Brand Management Report: Building and Managing Brand Equity

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Brand Management
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task 1 – Building and managing brand over time...........................................................................4
Introduction..................................................................................................................................5
P1 Explain the importance of branding as a marketing tool and why and how it has emerged in
business practice..........................................................................................................................5
P2 Analyse the key components of a successful brand strategy for building and managing
brand equity.................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................7
Task 2 – Brand portfolio and hierarchy management.....................................................................8
Introduction..................................................................................................................................8
P3 Analyse different strategies of portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand equity
management.................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................12
Task 3 – Brand extension and leverage.........................................................................................13
Introduction................................................................................................................................13
P4 Evaluate how brands are managed collaboratively and in partnership both at a domestic and
global level.................................................................................................................................13
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................15
Task 4 – Measuring and managing brand value............................................................................16
P5 Evaluate different types of techniques for measuring and managing brand value using
specific organizational examples...............................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................19
References......................................................................................................................................20
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Introduction
In order to cope up with growing competition, it necessary for organizations to regularly monitor
the market trends and maintains uniqueness of product and services with their brands. Brand
management approaches are employed by organizations to keep their product highlighted in
targeted audience. Brand management process involves improving and maintaining brand name
so that it can produce positive results. In this report range of techniques, approaches and tools
has been discussed for maximizing brand value. In task 1, case study of advertising organization
named “Optimum Impression Ltd” is discussed. In this task, concept of brand and brand equity
and stages of developing successful brand has been discussed in detail. In task 2, portfolio
strategy of organizations and hierarchy management of brands in organizations has been
described. In task 3, strengths and weakness of brand selected from organization in considered in
task 2 were investigated. Brand leveraging strength of brand has been introduced in this section.
In final task i.e. task 4, various techniques employed for managing and measuring brand value
has been discussed.
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Task 1 – Building and managing brand over time
Title: Brand is Power
Date: 04/07/2019
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Introduction
Brand is term that determines one seller’s product and services that is different from those of
other suppliers. Brand equity denotes the value generated by the product of recognizable brand in
comparison to the generic equivalent (San Martín, et.al., 2018).
P1 Explain the importance of branding as a marketing tool and why and how it has
emerged in business practice.
Brand is company’s unique feature offered to consumers in order to reflect their market image
different from others. Optimum Impression Ltd. is reputed advertising organization, providing
exceptional level of services from last 16 years. Successful brand building strategies outshines
competitive advantage and plays crucial role in developing customer’s loyalty. Successful
branding process will enhance the sales and will advocate the services of Optimum Impression
Ltd. Six major steps of building successful brand includes: Determining the target audience,
defining the mission of company’s brand, analyzing the competition, focusing on brand value,
identifying brand guidelines and marketing the brand with proper strategies. Brand developing is
ongoing process and steps described above will help Optimum Impression Ltd. grow with good
rate. Marketing department plays crucial role in building the brand equity and nourishes the
company’s image. Integration of marketing communication in Optimum Impression Ltd. will
enhance brand equity. Marketing programs framed up the department effectively plays
cultivating role in value of brand. Marketing strategies related to price, product and distribution
channels helps in improvising the brand equity.
P2 Analyse the key components of a successful brand strategy for building and managing
brand equity.
High-quality goods and services is the first factor that without requirement of anything else gains
the customers confidence. For strengthening the brand equity, majority of organization focus on
four common strategies that includes: offering quality products and services, maintaining
consistent brand image, competitive analysis, ensuring customers feedback. Since Optimum
Impression Ltd offers wide range of promotional and advertisement solution hence from future
growth perspective, it will be good to follow consistent brand image strategy. Brand equity is
intangible; hence it is necessary to work on it through every possible angle (Pappu and
Christodoulides, 2017). Developing consistent brand image will communicate the consumers
looking for advertisement solutions that company is dedicated and serious towards their services
(Hazée, et.al., 2017). By adopting this strategy, brand message will going to be same through all
communication channels by ensuring appropriate terminology and wording. One major aspect of
this strategy is that every segment of business will emit the same message and vibe, for example,
majority of audience from targeted market is young adults, then it necessary to mold the brand in
such a way that it looks more visually appealing. Maintaining consistent brand also implies that
company need to consistently produce same level quality every time (Cawsey and Rowley,
2016). In Brand extension, company market the brand having developed image in different
product category through appropriate marketing strategies. Optimum Impression Ltd can use the
brand having remarkable image in launching different products having distinctive component
compare to parent product. Brand extension will help company in reducing the risk of launching
new product to market. This will also increase acceptability of product. Effective brand
extension strategy should include following elements: Parent brand image, strength of parent
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brand, fit, marketing support, experience and quality of parent brand (Hayran and Gürhan-Canli,
2016).
