Comprehensive Report: Brand Building and Management Strategies

This report delves into the crucial aspects of brand building and management, providing a detailed analysis of strategies and techniques. It begins by defining the core concepts of branding, brand equity, and the importance of differentiation in the market. The report explores the Aaker model of brand equity, outlining key components such as brand loyalty, awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, and proprietary assets. It then examines brand extension, reinforcement, and revitalization strategies, highlighting their application in maintaining and enhancing brand value. The report further investigates the brand portfolio strategy of the Virgin Group, utilizing the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix to analyze its diverse range of products and services. It also covers techniques for measuring brand value, awareness, market share, and consumer attitudes. The report concludes by emphasizing the significance of branding in driving sales, revenue, and customer loyalty, serving as a valuable resource for understanding and implementing effective brand management practices.

Building and Managing Brand

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................5
1. Analysing Virgin group brand portfolio strategy....................................................................5
2. The hierarchy management of Virgin Brands.........................................................................7
3. Analysing strategies used for managing equity of brands in Virgin groups..........................8
TASK 3..........................................................................................................................................10
1. Strength of virgin radio that can be leveraged......................................................................10
2. Weaknesses of Virgin radio and recommendations..............................................................10
3. Collaborative and partnership agreements of Virgin radio..................................................11
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................11
I. Techniques to measure brand value.......................................................................................11
II. Techniques to measure brand awareness..............................................................................11
III. Techniques to measure market share..................................................................................12
IV. Techniques to measure consumer attitude..........................................................................12
V. Techniques to measure brand awareness.............................................................................12
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Brand is a product or services of an organisation that has differentiated position in market
from other competitors. Brand building is an important aspect of business development, as it is
important too increases the sales and revue for the business. The present report will help in
understanding the ways to build and manage a brand of an organisation. Report will discuss the
strategy to manage the brand equity with different theories and model. Further, brand portfolio of
Virgin Group, UK based holding company will include. Hierarchy management of Virgin
group's brand and strategy to manage its brand equity will be described. Furthermore, brand
extension and brand leveraged will be explained in this study. At last, measuring and managing
brand value techniques will be identified.
TASK 1
Brand is Power
Manager
Optimum Impression Ltd.
Introduction:
Brand can be defined as a product, services or concept of an organisation which
differentiate it from similar product in market. Such products or services can be easily
communicated or marketed. Branding is refereed as the process of creating the brand name of
product and services in the market (Chernev, 2018). Product or services that become a brand
will likely to survive more than the undifferentiated product in market. Branding can be applied
to the entire corporate identity as well as to the single product or service name.
The term that is used to define the brand value is known as brand equity. It is marketing
term which is determined by the consumer perception and experience with the brand. If the
awareness and perception of the customer regarding the brand is favourable than it can be said
that brand has positive equity (Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011). On other hand, if
customers are disappointed with products and avoids to buy it, than it has negative brand equity.
A successful brand building process helps the product to be differentiated from competition
in market, it also plays an important role in creating a customer loyalty for the product (Pamfilie
and Croitoru, 2018). Building a successful brand is an ongoing process for organisation. There
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are various steps that need to be followed in order to built a successful brand, it includes
 Determining the target audience to whom the company needs to communicate.
 Determining the vision and mission that help customer to evaluate company's purpose. It
helps in guiding the brand building process (Iglesias and et.al., 2019).
 In order to built a brand it is foremost important to analyse the competition of product
and services in the market.
 Creating and focusing on uniqueness that assist to differentiate brand from others in
market.
 Defining the brand guidelines is important as it helps in defining specific rules based on
which the business will interact with audience (Sevel, Abratt and Kleyn, 2018).
 In the last step an effecting marketing strategies has to be made in order to market and
promote the brand to the target market.
Marketing plays an important and essential role in creating a brand equity, company make
strategies for product, price and distribution. These strategies are essential in creating brand
image and awareness of brand in market.
