ALL ABOUT BRANDING

The term brand means different things to the different roles of buyer and seller, with buyers generally associating brand with a product or service, and merchants associating brand with identity. Brand can also identify the company behind the specific product -- that's not just a biscuit, that's Britannia biscuit. This use of brand puts a "face" behind the name, so to speak, even if the "face" is the result of advertising copy and television commercials. This use of brand also says nothing of quality, just the buyer's exposure to the brand's PR and media hype. For the typical merchant, branding is a way of taking everything that is good about the company -- positive shopping experience, professionalism, superior service, product knowledge, whatever the company decides is important for a customer to believe about the company -- and wrapping these characteristics into a package that can be evoked by the brand as signifier.

1.1 Introduction to Branding

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as A name, term, sign, symbol or design or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group and to differentiate them to those for competitors. A brand is thus a product or service thats adds a Dimension that differentiates it in some way from other products or services designed to satisfy the same need. These differences may be functional, rational, or tangible- relate to product performance of the brand. Branding has been around for centuries as a means to distinguish the goods of one producer to those of another. The earliest signs of branding can be traced to Europe where the medieval guilds required that craftsmen put trademarks on their product to protect themselves and producer against inferior quality substitutes. Also in fine arts branding began with artists signing their works. Brands today play a number of important roles that improve the consumers lives and enhance the financial value of firms. Brands identify the source or maker of the product and allow consumers-either individual or organizations- to assign responsibility to a particular manufacturer or distributor. Consumers may evaluate the identical product differently depending how it is branded. Consumers lean about the brand with its past experience and the marketing program. As consumers lives becomes more complicated, time starved the ability of brand to simplify decision making is invaluable. Brands also perform valuable functions for the firm. First they simplify the product handling and tracing. Brands help to organize

inventory and accounting records. The brand name can be protected registered trademarks. The intellectual property rights ensure that the firm can safely invest in the brand and can reap the benefits over a long period of time. Brands can signal a certain level of quality so that satisfied buyers can easily choose the product again. Brand loyalty provides predictability and security of demand for the firm and creates barriers to entry that makes it difficult for other firms to enter the market. This brand loyalty can translate into willingness to pay higher price. In this sense branding can be seen as powerful means to secure a competitive advantage. Brands represent enormously valuable pieces of legal property that can influence consumers behavior. Strong brand results in better earnings and profit performance for firms, which in turn, creates greater value for shareholders. How do you BRAND a product? Although firms provide the impetus to brand creation through marketing programs and other activities, ultimately a brand is something that resides in the mind of the consumers. A brand is a perpetual identity that is rooted in reality but reflects the perceptions and perhaps even the ultimate choice of the consumers. Branding is endowing products and services with the power of brands. To brand a product, it is necessary to teach the consumers who the product -by giving a name. Branding involves creating mental structures and helping consumers organize their knowledge about products and services in a way that clarifies their decision making and in process provides value to the firm Branding can be applied virtually anywhere a consumer has a choice. It is possible to brand:

A physical good (Nestle soup, Pantene shampoo or Maruti Swift), A service (Kingfisher Airlines, TATA AIG medical insurance), A store (Big Bazaar, BATA stores), A place (The state of Kerala, Pushkar Mela), A person (Shahrukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar), An organization (UNICEF or BCCI),

Brand is the proprietary visual, emotional, rational, and cultural image that you associate with the company or a product. When you think of Volvo, you think of safety. When you think of Nike, you think of Michael Jordon or Just Do It. When you think of IBM, you think of Big Blue. The fact that you remember the brand name and have positive associations with that brand makes your product selection easier and enhances the value and satisfaction you get from product

While Brand X cola or even Pepsi-Cola may win blind taste tests over Coca-Cola, the fact is that more people buy Coke than any other Cola. The fond memories of childhood and refreshment that people have when they drink Coke is often more important than a little bit better cola taste. It I this emotional relationship with brands that make them so powerful.

