Brand Management Report: Strategies for Brand Building and Equity

This report delves into the multifaceted world of brand management, examining the processes of building, maintaining, and enhancing brand value. It begins by analyzing Optimum Impression Ltd., an advertising company, and how it can establish and manage its brand through various techniques. The report then investigates Apple Inc.'s brand portfolio strategy, particularly focusing on the iPhone, employing the BCG matrix to assess its product categories. It further explores brand hierarchy management and models for managing brand equity. The report also assesses brand leverage, both domestically and internationally, and addresses potential weaknesses. Furthermore, it covers collaborative and partnership agreements in brand management. Finally, it evaluates methods for measuring and managing brand value, including brand awareness, market share, customer attitudes, and purchase intent. The report concludes by summarizing key findings and offering insights into effective brand management practices.

BRAND MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................2
Article to demonstrate importance of brand and how it is created and managed...................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Main Body..............................................................................................................................2
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................5
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................6
Brand portfolio strategy - iPhone...........................................................................................6
Brand hierarchy management.................................................................................................7
Model used for managing the equity of brands......................................................................9
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................11
Strength of brand leverage....................................................................................................11
Weakness that need attention...............................................................................................11
Collaborative and partnership agreement.............................................................................12
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................12
Brand value...........................................................................................................................13
Brand awareness...................................................................................................................13
Market share.........................................................................................................................14
Customer attitude..................................................................................................................14
Purchase Intent.....................................................................................................................15
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................17

INTRODUCTION
Brand management is the process of maintaining, improving and upholding a brand so
that it associated with positive result. In other words, Brand management is a marketing function
that increase the perceived value of brand or product line over time by using various techniques.
The first task of report will be based on Optimum Impression Ltd. that is an advertising
organisation. It will analyse in the report that how organisation can build and manage brand over
time by using various techniques and strategies. The study will determine brand portfolio
strategy and hierarchy management of Apple Inc. that is a premium brand as well as strategies
for managing brand equity will also be evaluated. The report will cover how brand can
leverage/extended domestically and internationally over time. Lastly different techniques will be
evaluated for measuring and managing brand value.
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TASK 1
Article to demonstrate importance of brand and how it is created and managed
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Brand is power
Introduction
Brand is an identifying logo, name, mark or symbol that organisation uses to separate
their services and products from others (Heding, Knudtzen and Bjerre, 2015). Optimum
impression Ltd. Is a popular advertising company and has launched new marketing brochure
known as 'Brand is Power'. Brand name have power to drive market performance of Optimum
impression Ltd. and it contributes to the overall value of business as well as it gives power and
strength to compete.
Brand equity is the added value endowed on services and products of that reflected in
the customer feel, think, and respect to the brand. It combined four components perception,
image, awareness and loyalty (Keller and Brexendorf, 2017). Brand equity is defined as the
level to which a brand has achieved consumer understanding, their awareness, loyalty, belief
and advocacy among a target group.
Optimum impression Ltd. can build or developed successful brand by these following
steps wherein in first stage in building a brand is determining target audience and core strength
of the brand. However, after finding target audience it is essential to define mission of brand
and deliver it with attractive logo, symbol and tag lines. Lastly, building a successful brand last
stage is, analysed sustainability of brand and regular monitoring is necessary.
On the other hand, Marketing department plays and important role in creating brand
equity. They are responsible for various marketing programs related to distribution channel,
products, price and these programs create brand image and build brand awareness and that make
the process easy of creating brand equity.
Main Body
Successful brand strategy for strengthening brand equity
Optimum impression Ltd. can strengthen the brand equity by providing quality products
and services to the potential customers. It is important for the organisation to ensure that they
bring out products and services into the market are new to the business portfolio (Urde, 2016).
Having quality products and services is the first and most essential strategy to strengthening
brand equity. Creating a consistent brand image and communicate to the consumers helps the
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organisation to strengthening brand equity and it helps in showing to the customers that the
brand is dedicated and serious to deliver exact services and products what they need.
Optimum impression Ltd. ensure that they always lookout trends and activities of its
core competitors and operate the business in unique space that build and strengthening brand
equity and value of the organisation. Along with it, industry should target a niche that help them
to focus on a particular area of product and services and help the organisation in increasing the
innovation thinking and understanding the consumer need effectively.
Brand equity can be managed and developed by understanding and applying brand
equity model by AAKER that have 5 various categories:
Brand Loyalty: According to Aaker, brand loyalty is currency of brand and higher loyalty help
optimum impression Ltd. To reduce marketing cost and to strengthen brand equity. To
implement brand loyalty marketer of the industry, have to create experience that is unforgettable
for the consumers by providing them quality services and products. Loyalty is something that
takes a long time to build by competitors.