Main Body:
Making a product or services a brand, is depended on how well organisation has make
strategies in order to advertise and promoting a brand. Brand equity can be defined as
awareness, perception and loyalty that a customer has toward brand (Aakerand Biel, 2013). The
brand equity strategy can be best defines with Aaker model of brand equity.
As per this theory, brand equity is set of five categories of assets and liabilities that can be
helpful in measuring brand value to firm's customer. The five categories are:
 Brand loyalty: According to the Aaker model, it is brand currency that helps in
reducing marketing cost. Loyal customers will not switch to others easily, it assist in
proving time to respond to the changes made by competitors. For example, Apple and
Samsung have effective brand equity and its customers are loyal towards the companies.
 Brand awareness: It assist in building the brand equity, it assists brand to be considered
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by customers when they want to purchase product.
 Perceived Quality: It referred to the perception of the brand to deliver quality product.
It helps in defining position of brand with other competition (Harris and Rae, 2011).
Perceived quality will consider higher if it has higher position.
 Brand Association: it is the level up to which brand name is recognised by the
consumer. It involves the extent to which the brand association drive consumer
purchase, creates positive attitude in customer' s mind.
 Proprietary assets: it contains the patents, copyright, trade-mark and other intellectual
property rights. If a brand has more proprietary assets it consider as more more
competence in market.
This theory assist in making strategy to promote the product so that the product can change the
perspective of the customer. Adopting different promotional method can be beneficial.
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Illustration 1: Brand Equity
Source: (Brand Extension , 2019)

Band extension: It can be defined as a marketing strategy that uses existing brand image
in order to promote a new service or products. It is an effective strategy in which a company
marketed new product or services to new customers with same image of brand (Brand
Extension , 2019). Brand extension can be used either to expand new product line or launch in
same category products. Brand extension strategies have effectively utilizes by Apple. From
manufacturing I-Mac , I-pad it also extended to I-phones as it has good brand image in market.
Brand reinforcing: it refereed as an activity that is associated with maintaining brand
equity. Reinforcement are attracting consumers who uses the brand in order to make them
continuous purchases and also attracting new users. Brand reinforcement can be done through
regular monitoring product at all level of product life-cycle (Colicev, Malshe and Pauwels,
2018). It is very essential strategy in order to check changes in the preferences and wants of
the customers. Brand reinforcement includes several strategies which is essential to maintain
brand image of product and brand awareness to customers through advertising, events and
sponsorship, promotion etc. Example of brand reinforcement is Nestles product Maggie
Brand revitalization: It is a marketing strategy that is being used when brand has reached to
its saturation and its profit started declining. It can be said that this strategy is used in order to
bring back the product in the market and maintain its customer (Hur, Ahn and Kim, 2011).
Brand revitalization approaches include market expansion, modification of product or brand
repositioning. example of brand revitalization can be Mountain Dew, which is a Pepsi product
launched with a tag-line ” Yahoo Mountain Dew” later when the sales started declines it was
reinforced with new tag-line “Do the Dew”.
Conclusion:
Branding can be termed as the process of creating the brand name of product and services
in the market. Development of a brand in market will assist company to increase its sales easily.
If product or services has a good brand Image, it will not require another marketing strategies,
as branding itself act as an important marketing tool. Brand itself is an important marketing
strategy which assists in promoting and attracting new customers, increase the sales and
revenue of company. It assist in clearly deliver a message, confirm the brand creditability in the
marketplace. Assist in encouraging and motivating the buyers to purchases the product or
services and act as a great marketing tool in order to create loyal customers for the firm.
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TASK 2
1. Analysing Virgin group brand portfolio strategy.
Brand portfolio strategy can be defines as collection of one or more brand under a single
company's control. A business entity can have a single product or product line in different
market with different brands. These brands will be considered as a part or component of the
company's brand portfolio (Lee, 2018). Creating an effective brand portfolio strategies is very
difficult task, as to many brand of single company often generates customer confusion. It is very
essential to follow proper guidelines to create brand portfolio strategy.