1.2 Purpose of Branding

The purpose of branding is to create a powerful and lasting emotional connection with customers and other audiences. A brand is a set of elements or brand assets that in combination create a unique, memorable, unmistakable, and valuable relationship between an organization and its customers. The brand is carried by a set of compelling visual, written and vocal tools to represent the business plan and intentions of an organization. Branding is the voice and image that represents your business plan to the outside world. What your company, products and services stand for should all be captured in your branding strategy, and represented consistently throughout all your brand assets and in your daily marketing activities The brand image that carries this emotional connection consists of the many manageable elements of branding system, including both visual image assets and language assets. The process of managing the brand to the business plan is important not only in big change situation where the brand redefinition is required, but also in the management of routine marketing variables and tactics. This does not have to be a ground-up situation where there are wholesale changes to the business. Rather it is more common that specific changes to the changes to the business plan are incremental and the work of the brand strategist and designer is to interpret these changes and revise the branding strategy and resulting brand assets and define their use in the full range of marketing variables.

1.3 Brand Identity

Brand Identity includes brand names, logos, positioning, brand associations, and brand personality, brand toons etc. A good brand name gives a good first impression and evokes positive associations with the brand. A positioning statement tells what business the company is in, what benefits it provides and why it is better than the completion? Brand personality adds emotion, culture and myth to brand identity by the use of a famous spokesperson (Bill Cosby-Jello), a character (Pink Panther), an animal (the Merrill lynch bull) etc.

Brand associations are the attributes that costumer thinks of when they hear or see the brand name. McDonalds television are a series of one brand association after another, starting in yellow arches in the low right corner of the screen and following with associations of Big Mac, Ronald MacDonald, kids, happy meal, food quality etc. The first step in creating a brand for your company is branding workshop. How do we determine our Brand Identity? Brand has been called the most powerful idea in commercial world, yet few companies create a brand identity.

Do you want your companys brand identity created for you by competitors and unhappy customers? Of course not. Our advice to executives is to research their customers and find the top ranked reasons that the customers buy their product rather than their competitors. Then, pound that message in every ad, in every news release, in communications with employees and in every sales call or media interview. By continuous repetition of messages customer will think of your product and then buy it.

1.4 Tools for Building Brand Identity

Brand builders use a set of tools to strengthen and project the brand image; Strong brands typically exhibit an owned word, a slogan, a color, a symbol, and set of stories. Owned Word A strong brand name should trigger another word, a favorable one. Here is the list of brands that own a word: Volvo BMW Mercedes Federal Express Apple computers Lotus Kodak Safety Driving performance Engineering Overnight Graphics Spreadsheets Film Slogan Many companies successfully added slogan tagline a or to

their brand name which

is repeated in every ad they use. Here are some well-known brands slogans, which people on the street may easily recall or recognize: Colors It helps for a company or a brand to use a consistent set of color to and in the brand recognition. Caterpillar paints all its construction equipments yellow. Yellow is the color of Kodak film. IBM uses blue in its publications, and IBM is called Big Blues. Symbols and Logos Companies would be wise to adapt a symbol or logo to use in their communications. Many companies hire a well-known spokesperson, hoping that his or her quality transfer to the brand. Nike uses Michael Jordon who has worldwide recognition and likableness, to advertise its shoes. Sporting goods

manufacturers sign contracts with top athletes to serve as their symbols, even naming the product after them. Cartoons and Animations A less expensive approach is to develop a character, animated, to etch the brands image into customers mind. The advertising agency Leo Burnett has successfully created a number of memorable animated characters. Here are some well known brand cartoons which people may recognize: Company ICICI Prudential Amul Butter McDonalds All Out mosquito Repellent Pillsbury 7 Up Objects Still another approach is to choose an object to represent a company or brand. The travelers insurance company uses an umbrella, suggesting that buying insurance is equivalent to having an umbrella available when it rains. The prudential insurance company features the rock of Gibraltar, suggesting that buying an insurance is equivalent to owing a peace of rock which is of course, solid ad dependa ble. Companies have developed many logos or abstracts, which are easily remembered by people. Even the way the brand name is written makes a brand recognizable and memorable. Cartoon or Animation Chintamani Utterly Butterly Girl Ronald Louis Doughboy Fido Dido

1.5 Brand Effectiveness

With an increase in global competition, branding has become a source of competitive advantage. In rapidly evolving market for consumer, and industrial products and services, the source of next generation competency will be branding. In this briefing we demonstrate how to calculate the brand strength, the price premium associated with the products categories, and type of customers attracted to

the Premium Products. Marketers who match their brand with customers needs will have a sustainable competitive advantage.

Measuring Brand Effectiveness

There are many metrics to measure the potential of and actual effectiveness of brands. The simplest way is to apply the concept of what we call the 4 Ds of Branding; differentiation, distinctiv eness, defendable, digit-able.

