared to pay a premium is because of the perceived reliability, trustworthiness, as well as the positive image of superior quality that the brand commands. As emphasized, the major assets of Brand Equity can be categorized as:

 

1. Brand Awareness: This refers to the strength of a brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind. A Brand’s awareness is measured according to the recognition and recall of the brand.

2. Perceived Quality: Perceived quality lies at the heart of what customers are buying; and in that sense, it is the ultimate measure of the impact of a brand.

3. Brand Loyalty: A brand’s value to the company is largely created by the customer loyalty it commands. Since a company considers loyalty as a major asset, it encourages and justifies loyalty building programmes which, in turn, help to create and enhance Brand Equity. In a way, the loyal customer gets emotionally attached to the brand.

 

              Brands are built block-by-block and the best analogy one can give is how a building is constructed. The building of a brand is a three-part process. The first part relates to the idea. Like an Architect, the Marketing Team must not only be able to visualize whether there is a consumer need for a particular product but also in what form. It is only when the team has been able to pinpoint their particular need, then they can proceed further in terms of satisfying that need.

              This leads to the second part. How is the brand going to be positioned? How will it look? What should its price be and so on. These are the inputs through which the brand is built.

              The third part relates to the process. In other words, all the ingredients we saw in the second part – how are we going to use these ingredients to make the brand? This process includes research, the logic behind the introduction of the brand, creativity in terms of how to project the brand to the consumer and of course, make sure there is adequate quality control to ensure that the product delivers what it promises.

 

           This process is a continuous one. For any further stages of development, research has to be done to make sure that the brand is being developed along the right lines. The concept that a brand is built brick-by-brick, doesn’t mean that it only takes time, the most important thing is that it takes money and practice. A fair amount of time and money is necessary to build a brand and very rarely does a brand become profitable before the first three introductory years are over. Naturally the brand loses money in the first two years, it may make some money in the third; but cumulatively it will still lose money in the third year. Most businessmen are not willing to absorb this loss or wait patiently for the fourth year. It is for this reason that, today, most of the successful brands in the market are owned by multinationals baring of course a few like Nirma, Titan, etc

            In other words, a no-profit, no-loss deal for company was indicated for the first year. Forecast did indicate that in second year, there would be a small profit; but the third year would definitely show substantial increase, both in business and profit.

            Brand Equity is critically important to a company’s success, yet because of its reservoir-like nature, it is often taken for granted, overly drawn upon, and not adequately replenished, especially in times of crisis or to meet short-term needs.

 

 

 

 

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/understanding-the-language-of-branding-1027183.html

“PCs have gotten faster and faster yet PC boot time takes forever, or seems to take forever” observes Splashtop co-founder and CEO Mark Lee, who describes the common daily ritual of starting your PC and then going to fetch your morning coffee while the Toshiba PA3612U-1BAS battery system boots up.

While the software is available only to OEMs, and lives in a 512MB flash memory chip to which users can’t add applications, vendors can work with Splashtop to modify the build and add modules for quick access to contacts and a calendar as well as playing music, videos and IPTV. Asus’ customisation work includes a photo browser and access to online games.

The Envy slinked on stage at HP’s Connecting Your World media event, being held in Berlin this week, joining the TouchSmart IQ500 touchscreen desktop PC as HP unveils its ‘Summer 2008’ lineup of an insane 17 notebooks plus a new 24in desktop monitor, a BlackBerry-styled iPAQ smartphone and four new calculators (we kid you not about the later – HP takes this stuff seriously, you know).

We’ll admit that 1.5mm is the tiniest of differences, and Toshiba PA3591U-1BRS battery we’re sure HP’s designers had the micrometre out at every step of the way, ever-mindful of trimming every possible fraction off the dimensions of the Air.

Put simply, the government has been paying for hundreds of thousands of laptops for taxpayers almost completely every year. It seemed too good to be true, and perhaps it was — Kevin Rudd’s budget introduces changes to curb this practice.

Changes to tax laws mean you can no longer buy an fringe benefits tax (FBT)-exempt notebook PC through salary sacrifice and also depreciate it over a number of years. But does this mean you can still get a new laptop through your work and save money? APC got the full story from the Australian Taxation Office.

Local MSI distributor Altech has confirmed to APC that the first batch of its much-anticipated Wind 10 inch mini-note, which goes on sale this week at $699, will comprise only of units fitted with a three cell Toshiba PA3612U-1BRS battery. This shipment is limited to 150 units, while a second delivery of 600 units will include the standard six-cell battery.