Virgin Group Ltd. is UK based holding company, conglomerate in airlines and
telecommunication, but also expanded with more than 200 companies in different sectors. Virgin
group was incorporated by Richard Branson and controls all the brands of (Virgin Aaker, 2012).
The company follows unrelated diversification strategy which has expended its business to
numbers of sectors.
The brand portfolio is essential to be considered while making strategies like to introduce
new brand, extension of a brand in new product-line, etc. Brand Portfolio strategy can be well
explained with help of Boston product portfolio matrix, this models provides a framework that is
used to assist long-term strategic planning (Boston Matrix (Product Portfolio Model) , 2019). It
helps in analysis of Virgin which provides vital information of company about its various range
of products and services positioning in related market share and growth and place them in BCG
model. These models assist Virgin in making strategies regarding its brand-portfolio. The four
quadrants of Virgin BCG matrix are: Stars: This explained product that have best market share and generates more revenue
for Virgin group are comes in stars. This are the product that is strong as compared to
competition in market and have opportunities for expansion. This product requires heavy
investment in order to get sustainable growth of Virgin group. The star product of Virgin
group is, the Music and Entertainment segments (Jugenheimer, Sheehan and Kelley,
2015). These are the industries of Virgin group which are the highest source of earning
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for the firm. Strategies required for the star products are to make investment for their
steady growth and maintain the revenue.
 Cash-Cow: There are some products or services that have high chances of generating
profit on the log-term basis. The product/services that comes in cash cow have high
market share and are stabled its position in market. There are some products of Virgin
group that are the main source of earning for the entity. They make significant
contribution of revenue for the Virgin group. Such products or services of virgin group
are industry of media and telecommunication. These industries can be considered
matured in the market to earn stable revenue. As these industries have low growth rate it
requires strategies to increase its market share. Company can make strategies to increase
its profit so that they could be invested to other more potential products or services of the
firm.
 Question mark: There are some of products of Virgin group that have low market share
in high growth market (uškej, Golob and Podnar, 2013). These are the products that are
note performing well for the firm but has potential to grow. Virgin group has to make
strategies to invest in these product as they can also make profit for the firm. The
business unit of finance and health are the services that comes in question mark for the
firm. In order to improve there performance virgin group has to make strategies to
promote and expand its operations, they required effective financial support and proper
management by Virgin group in order to make this a profitable venture.
 Dogs: The products that come under this categories are low profitable product/services
of the firm. Even after making strategies to invest in order to improve, there are low
chances for such products to be improved. These product/services have low market share
and low growth rate defines no scope of the stability of such products. The services of
railways of virgin group can be included in dogs categories. As per the changes in
industry, it is not a profitable venture for the organisation (Groza, Cobbs and Schaefers,
2012). It doesn't contributes to financial strength of the company.
2. The hierarchy management of Virgin Brands.
Hierarchy management of brands can be summarized as branding strategy through
determining the numbers and nature off common and distinctive brands elements across the
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firm's product by revealing the explicit ordering of brand elements. Brand hierarchy helps in
displaying the various levels of products through its development and growth to be a brand.
There are various brands under a single umbrella of Virgin groups, some of the hierarchy
management of brands are as follows:
House of Branded House: In this architecture model, the company firm uses its name
for all its company's product and services. Like Virgin group used the same name for all
company, Virgin Media, Virgin rail, Virgin Airlines etc.
Advantage:
 It is easier for consumers to recognise the products or services and to understand them
better.
 It assist in increases in brand awareness.
Weaknesses:
 If any of the product/services goes through crisis or any type of negativity, the whole
brand may suffer.
There are some other brand hierarchy architecture are also there, which includes:
House of brand: in this separate brand name will be given to each product and services.
Each brand will have their own name, personalities, audiences and sometimes they compete with
each other. They are separate and independent from the master brand.
Advantage:
 if anything goes wrong to this, it will not affect other brand.
 It can assist in presenting in niche market and can target different audiences.
