Brand Management

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The key takeaways are how to identify, develop and promote a unique organizational brand through visual consistency, multiple touchpoints, website success and partnerships.

The 10 tips are brand perception, thinking like donors, value proposition, planning, organizational alignment, visual consistency, multiple touchpoints, website success, partnerships and alliances, and striving for excellence.

The factors necessitating customer engagement marketing are businesses losing power to dictate communications, decreasing brand loyalty, and customers gaining more control over advertising consumption.

1)How are brands created and enhanced? Explain.

A brand is the impression the public shares about an organization. Your


organization already has a brand. Its what the public thinks about you. Its
what fundraisers, constituents, volunteers, and colleagues in the
community think about when they hear your name.
This brand awareness may, or may not be accurate, or flattering to your
organization. The purpose of influencing your brand is to clearly
communicate your strengths. Enhancing your brand, how others think of
you, should be a top priority for your organization. It enhances fundraising
and volunteer commitments and promotes your mission.

Following are ten tips on identifying, developing and promoting your


unique brand.
Brand Perception: Step back and view your organization through the
eyes of a potential donor. Learn how others see your organization and
discover what they think are its most important activities. If they dont
align with your perception, then it is time to reevaluate and start a bottom
up branding campaign.
Think Donors: For sustainability, you need to build a donor-centered
brand. Today anyone can become a major ally and contributor for your
organization and they respond best when they are moved by powerful
stories of how your work affects the lives of those you serve. Build your
case around the heart of who you are and couple it with a mission-defining
story that aligns with donors dreams.
Value Proposition: Ask yourself, What is the one thing we do better
than anyone else? To be a meaningful brand, you need to find your niche,
your position among the other organizations in your field. Your cause
doesnt need to be a first, a new category, approach, or service but it is
important to identify what is unique and special about your work.
Planning: Great brands require time to build; achieving them requires
careful planning and attention to detail. Create a plan to close the gap
between the current perception of your brand and your brand goal. Dont
allow your plan to sit on the shelf and collect dust, achieving a brand goal
lies in keeping your brand out front.
Organizational Alignment: Promote your brand from within and
make it live throughout your organization. Top-down commitment and
involvement of each person in the organization is fundamental to success.
Your brand needs to live in the hearts and minds of every stakeholder in

the organization; it must be embraced and promoted from inside out.


Visual Consistency: Your logo mark, vision and mission statement set
the foundation for how the public reacts in ways seen and unseen. You
dont need a rigid set of rules to govern your branding and marketing
tactics, but you do need to present a consistent picture across all touch
points. Dont dilute your branding efforts with too many messages,
directions, or destinations.
Multiple Touch Points: Message consistency across many touch
points and lots of it are the keys to building an effective, accurate brand.
A brand that lives on in the mind of donors and constituents must be
developed through years of message layering. Creating a campaign
designed to inform, motivate and educate at many levels from web, to
collateral, to white papers, and relationships is essential to success.
Website Success: A web site is not just your organizations digital
marketing effort, but your missions global voice to a wider audience base,
driving common held beliefs and efforts in far-reaching locations and
peoples.
Partnerships and Alliances: Friends, Partners and Supporters are
your best sources for promoting your organization and building your
brand. Friends, supporters, and volunteers identify with your mission, so
actively search for alliances with other organizations, government, media,
and business. This step alone often brings the most benefit to nonprofit
organizations.
Just Be Great: Theres no substitute for simply being remarkable. Work
towards excellence in all things you do. Aspire for greatness and the
branding will come with ease.

4. Write an essay on International Brand Strategies.


For decades, Coca-Cola and IBM were among the scant few globallyrecognized brands. By crafting a universal message and increasing brand
awareness, here's how yours can be next.
Advertisement
Forty years ago, there were only a handful of truly "global brands" and
they were made up of only the biggest corporations -- Coca-Cola, PepsiCo,
Colgate-Palmolive, IBM, Shell. Then a rash of upstarts came along, such as
Nike, Microsoft, Apple, and Honda, and pushed their brand reputation
further than their actual sales footprint. But now that barriers to
international trade have come down and the Internet has helped small and
mid-sized companies compete on the global stage, building an

international brand is a realistic goal for more and more businesses.