Distinctiveness: your brand should be distinct when compared to your competitors and to all spoken and visual communications to which your target audiences will be exposed. The more unique and distinct your communications, the wider the filed of effective competitive strength it will have. There are simple means to apply to test the distinctiveness of your brand.

Differentiation: the brand strategy and brand assets must set youre offering apart and clearly articulate the specific positioning intent of your offering. Defendable: you will be investing in creating your brand assets and in all cases your brand must have proprietary strength to keep others from using close approximations. This applies to your trade names and other proprietary words as well as to your logos, symbols and other visual assets.

Digit-able: in most businesses there is strong and growing element of electronic communications and commerce that dictate all brand assets be leveraged effectively in tactile and electronics form. This goes for all brand assets.

Much of the brand managers work is to build a brand image. But its job doesnt stop there. The brand manager needs to make sure that brand experience matches the brand image. Much can go wrong. A fine brand of canned soup described in a full page color ad may be found in dented and dusty condition in the bottom shelf of a supermarket. The ad describing a gracious hotel chain is belied by the behavior of a surly concierge. Building brand therefore calls for more than brand image building. It calls for managing every brand contact that customer might have with brand. Since all the employees, distributors and dealers can affect brand experience.

1.6 Brand and Reputation

A brand exists in the mind, or not at all. The mind it exists in may be that of a customer, a potential customer, an interested observer, a disinterested observer... or almost anybody. Awareness of a brand may be irrelevant to any purchasing decision that an individual may make. People are aware of the Mercedes car brand, but cannot envisage any circumstance under which they would (could!) buy a Mercedes. They are aware of Marlboro (and scores of other cigarette brands) but as a non-smoker they will never convert their awareness into purchase. Male with no children are not targeted by Pampers or Huggies but still are aware of the brands. People wear many hats. But are or not a potential customer. People may be an employee, an investor, a citizen, a husband and so on. They hate McDonalds hamburgers but might love their stock market record and therefore be a potential customer for their stock. They will never buy a Boeing 777 but might be impressed by the aircraft and favor an airline that flies them. They have no idea what an Intel chip is, but might be persuaded that it is a good thing to have in my PC and therefore buy a computer from a company that uses them. Brand Aware argues that there is no difference between "Brand" and "Reputation". Some conventional wisdoms state that customers buy brands, but that investors buy reputations. Those potential employees join companies because of their reputation, that the media and other "stakeholders" judge a company on its reputation in some way as a distinct concept from its brand. This part argues that such distinctions are fallacious for all companies, but especially for single brand companies such as a McDonalds, a Coca-Cola, a Compaq or a Shell. These companies reputations are part and parcel of their brand. Their brands are their reputation. The Brand To any individual a brand (in his mind) is a complex combination of experiences, beliefs, perceptions and associations that have grown up over time. For example Coca-Cola is a company brand, a product brand, a service brand and a brand with a long history. It is a brand which may represent (to any one individual) diversity, internationality, technical excellence, financial strength etc. etc. It may also mean insensitivity, environmental pollution, abuse of power and other negative perceptions.

Perceiving the brand: An individual builds up his perceptions of a brand via a wide range of communications channels. They are as follows:

Experience: The most powerful influence is experiential. This is when the individual actually has a "Brand experience". The most obvious are: -

He visits a McDonalds restaurant or a Shell petrol station. He buys a Coca-Cola branded product or service. He views a Coca-Cola bottler's facility. He visits a corporate website. He attends an interview at the company. He contacts the company office for information. He meets an employee of the company. He buys a share in the company, etc.

Advertising: Over time an individual who lives in a country in which the company/brand is active, or travels to one on business or vacation, will be exposed to their advertising. This advertising may be in a wide range of media:

TV commercials for products and services Recruitment ads inviting employment applications "Corporate" TV commercials promoting the company's "reputation" Web based advertising An ad for the companys branded products or services in a wide variety of print media. Billboards on highways Radio Point of sale etc.

Media reports and stories: Individuals will be exposed to a wide variety of reports about companies in the media (print and broadcast) where the editorial content is only partly influence able by the company (in some cases) or not at all (in most cases). These stories will come from a variety of primary and secondary sources: -

Press releases Press conferences Reporting of "events" Investigative journalism Stories passed to the media by third parties (Non governmental organizations etc.)