(If you’re still super keen to ride the Wind, shop around for the best deal – we found that OzDirect already has the Wind marked down to $639, with a $15 delivery fee)

The Notus A12’s design is minimalist, so much so that it doesn’t have any branding on the lid or anywhere else on the casing. It’s still attractive in an understated way, though, with a black magnesium alloy casing that doesn’t attract fingerprints the way a glossy finish does. The wedge-shaped construction actually bears a strong resemblance to the Portege R500, and while the sturdy metal casing makes it heavier at 1.37kg, we feel the trade-off is worth it for the extra durability.

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Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/the-envy-slinked-on-stage-at-hps-connecting-your-world-media-event-1029008.html

The ‘Radio’ of course refers to my earlier blog on brand building and the oral culture of India;-) BTW, John Hegarty, the one living person I look up to in the world of advertising, did mention to me when he was in India at the invitation of India’s fledgling Creative Directors’ Club in 1997 that the Irish people also delayed the adoption of writing in order to maintain the richness of oral story-telling!

Those of you who have read Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, will probably agree that groups of people who belong to one sect, caste or society often grow blind to the practices that are clearly self-destructive. Jared refers to Easter Island and Mayan societies as examples that prove this theory.

Are there such practices amongst us, we who claim to be brand creators, brand builders, brand definers, brand sustainers, brand nurturers, brand guides, brand expression specialists…?

One practice that springs to mind is the usage of jargon to bullshit our clients. In my two and a half decades in marketing communication and branding, I realized that clients as a species often worship ‘creative people’ as a species. Creative people are considered owners of arcane and mystical knowledge. Do we exploit this faith?

Here are some examples I picked at random:

1. A branding expert regularly tells his clients that he “assimilates market viability through brand planning…” I am a published writer of fiction and attempt to keep up with the world of words and grammar; and despite revisiting the dictionary I could make no meaning of this glorious objective of brand planning. To me it sounds suspiciously close to the language of art criticism, which uses words like the ‘precession of the simulacra’. If any of our brothers and sisters in branding can unravel the meaning, do write in.

2. Here’s another branding expert explaining a logo for a bank: “it signifies four new things about the brand: value for money, variety of channels, different timeline for every product that it offers and transparency in every service/product that it offers.” Four new things in one logo??!! That is real value for money! I was under the mistaken notion that a logo is a visual telegram (after all, the word logo itself is a short form of logogram) that communicates one message strongly!

3. Hardly had I recovered from this muscular, multi-tasking logo’s onslaught than my colleagues pointed out another one for a software company, which, they maintained, made the bank logo look like a starving featherweight. The brand expert maintains that this logo (which, btw, uses seven colours, so I don’t know what happens to it in B&W) communicates 16 rational and 12 emotional attributes! But don’t hyperventilate yet, brothers and sisters in branding. The brand line communicates a further 18 rational and 10 emotional attributes!! And they even communicate contradictory attributes like solid and flexible!!! And all this is proudly rounded off with the claim, “We focus on one singular positioning statement…!”

Because poor unsuspecting clients are dazzled by ‘creativity’ just as millionaires are by ‘art’, does not mean we as brand evangelists exploit their credulity…unless of course, like the societies outlined by Jared Diamond, we want to press the self-destruct button. Amen.

Kiran Khalap is a brand strategy consultant in India, author and founder of chlorophyll brand & communications consultancy based in Mumbai, India. In 2009, chlorophyll became the first Indian consultancy to win the Best Website in the Professional Services Category at the Global Internet Advertising Competition Award. Kiran plays the role of a brand guru, and is invited to write and speak on branding and marketing in various industry and media fora.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/brand-building-and-bullshitting-1030412.html

The answer is always the same: the more culturally relevant the marketing communication is, the more efficient it will be. That is in keeping with our own experience: I have heard of and seen most of the characters that feature in the new viral G for Gatorade that is being talked about in the US right now, but because I am an Indian those men and women (whether Serena Williams or Muhammad Ali) carry no emotional cache. There are no lump-in-the-throat moment, no giggles. Similarly, the advertising professional in the US may have heard of Amir Khan, but s/he is unlikely to grin from ear to ear as I did when I watched him as a safari-suit-clad ambassador in the Panch TVC for Coke. “Tumhaare baap kitne the?” Wow!

So the answer is always clear (“the more culturally relevant the marketing communication is, the more efficient it will be”), the question is never. “What is culture?”

One of the shortest, the most meaningful and my favourite answer was provided by Dr Sudhir Kakkar, a renowned Indian sociologist and psychoanalyst: “Culture is shared meaning.”