FIGURE 1: ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL BRAND IMAGE
Source: (Author, 2019)
Parent brand strength plays crucial role in introduction of new product or brand extension as it
consist of response of consumers towards brand and current image in market. For successful
brand extension, consumers must be well aware about the parent brand.
Brand equity management involves revitalizing and reinforcing brands. Band reinforcing majorly
depends upon nature of associated brand (Makhlouf, 2019). In context of Optimum Impression
Ltd., the successful brand reinforcement strategy revolves around maintaining the brand
consistency. This will increase positive reputation of brand with and without customers (Keller
and Brexendorf, 2016). Consumers get familiarized about brand through brand consistency and
increase the perception of brand uniqueness. Defending the sources of brand equity is yet one of
key strategy for successful reinforcement of brand. Internal and external factors may affect the
current positioning and deviation may occur. For this company should also need to look for new
sources of equity that are potentially power. Brand reinforcement is all about upholding the
brand equity. A successful brand reinforcement plan ensures that targeted consumers have
desired knowledge and understanding structure so that Optimum Impression Ltd continues to
retain its essential source of brand equity.
Revitalizing a brand needs either recapturing of gone sources of brand equity or identifying the
brand equity’s new sources (Lu, et.al., 2019). For successfully revitalizing the brand two
approaches are used by the Optimum Impression Ltd that includes: 1) Enhancing the brand
image by improvising the strength and uniqueness of brand and 2) Expanding the depth of brand
awareness by enhancing the brand recognition and recall of consumers between purchasing
settings.
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Successful Brand
extension
Parent brand
image
Strength of PB
Fit
Marketing
Support
Qulaity and
experience of PB

Conclusion
Although branding requires vast total of money but once capitalized can produce tremendous
benefits. It can be concluded that to succeed in branding, it is necessary that Optimum
Impression Ltd understand the wants and needs of attached consumers. Branding develops the
preference of consumers for product and services behind the Brand. Branding assist company in
surviving from the temporary crises and keeps new competitors away from business growth. It
can be said that when company does extensive branding, it's market share and revenues
increases. Through branding, company can have better grip on market than it was before. More
than company’s physical resources, brand’s equity contribute much to the market value. The
company’s worth display the necessity of branding. Branding enhances the repo of company and
when it is well-known among public, people also want to work there, hence it also increases the
employee productivity. Negotiation power with suppliers will also increase and profitability rate
will improve. Employee turnover rate through branding will drop dramatically because it will
increase their belief in working with branded company. If brand is unique and is offering
tangible products than through quality branding strategies remarkable brand image can be
achieved.
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Task 2 – Brand portfolio and hierarchy management
Introduction
The ultimate goal of any organization is to succeed among competitors and attract wider target
audience with every passing day. Since from 1824, Cadbury is an inspirational confectionary
brand with massive long history. Cadbury’s some most popular products include Cadbury Wispa,
Dairy Milk, Roses and Crème Egg. Portfolio strategy is a kind of an investment strategy that
produce maximum value to portfolio (Uggla, 2015). This allows organizations to identify set of
creative and innovative new product development investment. Hierarchy management of brands
in Cadbury’s portfolio is illustrated in below section.
P3 Analyse different strategies of portfolio management, brand hierarchy and brand
equity management.
Cadbury’s brand portfolio strategy
Revitalizing brand is the major issue faced by organizations and brand managers. Cadbury has
been able to successfully attract the new customers along with retaining the existing customers.
Talking about present-day situation, Cadbury is operating in more than 50 nations and selling its
products all over the world. For developing efficient brand architecture, Cadbury determines the
portfolio contribution of each brand. This provides a tool that allows more systematic view of
brand portfolio. Cadbury uses short term and long term strategies for launching new product and
marketing the existing ones. Short term strategy used by organization majorly concentrates on
four P’s of marketing mix i.e. Product, place, price and promotion (Nguyen, et.al., 2018).