Professional/business interest: For some individuals to interface professionally, or from a specific business need, with famous companies (or to observe them) is part of their job. They will usually procure their information from a variety of sources and via a variety of channels of communication. These individuals have a special interest in the companies and they include: -

Financial analysts and journalists with an interest in share performance Existing or potential suppliers of products and services Existing or potential industrial/commercial customer.

1.7 Building the Brand

The art of marketing is largely art of brand building. When something is not a brand, it will probably be viewed as a commodity. Then price is the thing that counts. When price is the only thing that counts then the low cost producer wins. But just having a brand is not enough. What does the brand name mean? What associations, performances and expectations does it evoke? What degree of preferences does it create? Choosing a Brand Name A brand name first must be chosen then its various meanings and promises must be built up through brand identity work. In choosing a brand name, it must be consistent with the value positioning of the brand. In naming a product or service the company may face many possibilities: it could choose name of

the person (Honda, Calvin Klein), location (American airlines), quality (Safety stores, Healthy choice), or an artificial name (Exxon, Kodak). Among the desirable qualities of a brand name. Some are:

It should suggest something about the product benefits. It should suggest product qualities such action or color It should be easy to pronounce, recognize and remember; short names help a lot to recognize the product to the customers. It should be distinctive. It should not carry poor meanings in other countries and languages etc.

Building Positive Associations The best known brand names carry associations. For example, here is a list of words that people say they associate with McDonalds:

Kids Fun Happy Meal Ronald Mc. Donald Quality Toys

In trying to build a rich set of positive associations for a brand, the brand builder should consider five dimensions that can communicate meaning:

Attributes: A strong brand should trigger in buyers mind certain attributes. Thus a Mercedes automobile attributes a picture of well-engineered car that is durable, rugged and expensive. If a car brand does not trigger any attribute, then it would be a weak brand.

Benefits: A strong brand should suggest benefits, not just features. Thus Mercedes triggers the idea of well performing car that is enjoyable to drive and prestigious to own. Company Values: A strong brand should connote values that the company holds. Thus Mercedes is proud of its engineers and engineering innovations and is very organized and

efficient in its operations. The fact that it is a German company adds more pictures in the mind of the buyers about the character and the culture of the brand. Personality: A strong brand should exhibit some personality traits. Thus if Mercedes were a person we would think of someone who is middle age, serious, well-organized and somewhat authoritarian. If Mercedes were an animal we might think of lion or its implied personality. Users: A strong brand should suggest the type of people who buy the brand. Thus we would expect Mercedes to draw buyers who are older, affluent and professional.
In summary, brands when their very name connotes positive attributes, benefits, company values, personality and users in the buyers mind. The brand builders job is to create a brand identity that builds on those dimensions.

1.8 Choosing Brand Elements

Brand elements are those trademarks devices that serve to identify and differentiate the brand. Most strong brands employ multiple brand elements. Nike has distinctive swoosh logo, the empowering Just Do It slogan and the mythological Nike name based on the winged goddess of victory. Brand element can be chosen to build as much as brand equity as possible. The test of the brand building ability of these elements is what consumers think or feel about the product if they only knew about the brand element. A brand element provides positive contribution to brand equity. Brand Element Choice Criteria There are six criteria in choosing brand element. The first three can be characterized by brand building in terms of how brand equity can be build through judicious choice of brand element. The latter three are more defensive and are concerned with how the brand equity contained in the brand element can be leveraged and preserved in the face of various opportunities and constraints.

Memorable: How easily is the brand element recalled? How easily recognized? Is this true at both purchase and consumption? Short brand name like tide, Nike can help. Meaningful: To what extent is brand element credible and suggestive of the corresponding category? Does it suggest something about a product ingredient or a type of person who might use the brand?

Likeability: How aesthetically appealing does consumers find the brand element? Is it inherently likeable visually, verbally, and in other ways? Concrete brand names such as Wheel, Sunsilk etc evoke much imagery.

Transferable: Can a brand element be used to introduce new products in the same or different categories? To what extent does the brand element add to brand equity across geographic boundaries and market segments?