Brand Awareness: The very first step of building and strengthening brand equity is aware
consumers about the brand that attract consumers mind towards the brand and help organisation
to develop and manage it successfully. For effective brand awareness, Optimum Impression
Ltd. focused on personal relevance in customer mind.
Perceived Quality: For strengthening brand equity or value, company need to provide higher
quality of services to their potential customers which gives reason to buy. Higher quality
services result in high level of customer experience and satisfaction. It is important for the
organisation to enhance their brand value by perceived quality as it ensures position of brand in
market which denotes its power.
Brand Association: The association of brand refers to the fact that brand have social position
and their professional roles are build and managed successfully. Optimum Impression Ltd.
Engage in their consumers mind by creating a positive attitude and by effective brand
differentiation that can make the process easy of brand equity management and that strengthen
brand equity. The slogan of Optimum impression Ltd. Is Brand is power clearly suggest that
brand association reflects, purchasing behaviour and attitude of consumers which help the
organisation to retrieving customer.
Other proprietary Assets: Other proprietary assets include patents, trademarks and channel
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relationship that ensure that brand equity is developing and managing successfully.
Brand extension-
Brand extension is a marketing strategy in which organisation market or introduce the
new product and services in a different category by using same brand name. Company use this
strategy for leverage and increase brand equity (Smith, 2015). To strengthen brand extension or
stretching, Optimum impression Ltd. focused on innovation and uniqueness in new product or
services in article which can helps the firms in managing successful brand name. There are two
type of brand extension; Line and Category that can enhance brand equity and company's image
in the market.
Reinforcing and revitalising brand-
Brand reinforcement refers to the activity to maintaining the brand equity by marketing
actions that consistently convey the meaning of the brand to its targeted customers. Reinforcing
brands include ensuring innovation in merchandising, product design and manufacturing (Shah,
2015). Brand reinforcement include continuous monitoring of the products and services to track
the change in trend, consumer's taste and preference. There are various strategies for
reinforcement:
Maintain consistency- Optimum impression Ltd. outlined about maintaining its consistency
while delivering the message to maintain the brand association that aware consumer but along
with that it is also important to change the way and manner of offering the services and product
to the customer.
Brand fortification- Fortify means to strengthen the brand over a period. Organisation should
focus on to strengthening the brand name because products and services are improved
periodically but the brand name remain same for years. Brand can be fortified by increasing
brand awareness, bringing innovation in merchandising, etc.
Brand revitalising is a marketing strategy that organisation can use when the profits have
fallen and products reach to the maturity stage to maintain the equity of brand (Davis, 2017).
There are various approaches to revitalising such as; market expansion, brand repositioning,
product modification, etc. seven avenues of revitalizing brand are entering in new markets,
finding new uses, increasing usage, repositioning, augmentation of products and services,
extending brand and obsoleting existing services and products of firm. Strategies to revitalise
brands:
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Brand awareness- Optimum impression Ltd. outlined about brand awareness by increasing the
level and frequency of consumption. Brand awareness can be extended by identifying new way
to use the brand that help to attract the consumer's attention towards the organisation.
Improving brand image- Brand image improvement includes repositioning, marketing
management, changing brand elements. Industry can improve the brand image in consumers
mind by positioning itself clearly that increase trust of customers and they can bring change in
various elements of brand such as; jingles, packaging, logo, etc. to revitalise the brand (Elliott
and et.al., 2015).
Conclusion
Branding is the process of disseminating and creating the brand name and it can be
applied to individual products and service name as well as the entire corporate identity. It
includes every aspect of customer's experience, from logo of Optimum impression limited to the
website, advertising, etc. Branding can be used as marketing tool in the organisation because it
focuses on same objective. It is very essential for every organisation because it makes overall
impact on the company. Following are the importance of branding as a marketing tool:
Cohesive brand strategy helps the organisation to communicate with the target
customers clearly that increase their interest and attract them towards the organisation or
products.
Well defined branding strategy directly connected to need of consumer, build an
emotional connection, and it increases business value.
Consistent branding is important for the organisation to attract new distribution for its
products as well as it attracts new investors.
Branding makes the promotion process easy and make remarkable and unique brand
image in the marketplace.
It increases the rate of success of Optimum impression Ltd. In advertising (Evangeline
and Ragel, 2016).