"Only in the last 10 years has global business become the benchmark for
how you do business these days," says Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer
for Landor Associates, a strategic brand and design consultancy that has
worked on international branding with such companies as BP, Panasonic,
and KFC. "Thanks to the Internet it's hard to keep your brand just
localized. Once you're on the Web, you're accessible pretty much
anywhere in the world. It doesn't necessarily make you a global brand but
you have to be mindful of the implications."
The following pages will detail what an international brand is, how to build
a brand internationally, and how to build brand awareness in new
international markets.
Dig Deeper: How Asa Candler Built the Coca-Cola Empire

How to Build a Brand Internationally: What a Global Brand Is


In starting a new business or seeking to increase growth at your current
business by expanding into international markets, establishing and
building a brand identity becomes essential.
Branding involves what people think about your business and your
products. "Think of a brand as a reputation," says Paul Williams, founder of
the international marketing firm Idea Sandbox, which helps companies
build their brands. "Building a reputation in any new market, including
overseas, involves a first impression, which comes from the initial
interactions someone has with your company, products, and services."
Businesses can attempt to shape or form the branding of their company or
products in many ways, including advertising, media, word-of-mouth, and
contact with your products or services. A lot of thought and effort goes
into branding, including naming products, designing logos, and ensuring
that service is uniform throughout the business. Through continued
exposure over time, your brand -- or your reputation -- is formed with
potential and existing customers. "A brand is essentially a short cut, it is a
way for a customer to get an instant recognition on what the promise is of
a product or service and how that will benefit them," Roth says.
The reason businesses spent time and money developing brand
recognition is so that they can charge a premium for a product or service.
People will pay more for a brand name product or service if it is recognized
as a leader and a trusted brand and they know what they will get. Apple,
for example, can charge more for its computers than some other
companies because of its brand reputation for offering innovative design
and quality electronics. The same can be said about Mercedes or BMW

automobiles.
How to Build a Brand Internationally: What You Need to Expand

When businesses try to expand their brand globally, those goals don't
change. But there are several steps you should take to make sure that
your products or services will have a market overseas, that you can
maintain quality in delivering and/or distributing your goods or services,
and that your business or product branding meets cultural expectations -and doesn't insult anyone -- in different parts of the world.
"The secret is doing your homework," Williams says. "Like any long
distance relationship, it's got to be managed and needs more work than
something you can see and physically touch, but it's not impossible."
The following steps may help you in building an international brand:

Make sure you have a market. "Proven success with your current
target audience doesn't automatically mean that your new target will
connect in the same way with your products or services," Williams says.
"Ask your new market the questions you used to build your initial business
plan." First and most important, he says, you'll want to determine if a
market exists for your product. If so, make sure the want or need isn't
already being well met by someone else. If there are existing competitors,
what (in the perspective of your potential customers) makes you
remarkably different? If there is a market and there are no competitors,
make sure you find out why -- are there laws against distributing your
products or can consumers buy them through other means?
Make sure you can deliver. Make sure you can get your product to,
or manufactured within, the new market. "Import and manufacturing laws
vary from country to country," Williams says. "Ensure you can make your
products reliably and consistently available to your new target markets."
Investigate the local laws. You need to make sure your products meet the
local standards for construction of components, use of chemicals, disposal
of goods, proper labeling of products, etc.
Re-examine your business and/or product names. In choosing a
name for your business or product, you need to be culturally sensitive if
you intend to sell in foreign markets. Make sure product names make
sense to customers in your new markets, both in English and in the local
translation. Williams, who has done international branding work with
Starbucks, recalls how a holiday favorite in the U.S., the Gingerbread
Latte, didn't sell well in Germany even though gingerbread was a favorite
holiday cookie in that country. Sales of the drink increased dramatically