Cadbury’s brand portfolio strategy majorly relies on long term marketing strategy which is based
on Ansoff matrix that helps organization in deciding whether to launch new product or enhance
the image of existing one. Ansoff matrix can be described as a strategic planning tool that offer a
framework to senior executives plan strategies for future growth.
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FIGURE 2: ANSOFF MATRIX
Source: (Vliegar, 2019)
Four major portfolio strategies of Cadbury through Ansoff matrix are as follows:
 Market penetration: Through this strategy, Cadbury use to increase the market share by
using its popular products in existing market. This is generally done by reducing the rates
of products to attract new customers or by enhancing the distribution and promotion
efforts.
 Developing product: By employing this strategy, Cadbury introduces new product to the
existing market. The major intention of utilizing this strategy is to introduce and expand
the new product range by carrying out extensive research. Organizations carry out this
strategy by investing extra efforts in R&D department for developing new products
(Laforet, 2017). In this, company also acquire products of competitors like Nestle and
Ferrero and merge latest resources to develop new product and fulfil needs of customers.
The best example of it when company introduced company developed Cadbury Raisins
and Almonds from existing product Dairy milk chocolate.
 Market development: Cadbury uses market development strategy to get enter into new
market or new customer base with its existing products. The major motive behind
implementing this strategy is to expand market by means of expanding new customer
segments and geographies. Success of this strategy depend upon the proprietary
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technology and consumers of new market. Cadbury carry out this strategy by catering
various customer segments or by entering into new domestic market. Cadbury entered
into Indian market way back in 1948, company used Dairy milk chocolate as major
product and been able to capture Indian audience that increased customer base and profit
rate for company.
 Diversification: By adopting this strategy, Cadbury enters into new market with a
upgraded or new product. This strategy may turn out risky in some cases. The real case
example of this is when Cadbury merged its business with Schweppes to form Cadbury
Schweppes back in 1969. This idea of company could have either turned in profit or in
loss.
Hierarchy management of brands in Cadbury
Brand Hierarchy triangles or trees are used to capture brand portfolio structure (Herrero, et. al.,
2017). The structure of Hierarchy management tree of brands in Cadbury looks organizational
chart with vertical and horizontal dimensions. The structure displays branding strategy by
providing display of nature and number of distinctive and common brand elements in
organization’s products, that discloses explicit ordering of brand entities. The brand hierarchy
structure of Cadbury majorly constitute of three stages i.e. Beliefs and core values, Benefits and
Features and Attributes.
FIGURE 3: BRAND HIERARCHY MANAGEMENT IN CADBURY
Source: (Author, 2019)
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Beliefs and core
values
Benefits
Features and
Attributes

The architectural brand hierarchy followed by Cadbury makes a range of offering to both
employees inside the organization and to attached customers. Logical hierarchy among sub-
brands assist in generating clarity. The major objectives of Cadbury behind maintain this
effective brand hierarchy architecture are as followed:
 To create powerful and effective brands.
 To develop synergy among brands by improving visibility and reinforcing associations.
 To leverage the brand equity by appropriate line and brand extension exercise.
 To provide platform to organization for future growth.
 To provide clarity to customers about products and their services
 To understand the portfolio roles (silver bullet, cash cow, strategic and linchpin) of each
brand and allocate resources.
Core values of brand communicate the belief of company and how particular product is
contributing towards that shared vision of organization. This is a powerful stage, as by
articulating as brand, better customers and employees can be attracted who share same beliefs.
For managing the brand equity within organization’s portfolio, Cadbury employ following
strategies:
1. Brand strategy: Developing a brand that is respected and recognized is problematic (Jha,
et.al., 2017). At lowest brand product must be simple to identify and label. The brand
should present consistent good value and quality. Cadbury employs successful branding
strategies that constitute of excellent planning and communication at every level of
manufacturing.
2. Awareness: Along with meeting the unmet needs of consumers, Cadbury utilizes
strategies such that its consumers are well aware about its products. Company uses
content marketing and social media as major source of promotion.
3. Emotional Capital: Cadbury have plenty of Emotional capital that attracts consumers to a
brand and retain them through economic downturns and life challenges.
4. Collaboration: Cadbury uses effective teamwork strategies and productive collaborations
to market products and resolve complex branding problems.
5. Ethical decision making: Ethical and legal choices are key aspects of brand equity.
Cadbury make ethical and legal decisions for welfare of consumers and employees.
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