Adaptable: How adaptable and updatable is the brand element? Betty corker received 8 makeovers through the years-although she is 75 yrs old, she doesnt look a day over 35. Protectable: How legally protectable is the brand element? How competitively protectable? Can it be easily copied? It is important that names that become synonymous with product categories such as Kleenex, Xerox, Jell-O, etc retain their trademarks rights and not become generic. Brand elements can play a number of roles. If consumers do not examine much information in making their product decisions, brand elements should be easily recognized and recalled and inherently descriptive and persuasive. Memorable or meaningful brand elements can reduce the burden on marketing communications to build awareness and link brand associations. The different associations that arise from likeability and appeal of the brand elements may also play a critical role in the equity of brand.

2 What is Brand Equity

There is no universally accepted definition of brand equity. The term means different things for different companies and products. However, there are several common characteristics of the many definitions that are used today. From the following examples it is clear that brand equity is multi-dimensional. There are several stakeholders concerned with brand equity, including the firm, the consumer, the channel, and some would even argue the financial markets. But ultimately, it is the consumer that is the most critical component in defining brand equity. Some researchers in the field of marketing have defined brand equity as follows:

Lance Leuthesser, et al (1995) writes that " brand equity represents the value (to a consumer) of a product, above that which would result for an otherwise identical product without the brand's name. In other words, brand equity represents the degree to which a brand's name alone contributes value to the offering (again, from the perspective of the consumer)."

The Marketing Science Institute (1988) defines brand equity as, "The set of associations and behaviors on the part of the brand's customers, channel members, and parent corporations that permit the brand to earn greater volume or greater margins than it could without the brand name and that gives the brand a strong, sustainable, and differentiated advantage over competitors."

2.1 Brand equity can be defined as three distinct elements:

The total value of a brand as a separable asset -- when it is sold or included on a balance sheet. A measure of the strength of consumers' attachment to a brand. A description of the associations and beliefs the consumer has about the brand.

Of those three concepts, the first can be classified as "brand valuation," the second "brand loyalty," and the third "brand description." Brand loyalty will be a factor that affects the overall brand value, and brand description will usually affect or explain some of the brand loyalty. Because of the importance of each of these elements of brand equity, they will each be briefly explained.

2.2 Brand Equity as Brand Value.

Brand value involves actually placing a dollar or rupee value on a brand name. The reasons for doing this are usually to set a price when the brand is sold and also to include the brand as an intangible asset on a balance sheet (a practice which is not used in some countries). While there are many methods for making this measurement, some of which will be described shortly, it is important to note that there is a significant difference between an "objective" valuation created for balance sheet purposes, and the actual price that a brand may get when sold? A brand is likely to have a much greater value to one purchaser than another depending on the synergy that exists. For acquisitions, the value of a brand to a certain purchaser is often estimated through scenario planning. This involves determining what future cash flows the company could achieve if it owned and took advantage of the brand. What this means is that there is no such thing as an absolute value for a brand, and brand value needs to be considered as only one component of the overall equity of a brand.

2.3 Brand Equity as Brand Loyalty

Loyalty is a core dimension of brand equity and is a way to gauge the strength of a brand. It represents a barrier to entry, a basis for a price premium, and time to respond to competitive innovations. The variety of measures used for brand loyalty usually is a combination of one or more of the following:

Price/demand measures--focus on a brand's ability to command a higher price or make consumers less sensitive to price increases than price increases for competing brands. Behavioral measures--focus on consumers' behavior. Attitudinal measures--focus on general evaluative measures such as 'liking' or 'disliking.' Awareness measures--focus on identifying a brand as being associated with a product category. Brand Loyalty and Equity refer to the notion that some brands are "stronger" or better than others.

An example of this sort of belief is: If the businesses were split up, I would take the brands, trademarks and goodwill, and you could have all the bricks and mortar - and I would fare better than you. The optimism for the concept can be stated on the fact that when one would say as a predictor of future financial performance, brand equity, if reported, would be valuable for capital marketers and shareholders. Brand equity has the potential to become the set of measures of business performance that matter most. The motivation for brand equity comes from the observation that many marketing efforts "realize" benefits; such as sales or profit and these are accounted for in the firms profit and loss figures. However, there is the possibility that management might choose between taking realized benefits and "storing" them future. One of the most common times this argument is used is when discussing the role of advertising versus sales promotion. You could spend lots of money on advertising, see no immediate effects, but you could save your job by saying that you had "built the brand". At least one advertising agency offers to partner companies in this sort of activity.