when Starbucks began using the German word for gingerbread and
rebranded the drink, the Lebkuchen Latte. If you are considering
translating names, don't rely on computer translation. "You don't want
what you think is an effective name to mean something opposite or offend
potential customers," Williams says. "Work with someone locally who can
help make sure you communicate what you intend."
Give your logo another look. Similarly, review your logo to make
sure that you don't use any wording or symbols that would offend in a
foreign market. "Ensure that any logos or symbols you use make sense
and don't offend," Williams says. "Do an international search to make sure
your logo isn't similar to that of another international company." For
example, if you are selling products in some Middle Eastern markets, a
logo featuring the face of a woman might not be appropriate. The best
way to understand these cultural sensitivities is to consult a branding or
design firm -- either a local one or an international firm that can research
cultural sensitivities.
Understand packaging requirements. If you're selling a product,
you need to consider the laws and customs and packaging requirements in
your new markets before deciding on packaging for your products. Your
packaging may use a clear plastic shell that hangs from a rod, but your
competition may package their product in a box that can go on a shelf,
Williams says. This may put you at a disadvantage. "If you're selling a
packaged product around the world there are incredible hurdles," Roth
adds. Shipping food across borders may require you to provide more
nutritional information on packaging, in more languages, and there may be
laws prohibiting the use of certain products in some markets -- even New
York City has a ban on trans fatty acids, for example. Learn the local
standards and ensure your packaging includes any necessary regulatory
information and meets transportation standards.
Register trademarks and domain names. Follow the process in your
new market to ensure you preserve patent and trademarks. Thanks to the
NAFTA Treaty your marks should already be protected in Mexico and
Canada, Williams says. If you're doing business in the European Union
filing for a Community Trade Mark (CTM) will protect you. Another
consideration is making sure the Internet domain name for your company
and product are available. You still want to register a dot-com, which is the
most popular domain worldwide for businesses. But you may also consider
registering domains using specific country codes -- .nl for the Netherlands
or .br for Brazil -- if you are targeting only one or two local markets and
plan on providing up-to-date translations of your websites into the local
languages.
In taking these steps to building a brand internationally, it almost always
helps to find local resources to help you understand and enter new foreign
markets. You might consider entering into business with a local distributor

or retailer in this new market. "It is nearly impossible to understand local


culture simply by visiting a country," Williams says. "Find local customers,
local translators. Just because you took two years of French in high school
doesn't make you qualified to understand the French market nor do French
translations. Just as consumers' needs are different in Rhode Island from
those in Florida and California, so are the needs of consumers in Paris
different from those in Marseille."
How to Build a Brand Internationally: Building International Brand
Awareness

The way to build awareness of your brand in these new markets -- and
increase sales because, let's face it, this is your goal -- follows the same
formula you use to increase brand awareness at home. "Craft and
communicate a message that is relevant to the needs and wants of your
customers," Williams says. "Deliver this message in the places they are
receptive to it, in terms they can relate to and understand, and through
the channels that will truly reach your potential customer."
Craft your message. Having done your homework and researched the
new foreign markets, and perhaps engaged the help of a local firm or
representative, you have hopeful honed your domestic branding for this
new audience. Be sure to note what the competition and other businesses
are doing. "What may have seemed witty or charming in the U.S. may be
misunderstood in your new market," Williams says. "Be careful playing the
'old and established' angle. An 'old' company in the U.S. can sound
impressive, but you may be doing business in a country that has bottles of
wine and rounds cheese older than your company."
Deliver this message through the right channels. Don't rely on
radio advertisements if your new market is a city in which people
commute by subway or bicycle. Make sure you are communicating your
message where it will be seen. Think about advertising inside the subway.
"What are the habits your customer base in that other country? Where are
they found? What is their lifestyle? What are they doing?" Williams says.
There is no secret answer. It's up to you to connect the dots and find the
right approach.
Communicate in the right manner. The manner and tone in which you
engage your potential and new customers is as important as the words
you choose, Williams says. "Manner and tone will come across through
your packaging, advertising, online, through your sales people, and even
the way you answer the phone," he says. What types of interaction you
will have with customers? What will be the tone you choose? What types
of sales process and policies will you use? Even though you are based
thousands of miles away, this is still a reflection on you and your brand.
Remember that.

While you focus on raising brand awareness, there is another component


to building a brand internationally that needs your attention. You need to
be vigilant in maintaining your brand reputation in every market in which
you sell. That gets harder as your business gets bigger and expands into
more locales. "Once you start having a couple of different offices or are in
multiple states or countries or you've gone from 10 employees to 300 -- all
of a sudden you're not a mom-and-pop operation anymore," Roth says.
"Remember, your brand is a promise. You're starting to make a promise
that people are buying into and you need to deliver whatever that product
or service is."
You need to ensure that your customers' experiences with your product,
your business, and your staff are positive. That extends to how you deliver
your product, product quality control, how service is delivered or
structured, and how your people act. "The larger you get, it's not just you
being the representative for your widget," Roth says. "You now head up an
organization."
In branding, one bad customer experience often resonates longer than one
good experience. "One bad experience magnifies 100-fold," Roth says.
"You need to have constant vigilance." You might consider developing an
employee manual, investing in online training for your staff, and/or
keeping in check how fast you grow so that you can ensure that you
deliver on your brand promise no matter what market you serve.

