The Big Idea: a strong brand is one of the most important economic moats a company can build. Building a brand is not easy but, if done well, can pay dividends for many years.

Intro

• A brand is much like a reputation.
• A strong brand will reshape perception.
• Cash: Executives are pressured to focus on short-term financial results, however, brand building is a long-term project.
• Consistency: Brands are built at every touchpoint with the customer.
• Clutter: A strong brand needs to be focused and unique to stand out from the clutter.

1. Brand Positioning

• Develop a formal brand positioning statement to guide internal marketing managers.
• Once a brand is well-established, it is difficult to change.
• Who is this brand for?
• What does it help the customer accomplish?
• How is it different from the alternatives?

2. Designing Brands

• Begin with a strong brand concept.
• Incorporate specific cues into the design.
• The best technique for evaluation of brand design is to expose the design briefly and then ask consumers what they remember.

3. Brand Meaning

• A strong brand is differentiated from the competition in a meaningful way. Consumers are willing to pay a premium and to repeat purchases over time.
• Effective brand management involves the discovery, creation, and constant revision of stories.
• Brands can promote and proclaim brand affiliation (Harley Davidson, Apple.)
• Conduct a brand meaning audit to track and guide brand management efforts.
• Brand stewards must become astute meaning managers.

4. Competitive Brand Strategies

• The pioneer who creates, then dominates, a category enjoys a significant advantage for years and, sometimes, decades.
• Late entrants have three broad competitive strategies: fast-follower, differentiation, and innovation.

5. Brand Extensions

• A familiar brand name signals trust which can persuade consumers to try a new product launched with the brand name.
• The brand extension must make sense.
• Too many brand extensions can confuse consumers.
• Sub-brands are sometimes a better choice. Eg., Sony Walkman, where Sony is the parent brand and Walkman is the sub-brand.

6. Brand Portfolio Strategy

• Brands are a long-term asset.
• A company with many brands has two broad strategies: house of brands or branded house.
• House of brands: Proctor and Gamble, the brands are kept distinct and little effort is made to market the parent company to the consumer.
• Branded house: Apple, the parent company has a strong brand and the sub-brands are natural extensions of the parent brand.

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7. Building Brands Through Effective Advertising

• Advertising should reflect the consumer’s aspirations.
• Advertising should resonate with prior beliefs, not try to change them.
• Advertising should resonate with existing goals.
• Some advertising strategies: hard sell (Visa and “we’re everywhere you want to be”), big idea (Delta stands for convenience because of X, Y, Z), story grammar (follow a character from problem to solution.)
• Keys: selecting the right media and the right timing.

8. Relationship Branding and CRM

• CRM can be used to build a personal connection with the brand.
• First, subsegment the market.
• Second, personalize the touch points to improve the customer experience.
• Segmentation methods: monetary value, sociodemographics, purchase behaviors.
• Cluster analysis is a statistical method used to find natural groups.
• Well-defined rewards (loyalty club benefits) generally work better than discretionary rewards (complimentary upgrades).

9. Brand Strategy for Business Markets

• Managing business brands presents unique challenges.
• The foundation of branding is positioning.
• A positioning statement declares who that target customer is, what you offer, and why it’s customers should prefer your offering.
• Brand equity is determined by the associations that are established in the customer’s mind with your brand.
• The brand associations can be functional (easy to use, high quality, affordable) or they can emotional (exciting, fun, trustworthy, exclusive.)

10. Services Branding

• A brand name is a promise made to the customer.
• Customers are either delighted, satisfied, or disgruntled.
• In contrast to goods, services are generally more intangible, complex, variable in their delivery, process-dependent.
• For services, the front-line employee (the primary touch point) is the brand.
• Since the front-line employee is the brand, marketing the brand internally is critical.
• Front-line employees must view their role as partners. Treat employees like part of the brand.
• Using self-service technology can reduce variation in customer experience. Service machines make remaining human employees even more valuable.
• Since the company is the brand, be careful to control communications of the company identity (from sponsored events to ethics to social media.)
• To manage and improve the customer experience, map all the touch points.
• Service blueprinting is a mapping of all the touch points with the customer.
• The blueprint will help identify bottlenecks, ensure consistency, and reveal opportunities to distinguish the brand from competitors.
• Ex. Mayo Clinic “patientfirst”.
• Be careful when selecting partners because they become an extension of the brand, for better or worse.