So marketing strategies could be putting money into (or out of) the brand equity bank account. But the question is as always how do we know? That is are we actually building the brand with all our advertising (or other brand building 4 ps decisions e.g., limited / premium distribution rights, high price, fancy packing, after sales service, extended warranties).So, hopefully you have got the idea - theories about brand loyalty and equity are used to represent aspects of brand strength. This "strength" can take a number of forms, e.g., consumers predominantly buying your brand, which might be represented by a high share of category requirements, or high proportion of sole-buyers. Consumers saying good things about your brand, e.g., having a positive brand Attitude, it might be the ability to charge a price premium. It might be the ability to not be substituted when out of stock. Future strength might be in terms of some sort of long-term competitive advantage or the ability to sustain brand extensions. One of the things is that as with many concepts in marketing, is that there are many different definitions and viewpoints on what exactly brand equity is and how to measure it. So that is a problem. We need to be clear just what people mean when they talk about brand equity or brand loyalty, or building brands.

2.4 Brand loyalty / Equity advocates

One of the ruses used by proponents of brand equity or loyalty is to claim that these measures do not capture all the important aspects of brands strength. But this is an evasion. We want to be able to detect that our efforts are doing something to the brand, and so we need to know ways that this might show up in.

2.5 Brand Equity as Brand Description

Brand description, the final component of brand equity, concerns the actual attributes of the brand. These attributes or associations are major creators of brand loyalty. A wide variety of techniques exist for matching consumer associations with perceptions of a brand. These techniques can be both qualitative and quantitative. They work by getting the respondent to link each brand with pictures or words. These attributes then can be measured with multi-dimensional scaling to position the attributes relative to one another.

2.6 Qualitative Measures of Brand Equity

The Brand Equity Ten are ten sets of measures grouped into five categories, which attempt to gauge the strength of a brand. The first four categories represent customer perceptions of the brand along the four dimensions of brand equity- loyalty, perceived quality, associations and awareness. The fifth includes two sets of market behavior measures.

Loyalty
Price Premium: A basic indicator of loyalty is the amount a customer will pay for a product in comparison to other comparable products. A price premium can be determined by simply asking consumers how much more they would be willing to pay for the brand. Customer Satisfaction: A direct measure of customer satisfaction can be applied to existing customers. The focus can be the last use experience or simply the use experience from the customer's view.

Perceived Quality and Leadership Measures

Perceived Quality is one of the key dimensions of brand equity and has been shown to be associated with price premiums, price elasticities, brand usage and stock return. It can be calculated by asking consumers to directly compare similar brands.

Leadership/Popularity has three dimensions. First, if enough consumers are buying into the brand concept it must have merit. Second, leadership often taps innovation within a product class. Third, leadership taps the dynamics of consumer acceptance. Namely, people are uneasy swimming against the tide are a likely to buy a popular product. This can be measured by asking consumers about the product's leadership position, its popularity and its innovative qualities.

 Associations/ Differentiation Measures

Perceived Value: This dimension simply involves determining whether the product provides good value for the money and whether there are reasons to buy this brand over competitive brands. Brand Personality: This element is based on the brand-as-person perspective. For some brands, the brand personality can provide links to the brands emotional and self-expressive benefits. Organizational Associations: This dimension considers the type of organization that lies behind the brand.

Awareness Measures
Brand awareness reflects the salience of the product in the consumer's mind and involves various levels including recognition, recall, brand dominance, and brand knowledge and brand opinion.

Market Behavior Measures

Market Share: The performance of a brand as measured by market share often provides a valid and dynamic reflection of the brand's standing with customers.

Price and Distribution indices: Market share can prove deceptive when it increases as a result of reduced prices or promotions. Calculating market price and distribution coverage can provide or more accurate picture of the product's true strength. Relative market price can be calculated by dividing the average price at which the product was sold during the month by the average price at which all the brands were sold.

2.7 Managing Brand Equity

Consistency is the key to successfully building and managing brand equity. Having a long-term outlook and projecting a consistent image of your brand to the customer will maximize the results of building brand equity. It is critical for managers to realize that brand equity can have positive as well as negative effects on a product or company. In the end, it is the customer that truly defines what brand equity means.

