Boom brands through causal branding approach!

Cause related marketing works by integrating the core trading objectives and activities of a business with the needs of a particular cause or charity. When done well, it provides a win for the charity or cause, a win for the consumer and other stakeholders and a win for business as a whole. It makes commercial sense too. As it delivers greater benefit more than anything else any company can do and can achieve through a wide range of marketing tactics, fundraising and social benefits, Stakeholders in a Global Environment

This enhances standing and profile, builds relationships and loyalty, adds value, reveals the organizations' values, supports existing programs and provides resources. It also has the potential to maximize sales, value and income. It is about using marketing, its techniques and supporting valuable causes even as at the same time growing the business. It is a commercial activity by which businesses and charities or causes form a joint venture with each other to market an image, product or service for mutual benefit. Causal Models in Marketing

With the change through the globalization, organizations play an increasing role in community and have a greater impact on society. People in the dual role as consumer and citizen will expect companies to use their power and influence wisely to meet the needs more effectively. It’s about corporate responsibility. It enables an organization to build loyalty amongst the shareholders, expand strong global affiliations and relationships with the government, pierce new markets, and engender positive publicity.

An organization ideally carry on with a cause related marketing mission with some of the key success factors as are given below:

• Assess organization's values and current image
• Note down the objectives clearly
• Short or long term relationship strategies
• Get organization geared for the challenge in these relationship
• Visualize the results ahead of time in advance
• Consumers want socially responsible organizations so go for it
• Positive image makes a difference
• Build a human interaction possibly to the whole event
• Reliability is key
• Have a campaign-able idea
• A significant ad and communication budget required
• Monitor the results closely
• Trust is the relationships but keep a contingency plan in place

Broad Spectrum Brand Management Tactics: Marcoms

Brand managers or researchers take brand management as an activity built around masses to increase brand awareness among them and, with luck, they establish brand preferences for them on the basis of it. A more practical and useful tactic is branding via consumers which include several methods like wide spread use of interactive, digital media, public relations and event management have a prominence today which was not so evident in the past; street-smart communicators have embraced buzz and viral.

The interface between brands and their publics irrespective of whether they are existing ones or prospective customers lead users, bloggers, media commentators or fans. These are known as “Marcoms”. Marcoms (Marketing communications) make the brand visible and audible to all public. Apple that is an archetypal iconic brand knows well the power of marketing communications to create brands that consumers embrace passionately. It was no accident thing that YouTube videos and Flicker photos appeared at the time of the iPod launch. This popular view of brand management is not only dominates business practice but also help about learning on a specific subject or object.

Normally Marcoms have developed in the form of textbook format in which stories are told, perpetuated, refined and elaborated. Much of this re-telling of the story is a straightforward description. At a more sophisticated level, this re-telling is framed in the language of brands as cultural icons, whereby the immersion of the brand management team, advertiser, or agency in populist worlds enables stories to be co-developed which have meaning for a brand’s public initially cultural insiders and lead users then to be cultural followers, such stories are constructed around myths that address contradictions exist in the society. The Book of Myths

Brand management that does not deny the importance of Marcoms, also takes heed of Non-Marcoms aspects of business: consumer psychology, consumer habit and routine, and social psychology; human resource management (HRM), organizational behavior and employer branding; management and financial accounting, brand valuation and brand finance, brands on and off the balance sheet, and brands in the boardroom; intellectual property, trademarks, counterfeits and the legal aspects of branding, linguistics, signs, semiotics and symbolic meanings; graphic and product design.

None of this Marcoms or Non-Marcoms approach is easy. To be effective there needs to be coordination and integration across several disciplines of them. Effective brand management should be seen as a slow spanning activity in which managers are proficient at making connections and linkages. So for broad spectrum branding one requires multi-disciplinary thinking, practice and education.