5)How are brands managed? Explain.

Brand is reputation. A reputation, which is created in the interaction with


the companys communication, employees and services the brand
touchpoints. Therefore brand is not only appearance brand is your
companys fate determined by its ability to present a relevant promise and
to keep it to all its target groups.
Today the external environments confidence represents a larger part of
your companys market value than your ability to produce and sell
products.
Many of the existing management tools and theories start from within the
company and view their target groups from inside the company and out.
This is an outdated perception.
There lies a greater competitive advantage in starting with the target
groups experience of the company seen from outside the company and in.
In this respect the existing management tools are not suited.
Reputation Quality Management is a new management tool, which starts
by identifying and analysing touchpoints. This way the companies can

systematically develop brand management, ensure brand alignment and


enhance brand performance hereby strengthening their competitiveness.
Many consultancies asses the economic value of a companys reputation
others extract the target groups experience of the company. Reputation
Quality Management on the other hand is based in the new reality and
systematically identifies and surveys the activities that lie behind more
than half of the companys market value.
The financial crisis has made evident, that the world has changed
fundamentally. The crisis has attracted attention to the companies selfperception and their markets. Few have found new ways to navigate and
create possibilities in the new financial world order, others are changing
their old ways and the rest are stuck in the time before the financial
crisis.
Today the markets are uncertain and marked by tough competition.
Globalisation and new technologies have made new markets easily
accessible. The name of the game is to create customers which is why
focus increasingly is on the companys brand the most difficult part for
the competition to copy.
At the same time the consumers are more powerful than ever before. They
will not tolerate if the company in any way fails to meet its brand promise.
Communication amongst consumers has never been easier or more
developed. This is evident, when loyalty is tested in each and every
Touchpoint the verdict can be harsh and is always immediate.
Furthermore previously the brand only spanned a single product. Today a
single brand often spans several products and services. This is why, the
companies face a growing challenge in keeping and staying true to their
brand promise.
At the same time the number of sales channels and means of
communication is rising. The consumers expect consistency in the brand
experience during the entire ride. It is becoming increasingly difficult to
create consistency amongst all the experiences of the companys brand.
Likewise more strategic partnerships are entered into in order to deliver
brands to the consumers. A computer contains several brands pieced
together to one. The complexity poses a risk to delivering a consistent
brand experience.
Service is at the heart of all trade. Products are no longer the goal on their
own, but the means to deliver a service. Therefore it is the ability to create
needs that drives competition.
Today the customer is part of the value creating process, this means that
the company is unable to deliver value directly but it delivers an offer of
value.

If the company does not focus on the new reality in which the company
in collaboration with the customer creates value, then it will affect the
companys ability to attract and retain customers, employees, partners,
investors, the media and other target groups.
Lacking focus on the activities that create the companys brand reduces
the companys ability to:

achieve the best price for its services

gain the target groups loyalty

become the customers preferred brand

Today most companies work with quality assurance. It is thoughtprovoking, that the economic value secured by this, amounts to less than
half of the companys market value.
So in order to navigate this new reality, it is necessary to oblige the target
group. Knowledge of the target groups experience of touchpoints
constitutes a competitive advantage and increases the companys value.
Reputation Quality Management secures the largest part of the companys
market value i.e. the brand in accordance with existing quality
management systems. Reputation Quality Management manages
Touchpoints like any other activity in the company.
Leading companies thought leaders now take the lead in the new
reality, and offer their target groups value through experiences, which
they actively and systematically manage with BTM.
Reputation Quality Management makes a complex topic straight forward
and manageable in everyday life.
Reputation Quality Management identifies and systematically investigates
activities that create reputation. The tool is simple and contains a
functional report identifying performance and gaps.
The results are presented in collaboration with management. Based on the
analysis managerial target areas are setup for the relevant Touchpoints.
The survey and the target areas are placed in a continuous system, which
develops the brand and thus enhances reputation. This way the
companys value is maintained and developed systematically.
By repeating the survey with regular intervals, the development of the
different activities, that create reputation, is stimulated.
Reputation Quality Management has been developed by Brand Architect
MAA Henrik Gabriel in collaboration with Bureau Veritas. Reputation
Quality Management builds on the structure of ISO 9001:2008 and has