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TASK 2
Brand portfolio strategy - iPhone
Brand portfolio is the collection of brands under an organisation's control. Brand
portfolio strategy is a critical part of an organisation's brand equity that also drive by brand
identity. Effective brand portfolio strategy allows Apple to manage its brand i.e. iPhone. This
strategy is essential for long-term success of multi-brand companies and help in considering
external and internal competitors.
Apple Inc. is a leading manufacturer of electronic devices and BCG matrix can provide
an insight of its different products by the brand iPhone:
Dogs (Low market share- Low market growth)
The product that are put in dog category are low growth and low market share products.
This category of Apple includes; various series of iPods, Apple TV, etc. that are low in market
and that are reported as low growth in compare to other products. iPhone 1-4 series come under
this category as they are of low market share and less demanding than other series of iPhones.
Cash Cows (High market share- low market growth)
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Illustration 1: BCG Matrix
(Source: Matrix (Growth Share Matrix, 2016))

Cash cows denotes that products of Apple that are rich source of income and have high
market share (BCG Matrix (Growth Share Matrix), 2016). Product category of Apple include;
iTunes, iMusic, MacBooks, etc. these category products are made by organisation but most of
the customers are shifting to portable and mobile. Iphone 5 and 5S come under this category as
they generate tons of cash and make huge portion of Apple's overall revenue.
Rising star (High market share -High market growth)
The products come in star category are of high market share and those products can more
expand in the market and can increase market share with the growth of industry. Products come
under this category are; iPhone, iPad. These products are so successful that their growth increase
market share of the organisation. Iphone 5 to X series come under this category as they have high
market share and high market growth.
Question mark (Low market share- high market growth)
Products come under this category are likelihood of achieving the position of a star for
the company. Apple TV comes under question mark and they make a bit of money but the
product is not reaching to its potential position. If Apple resolve some ecosystem issues they can
make their space in TV. Under this category iPhone's series of 6 and 5C comes.
Apple focus on ideal portfolio that fit into their vision and future growth and maintain the
portfolio determining the brand portfolio, roles of portfolio, product, defining roles, brand scope
and portfolio graphics. There are various portfolio models such as; Branded House, house of
Brand, sub-brands, endorsed brand.
Apple use branded house strategy as they use single major brand in every product line
and services. Effective portfolio management of products maximize their revenue, reduce risk of
competition. The purpose of portfolio management of Apple is to analyse possible product line
expansion and not to limit their product line in one category.
Brand hierarchy management
Brand hierarchy means of summarizing the brand strategy by portraying the nature and
number of distinctive and common brand element (Managing Brand Hierarchy, 2019). It is
based on the realization that products and services can be branded in various ways depends on
new and existing brand element and how they can be combined for any one product of the
company. In simple words brand hierarchy portrays organisation's branding strategy for one
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specific brand line and displays all the products associated with the brand name. Brand hierarchy
tree of Apple company.
It outlines various level to a hierarchy of brand that is corporate branding, family branding,
individual branding and there are various strategies to manage the brand hierarchy;
Apple practices Corporate Branding strategy in the industry. They use corporate brand
name as their product name. For example, they introduce their smartphones as the name of Apple
or iPhone and provide a logo of the apple that recognise by consumer. Organisation uses
corporate brand equity to create brand recognition. Brand hierarchy is managed by Apple by one
Brand name on each and every product line.
Brand hierarchy
Smartphones- iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4, 4S iPhone 5, 5S, iPhone 6, 6S and it
continuous to iPhone XR till 2018.The first generation of iPhone was launched on June 29, 2007
with iPhone OS 1.0 and iPhone XR launched on October 26, 2018 with iOS 12.
 The brand launched their first generation of iPhone on June 29, 2007, which changed the
world with providing multitouch screen and digital keyboard with iPhone OS 1.0.
 Apple upgrades the original iPhone in 2008 with a complete redesign and support 3G
networks and allow their user to download files.
 In iPhone 7 and 7 plus they maintain the design of iPhone 6. In that product they add
more features to their product such as; water resistance.
MacBook: Laptop/Pc- MacBook air, MacBook pro, Mac mini
 They introduce to the world with butterfly mechanism keyboard in MacBook.
 They upgrade the features and launch MacBook Air with increased speed of processor to
1.8 GHz and third generation of butterfly mechanism keyboard. MacBook pro is more upgraded and it is Apple's higher end laptop with variation in
size and touch ID sensor integrated.
iPhone Iphone is a line of smartphone by Apple Inc. that include many
generations of iPhone. The first generation was relaesed on 29th June
2007 and current iPhone was launched on 26th October 2018. Till now
they launched 13 generation of iPhones.
MacBook Pro MacBook pro is a line of Macintosh portable computers that was
introduced by Apple Inc. in January 2006.
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