Jul 30, 2011

Right Branding Strategies Through Customers’ Perspective

Brands influence the customers’ perspectives and perceptions with no regard to how they connect with other brands of various companies. Now it’s right time for marketers and brand managers to alter the old approaches to an entirely new mapping tools needed to reflects the brands the way customers want them to appear as. In this strategy what is most important to work on to win customers’ top of mind space is actually the “brand portfolio” management process. It provides the companies powerful new aspects to think and draw strategies about their branding techniques.
In brand portfolio according to traditional way they simply arrange it through corporate brands hierarchy system but now-a-days all they doing is quite converse. Today they are more spoken about the relationship management from the organizations objectives while in back days they completely ignore the customer element. In fact in this brand portfolio based on recent research management have to consider three elements such as: Company’ brands according to organizational lines, on international markets trade basis, and brand extensions on customers’ perspectives.
In this portfolio management process the different elements are size, shade, and location that represents different characteristics of brand. Size for role like largest size appears as lead brands, midsize as strategic brands and smallest size as support brands. Lead brands are on always the main page of the organizations sales objectives, strategic is for blocking the competitors from poaching the current customers, and support brands help in seal the deal with the customers.
Shade indicates whether the brands impacts are positive, negative, and neutral on customers’ buying decision. According to customers the strongest brands are those who create among them strong community sense. Location has two facets, one is, proximity. It means relatedness of brand and market positioning. Second is linkage. It indicates the relationship among the companies and the brands.
The other impact of this link is the degree of control. It means need is to classify the brands according to customers’ perspectives, perceptions, and choices. In normal thinking pattern to do branding is to influence the potential buyers through different ways like campaign, sponsorship, and value added services. A brand must fulfill its mission statement that it is using to attract the customers. The need is to control the intensity of hype for brands so that customers can utilize the right kind of brands to make their life go on with ease and healthy lifestyle.

Jul 28, 2011

Structuring formula of a “Leading Brand”

Leadership brand is a reputation for developing exceptional managers with a distinct set of talents that are uniquely geared to fulfill customers’ and investors’ expectations. A company with a leadership brand inspires faith that employees and managers will consistently make good on the firm’s promises. A leadership brand is also embedded in the organization’s culture, through its policies and its requirements for employees. Leadership - BRAND CANVAS
Building a strong leadership brand requires that companies follow five principles. First, they have to do the basics of leadership like setting strategy and grooming talent well. Second, they must ensure that managers internalize external constituents’ high expectations of the firm. Third, they need to evaluate their leaders according to those external perspectives. Fourth, they must invest in broad-based leadership development that helps managers hone the skills needed to meet customer and investor expectations. And finally, they should track their success at building a leadership brand over the long term. the world s leading brand design to victory
The following chart will help company discover the level of branded leadership within an organization. As a prerequisite to building a leadership brand, firms must master what we call the Leadership Code. Roughly speaking, the code consists of these requirements: First, leaders must master strategy; they need to have a point of view about the future and be able to position the firm for continued success with customers. Next, they must be able to execute, which means they must be able to build organizational systems that work, to deliver results, and to make change happen. Additionally, they must manage today’s talent, knowing how to motivate, engage, and communicate with employees. They must also find ways to develop tomorrow’s talent and groom employees for future leadership. Finally, they must show personal proficiency demonstrating an ability to learn, act with integrity, exercise social and emotional intelligence, make bold decisions, and engender trust.
Assess leaders against the statement of leadership brand. Once a company has crafted a statement of leadership brand, it needs to continually evaluate individuals to make sure that they are living up to it. This requires firms to assess leaders more from the customer’s point of view and measure results less by what the individual manager or the company produces. Instead of worrying about goods shipped on time, customers care about whether they received their goods on time. Instead of concerning themselves about the firm’s product error rates, customers notice when products they receive aren't fully operational on arrival. Rather than just tracking employee commitment to the firm, a company should also try to calculate the impact of employee commitment on customers.

Jul 25, 2011

Influences on “Brand Extensions”