Since 1995, I have been making presentations to fellow Indians and marketers about India’s oral culture and how it affects everyday life, product development as well as marketing communications even today!
First, a quick note on India’s oral culture. For those who appeared fairly recently on earth, the Indian culture is meant to be at least 5000 years old. And the one noteworthy aspect of this culture is that most of its architecture, dance, music, mathematics, even medicine has been transmitted orally for several thousand years.

The Indian musicians perform without musical sheets: they have committed to memory the ascending and descending notes that define every structure called a raga. Indian maths rarely went wrong because it was transmitted in rhymed Sanskrit, a language whose meaning is independent of syntax!

Most of the truths of Ayurveda, the science of health, were also transmitted through rhymed sentences. My mother had been schooled only until Class 3 in a village, but she calculated things faster than I ever could but she had been made to memorise arithmetic tables of not just 2X2, but 1/4×1/4, 3/4×3/4!

So far so good! Does this culture express itself in today’s life, in the 21st century or is it just a fancy notion about a romanticized past?

Consider this: one of India’s most successful TV shows is actually a radio show. It is called Antakshari. It involves singing songs that match the last sound of the competitor’s song. “Now that’s a face for radio” was a phrase invented just for these participants (late night, allowing myself some nastiness;-)!)

Consider this: every single global brand of car marketed in India needed to have its horn re-calibrated. The louder the horn, the bigger the car!

Consider this: every single global television brand marketed in India needed to have its sound recalibrated. If the neighbour can’t hear my TV, why have one?

Consider this: On the Indian highway, unless the car in front of you hears you, it will dismiss your car’s image in its rearview mirror as an illusion. That is why, India has the largest collection of trucks that say “Horn OK Please” Well Ok, the OK used to be once upon a time a light that would blink at night to signal to the overtaker that the overtakee had allowed him to overtake on the dark highways of India. But the Horn was essential to certify that the overtaker was real;-)!

Consider this: Most Indians will send a mail or an SMS, and then call you to say they have done so!

Consider this: Every single marketing and advertising ‘slogan’ in India is rhymed. (Except those in English, of course.)

Consider this: All ad agencies in India have writers who write in English and writers who write in other Indian languages. As a Creative Director in advertising for 20 years, I have always had the English writer coming to me and handing over a sheet of paper saying, “KK, what do you think of this?”
I have always had the language writer coming and saying, “KK, listen to this.” Without exception!

Once, I asked my wife, who is a specialist on the INDog, the primitive dingo pariah dog-type, why our pet dogs do not react to the images of cats or birds or other dogs on TV, and she said, “Because they can’t smell them.” Their primary organ is the nose! They might hear them mewing and barking and chirping and get excited but if their noses don’t confirm the data, it is not useful data!

For us Indians, the ear is the primary organ, the eye is not. When Coke came to India first, they ran a TVC that celebrated the colour red. Whoa! The brand name was never uttered! The consumer did not know whether to ask for coke or coca or coca cola! Worse, 60% of the TV sets were B&W! Worse, Coke was distributed not through retail outlets where row upon row of merchandise was displayed but through mom-and-pop shops where you had to go and ask for it.

Lesson One: Therefore “Brand Recall” (ears, therefore how to say the brand name!) was more important than “Brand Recognition” (eyes, therefore how to spot the colour red as opposed to the Pepsi blue).

My most memorable anecdote about branding building and the oral culture in India (I have several, write to me if you need more!) was when I was doing marketing communication for a detergent soap (remember in India, powders, liquids and bars co-exist!) named, hold your collective breaths, 501!
The number 501.

So we decided that on the pack and in other visual media (outdoor, print) we would restrict branding to the English script (the brand name would be written as 501)…but what about media where sound played a part?
Radio and TV? (The internet was not even born before 1988!)
We had to, believe it or not, translate the brand name in the local language!

So on Marathi TV channels the brand name became, “Paach she ek”, In Tamil it became, “Aainati unna…” in Bengali it became, “Paanch sho ak…”

Heard of any other nation where the same brand name is pronounced in twelve different ways?
Naah…so stay tuned;-) for more interesting notes (from an old and ever-delighted observer) on brand building in India and elsewhere!

Kiran Khalap is a brand strategy consultant in India, author and founder of chlorophyll brand & communications consultancy based in Mumbai, India. In 2009, chlorophyll became the first Indian consultancy to win the Best Website in the Professional Services Category at the Global Internet Advertising Competition Award. Kiran plays the role of a brand guru, and is invited to write and speak on branding and marketing in various industry and media fora.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/branding-articles/indias-oral-culture-its-relationship-to-brand-building-1030424.html