If management feels it is necessary to change the direction of a brand or change a product it must be careful not to change too quickly. There are many examples of companies that have changed a product or brand too much or too quickly. On these occasions, consumers met changes with adverse reactions. The most famous example is Coca-Cola. They changed the formula of their flagship product Coke, and consumers reacted so poorly to the new product that the old formula was reintroduced and the new formula eventually was discontinued. The consumer through the product experiences brand equity. The product has certain attributes or characteristics that deliver the equity to the consumer. If any of these attributes are changed or eliminated, the equity delivered to the consumer is also changed. Managing brand equity is a continual process with long-term implications. Unfortunately, many brand managers are forced to focus on short-term goals such as market share and profits. Many programs that are implemented to boost short-term sales or market share may be detrimental to the long-term viability of the brand. For example, Proctor & Gamble has started to test market a program to move away from using coupons to a system of every day low prices. This is, in part, because consumers may become loyal to the coupon or promotion and not to the product itself. Constant promotional programs erode margins and eventually brand loyalty. Ultimately, brand equity is damaged. In 1988, Graham Phillips, Chairman of Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide, said, "I doubt that many would welcome a commodity marketplace in which one competed solely on price, promotion and trade deals, all of which can be easily duplicated by competition. This would lead to ever decreasing profits, decay, and eventual bankruptcy. About the only aspect of the marketing mix that cannot be duplicated is a strong brand image." This quote clearly demonstrates the importance of managing brand equity. In many categories, brand equity is the only point of differentiation between products.

Many people may think that building and maintaining brand equity is solely the responsibility of brand managers, but it is actually a cross-functional team effort. Financial managers are important because they can fully analyze the costs of maintaining and building brand equity. For example, launching a new brand is extremely consuming in terms of money and time. It may be more cost effective to extend a current brand than introduce a new brand. Marketing research is critical for many obvious reasons. It develops most, if not all, of the research and data that companies will use for deciding strategic issues. Marketing research can also help determine how brand equity is actually measured. Once a definition of brand equity is established, the responsibility of tracking

2.8 The World Strongest Brand Share 10 Attributes

The brand excels at delivering the benefits consumers truly desire. The brand stays relevant. The pricing strategy is based on consumer perceptions of value. The brand is properly positioned. The brand is consistent. The brand portfolio and hierarchy makes sense. The brand makes use of and co-ordinates a full repertoire of marketing activities to build equity. The brand is given proper, sustained support. The brands manager understands what the brand means to customers. The company monitors source of brand equity.

2.9 Branding benefits buyers as well as sellers in the following manner

To Buyer:

Help buyers identify the product that they like/dislike. Identify marketer Helps reduce the time needed for purchase. Helps buyers evaluate quality of products especially if unable to judge products characteristics. Helps reduce buyers perceived risk of purchase.

Buyer may derive a psychological reward from owning the brand, i.e., Rolex or Mercedes.

To Seller:

Differentiate product offering from competitors Helps segment market by creating tailored images, i.e., Contact lenses Brand identifies the companies products making repeat purchases easier for customers. Reduce price comparisons Brand helps firm introduce a new product that carries the name of one or more of its existing products...half as much as using a new brand, lower co. designs, advertising and promotional costs. Example, BPL telephones.

Easier cooperation with intermediaries with well known brands Facilitates promotional efforts. Helps foster brand loyalty helping to stabilize market share. Firms may be able to charge a premium for the brand.

3.ALL ABOUT TOON BRANDING

3.1 Toon Branding

Looks like the ad industry cant have enough of animation. Digital characters are fast stepping into the realm of corporate brands. Hutchs Boy-Girl duo, the claymation Chintamani of ICICI, The toons in All Out Mosquito repellent ad, as well as the classic Asian paints ex-mascot Gattoo, the Amul girl, the Handiplast Boy, Fido-Dido of 7-Up etc are some of the examples of the toons used for marketing the product. Most advisers are using animation for top of the mind recall says McCann Ericksons Prasoon Joshi. McCanns new commercial for Coca-Colas vanilla variant has the model blowing animated, heartshaped kisses for the audience. Toon illustrations create excitement, and also serve as a memory hook to pick a particular brand fro m clutter. Kelloggs animated kid and bear are intertwined in peoples minds. Nike also used swoosh logo sign to bring immediate recall value, while the Claymation characters Of Amaron, an O&M creative, pick on sleeping politicians to get their value across. O&Ms Piyush Pandey says his firm encourages the idea of breaking form. Creative people have to look at different ways to get message across, and if that means exploring other forms of art, then why not? HLLs Annapoorna uses Flintstone like characters to drive its USP. Industry officials say animation could be used as creative idea to express a particular value, or it could be a sacrosanct image, almost becoming part of the logo of the brand like A-I am Maharaja or Amul Girl. As mnemonics flow thick and fast characters get established in the consumers mind. However at times they are given a hasty burial. Asian Paints Gattoo was the rage, but the kid was killed after he was linked to child labour. First it was retro advertising, and then there was the trend of using real kids. The ad worlds latest obsession is with animation. Be it Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat asking Fido to make her more curvy or Aishwarya Rai diving into the sea with a Frisbee or, for that matter, an animated poodle talking to Rani Mukherjee and her gang of friends in the Fanta commercial- theyve all got the cool punch with animation.