11. Branding in Technology Markets

• There has been a cultural bias in technology towards engineering and features and against branding.
• Technology firms need to learn from the CPG firms.

12. Building a Brand-Driven Organization

• The strongest, most resilient brands have a strong internal company culture that upholds the brand promises.
• A strong brand leads to customer loyalty, which leads to lower marketing costs, more repeat purchases, and a higher customer lifetime value.
• A strong brand leads to a higher willingness to pay, which leads to more revenue per customer, and a higher customer lifetime value.
• A strong company culture motivates employees, reduces employee turnover, and lower operating costs.
• A strong company culture motivates employees, which improves touch points with the customer, which leads to a strong brand.
• The touch point wheel consists of interactions during pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.
• At companies with a strong brand, CEO is the lead brand builder. But all leaders must build the brand in their departments or business units.
• Form an executive brand council (EBC).
• To communicate the brand to the employees, segment them like you would segment customers. Then customize the message and the delivery for each employee segment.
• 1. Make the Brand Relevant to Employees. (What does this mean for me?)
• 2. Make the Brand Accessible to Employees. (What is our brand, more specifically?)
• 3. Reinforce the Brand Continuously to Employee. (What is our brand, again?)
• 4. Make Brand Education Part of New Employee Training
• 5. Reward On-Brand Behaviors (What’s in it for me?)
• 6. Hire Based on Brand Fit
• What gets measured gets managed. Set up employee-focused brand metrics. Surveys, suggestion boxes, focus groups.
• Common pitfalls: relying on broadcast instead of conversation, not allocating sufficient resources, being seduced by sexy but shallow tactics, and relying too much on technology.

13. Measuring Brand Value

• What gets measured gets managed.
• Book: Managing Brand Equity (1991) by David Aaker
• 1. Customer-centric metrics: qualitative and quantitative measurements of consumer awareness/attitudes, eg. BrandDynamics model
• 2. Sales-centric metrics: marketing mix modeling (measure ROI via statistical analysis), predictive modeling (customer most likely to respond, Customer Brand Value)
• 3. Company-valuation-centric metrics: specialists determind brand valuation using accounting and finance principles, for M&A or brand management via scorecards

14. Using Positioning to Build a Mega-brand

• 1999, NetZero invested remaining capital to position itself against AOL and MSN as “Defenders of the Free World.”
• The campaign was a big success, NetZero launched premium extensions, and NetZero eventually became United Online.
• 1. Start with a tangible point of difference that resonates with consumers.
• 2. Create the impression that you’re bigger than you are.
• 3. Be nimble in responding to changes in the marketplace, but be true to your brand.

15. Marketing Leverage in the Frame of Reference

• Do not underestimate the impact of the right frame of reference.
• 1. Broaden the frame of reference: BMW is not a sports car, it’s the ultimate driving machine; DeBeers is not in the diamond business, it’s in the gift business
• 2. Compare your offering to the gold standard even if it’s not your primary competitor: it’s not delivery, it’s Digiorno; Visa positioned itself as better than Amex even though its primary competitor was Mastercard
• 3. I am what I’m not: it’s not TV, it’s HBO

16. Finding the Right Brand Name

• If your brand name is distinctive and memorable, it can make the difference in winning.
• Your name must be memorable and ownable.
• Be careful of descriptive names, fad-ish names, or names that define a product or benefit too narrowly.
• The brand and its name should convey a personality.
• Eg. Mrs. Dash

17. Building Global Brands

• The ideal strategy is to complement global standardization with local customization.
• Consumers have high expectations of global brands, so it’s best to focus on superior benefits.
• The brand essence should stay consistent globally, with a little bit of flex for local tastes.
• Local changes include: sizing, pricing, distribution.
• Eg. Philadelphia Cream Cheese

18. Branding and Organizational Culture

• Strong brands in healthcare begin with a strong internal culture.
• Begin with a clear mission and value statement.
• If your brand is tied to your employees, they must buy into the mission and purpose of your organization.
• Eg. Northwest Memorial Healthcare.

19. Branding and the Organization

• 1. Match the brand to the internal culture and reality.
• 2. Involve senior management in the branding process.
• 3. Manage the brand actively with marketing professionals.
• There is an advantage to scale in building a brand, but there is also an advantage to small size in maintaining a strong company culture and strong core values.

20. Internal Branding

• Don’t forget your employees when communicating the brand.
• Employees can be powerful brand ambassadors.
• Good internal branding can motivate employees to provide exceptional service.