been inspired by Vargo and Lusch Service-dominant logic as well as C K


Prahalad and Remkat Ramaswamy Co-Opting Customer Competence
among others. Reputation Quality Management is conducted on-line with
Brand Touchpoint Engine. The quality of the solution is assured according
to ISO 9001.
Research has been carried out in co-operation with Copenhagen Business
School, London Business School, University of Technology Sydney,
University of Griffith and University of Westminster among others.
Seminars have been conducted home and abroad, and today the BTM
network encompasses 150 practitioners and academics. Recently a special
edition of Journal of Brand Management has been published regarding
Brand Governance written by Richard Jones and Clive Helm.
In Denmark Brand Touchpoint Institute, which owns the rights to Brand
Touchpoint Management, works with among others ISS and Maersk Line,
who have embraced the new management method.
The advantages of Reputation Quality Management
Reputation Quality Management makes a complex topic simple and
manageable in the everyday life. This makes Reputation Quality
Management relevant in connection with:

ensuring brand delivery and performance

describing the individual activities in- or outside the quality


management system

conducting gap analysis between management, the responsible


employee and target groups

managing departments through best practise

documenting brand equity in connection with mergers and


acquisitions

adapting to different markets

evaluating innovation processes in relation to brand promise

assessing employees experience of the brand promise

assessing business partners experience of the brand promise

aligning analytics, investors and managers

managing the companys assets

ensuring IP in relation to brand touchpoints

6)What is the need for customer engagement? Explain.

The need for customer engagement


CE-marketing is necessitated by a combination of social, technological and
market developments:
1. Businesses are losing the power to dictate the communications
agenda:The effectiveness of the traditional 'interrupt and repeat' model
of advertising is decreasing. In August 2006, McKinsey & Co published a
report which said that by 2010 traditional TV advertising will only be onethird as effective as it was in 1990. This is due to:
Customer audiences are smaller and specialist: The fragmentation of
media and audiences and the accompanying reduction of audience size
have reduced the effectiveness of the traditional top-down, mass,
'interrupt and repeat' advertising model. The adoption of new media.
Forrester Research's North American Consumer Technology Adoption Study
shows people in the 18-26 age group spending more time online than
watching TV. In response to the fragmentation and increased amount of
time spent online, marketers have also increased spending in online
communication. ContextWeb analysts found marketers who promote on
sites like Facebook and New York Times are not as successful at reaching
consumers while marketers who promote more on niche websites have a
better chance of reaching their audiences.
Customer audiences are also broadcasters: A company's position is no
longer just inside consumers' minds. As they increasingly speak their
minds with the power for circulation and permanence of CGM, businesses
lose the power of shouting over everyone else. Instead of trying to position
a product using a couple of static messages that will themselves become
the subject of conversation amongst a target market that has already
discussed, positioned and rated the product, companies must join in. This
also means that consumers can now choose not only when and how but,
also, if they will engage with marketing communications; they can rely on
CGM. In addition new media themselves provide consumers with more
control over their advertising consumption.
2. Decreasing brand loyalty: The lowering of entry barriers (such as the
need for a sales force, access to channels and physical assets) and the
geographical widening of the market due to the internet have brought
about increasing competition. In combination with lower switching costs,
easier access to information about products and suppliers and increased
choice customer loyalty is hard to achieve.
The increasing ineffectiveness of TV advertising due to the shift of
consumer attention to the internet, the ability, within new media, to

control advertising consumption and the decrease in audience size is


bringing about a progressive shift of advertising spending online.
The proliferation of media that provide consumers with more control over
their advertising consumption (subscription-based digital radio and TV for
example) and the simultaneous decrease of trust in advertising and
increase of trust in peers point to the need for communications that the
customer will desire to engage with. Stimulating a consumers
engagement with a brand is the only way to increase brand loyalty and,
therefore, "the best measure of current and future performance".
CE is the solution that marketers have devised in order to come to terms
with the social, technological and market developments outlined above. In
a nutshell, it is the attempt to create an engaging dialogue with target
consumers and stimulate their engagement with the brand. Although this
must take place consistently both on and off-line, the internet is the
primary vehicle for doing so.
CE marketing begins with understanding the internal dynamics of these
developments and, especially, the behaviour and engagement of
consumers online. That way, business opportunities can be identified. As
Max Kalehoff suggests, consumer-generated media should play a massive
role in our understanding and modelling of engagement. The control Web
2.0 consumers have gained must, and will be, quantified through 'old
school' marketing performance metrics.

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