Disadvantage:
 The fact that every brand needs its own strategy, identity and marketing activities is a
financial disadvantage.
 The time and resources involved in planning and implementing the brand activities will
be greater
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Most appropriate approach for Virgin group:
It can be said that, house of brand is more appropriate approach of brand hierarchy, as the
one mastermind company will make strategies for all the brand. Virgin groups has numerous
brands, subsidiary and are successfully operating under a single umbrella. This straergy will be
appropriate for the Virgin group as it will assist the consumers to easily get the idea of the brand.
3. Analysing strategies used for managing equity of brands in Virgin groups.
Brand equity can be termed as value of a brand. This value is determined by perception
of brand and their experience with that brand. A brand equity of Virgin group can be identifies
through in a way a customer thinks, perceive regarding product or services. Virgin Radio is one
of most popular brand of Virgin media, and have positive brand equity in market ( Kapferer,
2012). In order to manage this brand equity, company should make proper strategies to maintain
value of Virgin radio as per customer perceptive.
Customer Based Brand equity is an effective approach which assist company to make and
maintain the brand equity of Virgin radio. This model will help in understanding needs and
wants of customers and make services in order to satisfy them. There are four steps in this steps
based on a pyramid structure which specifically represent four fundamental question or
requirement of customers.
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Level one- Salience: This level describes perception of brand from customers point of
view. Virgin radio is one of most famous radio station and very popular among youngster.
Company can develop strategies in order to broadcast more channels, different new shows to
attract more listener in order to create brand awareness in customers.
Level two- performance and Imagery: This level is categorised in two parts which
assist company to effectively consider brand reputation among listeners. The performance
factors considered the satisfaction through different channels and shows of virgin radio.
Imaginary factors encompasses the requirement of listeners from radio, trendy playlists, shows,
latest news, interviews with celebrities adds to meet their needs both socially and
psychologically. A strategy of which will assist the radio to ensures the satisfaction of its
listeners by providing them different eliminating channels which assist in meeting their needs
socially and psychologically.
Level three- Judgement and Feeling: This level helps in defining the what listeners
think about the radio services. It includes the listener's perception regarding shows quality, their
perception towards the market share or profitability of company. Feelings can be defined as the
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emotional responses and reaction of listeners regarding the brand. Virgin radio can make strategy
which assist in creating the positive perception of the show in listener's mind.
Level Four- Resonance: This is the top most level of model which defines the loyalty of
listeners towards the radio. In order to become loyal listeners of Virgin radio, listeners will
access various factors including quality of shows, services, past experiences. It will help in
increasing the number of listeners which assist in increasing the value of brand in media market.
TASK 3
1. Strength of virgin radio that can be leveraged.
Brand leveraging is a strategy that is being used when a company wants to use reputation
of a brand in order to enter into new but related product category. It can be defined as a
marketing strategy that uses the existing brand image in order to promote a new service or
products (Nguyen, Zhang and Calantone, 2018). It is an effective strategy in which a company
marketed new product or services to new customers with same image of brand. Strength of
virgin radio that can be leveraged are:
 Virgin radio makes strategy to strengthen its position at workplace also by starting
campaign which is showing the magic of good music. The new ”Work it” campaign is
being promoted at TV and Cineplex theatre. This strategy helps in increasing numbers of
listener and increasing brand equity.
 Virgin is started a new frequency between BB radio 1 and BBC radio 2, the dubbed BBC
1.5, this new station will explore the combination of new music with classic tracks to
appeal to a wide demographic group of 25-44 year age.
 Virgin radio is diverse brand, as it broadcast in seven languages to over 30 million
listeners. It operates on international level in many countries around the Globe.
With the strong focus on the local listening communities with their own flavour, the
content of Virgin radio is better than their competitors such as BT Group, BBC radio etc.
Techniques for brand leverage are as follows:
Brand extension: It can be refereed as the use of an established brand name in new
product categories. The category to which the which brand is being extended can be related or
unrelated to existing product categories.
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