With a string of animated commercials such as Pepsodent (Bhoot Police). ICICI Prudentials Chintamani and Anand Rathi Securities happening in the past few months, companies across sectors are more willing than ever before to use animation in their ad films. The number of animation ad films produced per year in the past five years has increased at least eight times and feature films like Hum Tum (had cartoons of Saif Ali Khan And Rani Mukherjee coming in between the film)are backing the overall trend around animation. We used to do three animation ad films a year five years ago, now its two every month, says, E.Suresh. Creative director. Famous House of Animation, a division of Famous Studios. Animation is no kid stuff anymore. One sees a fair number of youth and adult targeted content happening in the form of animation in films and TV shows these days, says Rahul Welde, general manager, media. Hindustan Unilever Limited. Mr.Welde claims to have used animation where it could add to the creative quotient of the commercial which give something unexpected to the audience. Gross thinks at time look cute in animation rather than the real thing, say in case of a fat man, the Chintamani ad was initially a radio jingle. With Claymation (clay + animation), it broke the clutter and became likeable in a very non-financial advertising style, says Abhishekh Bhatia, director marketing, Prudential Assurance, Malaysia, who was then involved in launching the campaign from ICICI Prudential. The contribution to the sales of pension schemes of the group rose 30% after the campaign. The popularity of cartoons among youngsters- a gradual transformation over the past few years- Kill Bill, Lion King, Shrek, Run Lola Run, all of which have cutting edge animation. Moreover, most of the global award winning campaigns have used animation extensively, be it Euro RSCGs Waterboy, Grrr Honda, Unileaf Tea or Levis Mr.Lova Lova. However a real character interacting with an animated character is not a novelty. It is a style and a lot of people are catching on it but this is not the end of it, points Ashish Chakravarty, head creative, Contract Advertising. There are other viewpoints too. Its a nice way of doing a boring script. But there are scripts that needs animation to prove the point as in the case of Oye Bubbly (Pepsi Commercial) last year, says Anuja Chauhan, VP and Senior Creative Director at JWT.

Besides the advantage of visual appeal, many complex issues, such as stunts, can be done away with, with the use of animation- for instance the stunt in the Lux Commercial couldnt be done so perfectly by the real character (here Aishwarya Rai) vis--vis the animated character. Animation ad also helps keep costs down. Industry sources say a simple animation ad is less expensive than an ad with decent production quality that costs around Rs. 70-80 Lakh. Animated ones cost around Rs. 30-40lakh on an average. However, what creative directors hate about animation is the fact that it takes a lot more time For A Fido itself, we need to work for three weeks to get it absolutely right, says. BRANDING-SPECIAL FOCUS ON TOON BRANDING QUESTIONAIRE Q1. Indentify the following toon mascots and their products or either of the one:

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1 page of questionnaire
st

Q2. Can you recognize a product on the basis of its brand mascot alone?

Always Sometime Often Very Rare

Q3. Do you relate any product with toons?

Always Sometime

Often Very Rare

Q4. Do you think nowadays brand mascots are losing importance to brand personality?

Yes

 No Dont Know

Q5. Which is your most memorable toon mascot? Amul Butter Girl Fido Dido Chintamani (ICICI) Any other __________________

Q6. Why do you think this brand mascot is the most memorable one? A6. _____________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________

2 page of questionnaire

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Q7. If you are to launch a new product will you depend on a brand personality of a toon mascot to build the brand image of your product? Give reasons? A7. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

Q8. Toon Mascot is more popular in the rural or urban areas? Give reasons? A8. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

Q9. What features do you think a toon mascot should possess so as to remember over a long period of time?

Cute

Happy Face Suitable to the product Innovative Entertaining Any other _____________________

`Q10. Would you like if toon mascots are also advertised through clothing, accessories, bags etc?

Yes No Depends on the mascot Dont know