Introduction to new products can be an attractive for growth strategy; however this is not without risks. Some estimate that 35% of all new products fail. Due to factors such as high advertising costs and the increasing competition for shelf space, it has become more difficult to succeed with new products. A basic premise underlying the use of brand extensions is that stronger brands provide greater leverage for extensions than weaker brands.
In the context of brand extension research, brand reputation has been defined in terms of consumer perceptions of quality associated with a brand which is the first influencer. High perceived quality brands can be extended further and receive higher evaluations than low perceived quality brands. Reputation of a brand in such situation is considered as the outcome of product quality, the firm’s marketing activities and acceptance in the market place. Brands with higher perceived reputation should provide consumers with greater risk relief and so encourage more positive evaluations than brands of lower reputation.
This notion should be true for FMCG, durable goods, and particularly for services. When a new brand is launched in the services sector, consumers have neither experience, nor concrete attributes, to judge its quality. Consequently, consumers rely heavily on cues such as brand reputation. On the other hand, with goods, consumers can obtain useful information about quality through visual inspection and thus the importance of inferences based on brand reputation may be reduced.
Second influencer is, perceived risk. Perceived risk is a multi-dimensional construct which implies that consumers experience pre-purchase uncertainty regarding the type and degree of expected loss resulting from the purchase and use of a product. Perceived risk is usually conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct such as: 1) uncertainty about the consequences of making a mistake, 2) uncertainty about the outcome.
A brand which is extended into a new product category offers a new alternative to consumers, but also impacts on consumers’ perceptions of risk. However, a well-known brand is a risk reliever and enhances the likelihood of product trial. As a person gains familiarity with a brand through repeated exposure, perceived risk tends to decline and positive affect tends to increase. When extending a well-known brand into a product category perceived as risky, the brand can serve as a credible risk reliever, signal an acceptable quality level, and thus increasing its likely acceptance. Reliance on a recognized brand is a popular way of reducing risk. Hence, anticipation is that as perceived risk increases when buying a newly extended services brand, so there should be greater reliance on the parent brand.

Jul 16, 2011

The Art of “Personal Branding”

Personal branding is about creating the externally facing identity that an organization has as a business project. Branding is very important. No matter what we might like to believe, people do not buy things for rational reasons. They do so for emotional ones. Even if they go out and do an elaborate comparison between the different features, prices, options, specifications, guarantees and perceptions of different products. They will still refine this down to a few possibilities and make their decision emotionally. That is why the brand is so important; it creates the emotional connection with the buyer.
Personal branding does the same for people as the marketers do for products. Personal branding is a strategic process; it is about intentionally taking control of how others perceive organization and managing those perceptions strategically to help it achieve its goals. Hence, all have a personal brand to a certain extent though most people don’t realize it and do nothing to manage it; yet it has a big impact on all consumers. A personal brand is “the public projection of certain aspects of a person’s personality, skills or values that stimulate precise, meaningful perceptions in its audience about the values and qualities that person stands for.”
Brands are generally built on one area of specialization. It is important to keep the brand simple, and to avoid diversification in favor of becoming even better at the core activity. Organizations can specialize in a number of ways: by ability – strategic vision, grasp of first principles, communicating complexity, by behavior – such as leadership skills, passionate energy or ability to listen, by lifestyle – living on a boat, wearing turtlenecks not ties, traveling by motorbike, by mission – seeing people exceed their own expectations, for instance, by product – the futurist who creates amazing places to work, by profession – niche within a niche – the leadership coach who’s a psychotherapist, and by service – the ‘consultant’ who works as a non-executive director or interim.
People don’t like individuals who try to pretend themselves as natural. They like people who are ‘real’. People who are able to risk being human in front of their domain are liked more for it. According to research there are four characteristics to being human; being related to, being fallible, being positive, and being authentic. There are no short-cuts to achieving a personal brand – those that ‘appear’ overnight are actually the products of many years of persistence. Throughout that time it’s important to recognize fads and trends and be prepared to reject those that detract from the brand.

Jul 14, 2011

Power of “Branding”

Any organization can benefit enormously by creating a brand that presents the company as distinctive, trusted, exciting, reliable or whichever attributes are appropriate to that business. A brand results from a set of associations and perceptions in people’s minds, then branding is an attempt to harness, generate, influence and control these associations to help the business perform better.
Absolute control over a brand is not possible due to outside influences, intelligent use of design, advertising, marketing, service proposition, corporate culture and so on can all really help to generate associations in people’s minds that will benefit the organization. Branding is a way of clearly highlighting what makes organization offer different to, and more desirable than, anyone else.
Effective branding elevates a product or organization from being just one commodity amongst many identical commodities, to become something with a unique character and promise. It can create an emotional resonance in the minds of consumers who choose products and services using both emotional and pragmatic judgments. People are generally willing to pay more for a branded product than they are for something which is largely unbranded. And a brand can be extended through a whole range of offers too.
Creating a connection with people is important for all organizations and a brand can embody attributes which consumers will feel drawn to. The big idea is perhaps a catch-all for a company or service. It should encapsulate what makes it different, what it offer, why an organization are doing it and how it going to present. The big idea is also a uniting concept that can hold together an otherwise disparate set of activities. Ideally, it will inform everything they do, big or small, including customer service, advertising, a website order form, staff uniforms, and corporate identity.
Generating a vision for a company means thinking about its future, where it want to be, looking at ways to challenge the market or transform a sector. A vision may be grand and large-scale, or may be as simple as offering an existing product in a completely new way, or even changing the emphasis of business from one core area to another. Like the word ‘brand’ itself, the term ‘brand values’ is perhaps a little over-used in design and marketing circles, but it does relate to important aspects of how people see an organization. It’s what stands for and it can be communicated either explicitly or implicitly in what organization do.

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