Brand Management Strategies of Google: A Comprehensive Analysis

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Brand Management
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................4
P1, P2, M1 and M2......................................................................................................................4
Brand is Power.............................................................................................................................4
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................7
P3, M1 and D1.............................................................................................................................7
Brand Portfolio and various models with focus on models used by Google...............................7
Provide an illustration of the hierarchy management of brands within organizations portfolio. 9
Analyse strategies used for managing the equity of the brands within the organization's
portfolio.......................................................................................................................................9
Task 3 Brand extension and leverage............................................................................................11
Introduction................................................................................................................................11
Strengths and weaknesses of Google.........................................................................................12
Collaborative and partnership agreements of Google...............................................................13
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................14
Task 4 Measuring and managing brand value...............................................................................15
Introduction................................................................................................................................15
Measuring and managing brand value.......................................................................................15
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................17
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................18
References......................................................................................................................................19
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Introduction
Brand management is a process or an activity which enables and supervises promotion of
particular products and services. It is essential for an organisation to manage their brands for a
longer duration so that they can ascertain competitive advantage. Brand management concept is
determined different business aspects to maximise their sales and presence at keen competitive
world. This report is focused on brand management concept with consideration of two
companies; Optimum Impressions Limited an advertising company and rest on Google, a
research supportive organisation. A clear understanding about management of brand will be
discussed. A clear estimation of brands management in portfolio will be discussed as well with
definition of hierarchies for products and services. It will be discussed management of brands at
domestic and international level with concept of leverage and extension. A clear description of
techniques to measure and manage brand value over time will be discussed as well.
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Task 1
P1, P2, M1 and M2
Brand is Power
Title: Brand is Power
Dated: 25th Feb. 2019
Introduction: Brand is one of the most valuable assets for the company. A brand refers to an
identifying name and symbol that company uses to distinguish itself from the others. However, a
brand is much more than just a name or symbol. A brand is the way in which an organization and
its products are perceived by those who experience it. The value of brand is often defined by
Brand Equity. It refers to the value premium that company can generate for a product which has
a recognizable name over the generic equivalents in the market. The purpose of the brand is to
provide something to the customer they can trust – it lends credibility, acts as a seal of quality
and assurance of what customers can expect. Not only can this it is also a set of ideals and values
that consumers align with their own. For example, a study by Nielsen found that while buying
any new product 69% of the costumers prefer to buy it from a brand they are familiar with over
any other (Nielsen, 2013). Therefore, building brand and brand equity is important in not only
achieving the new and repeat customers but also for future business growth and is required to
stay ahead of the new entrants.
Stages of successful brand building: Building a successful brand is an on-going process. It has
to be consistent in experience and communication across environment, sales & customer service,
print &packaging, content marketing, website & online advertising and social media. Building a
successful brand has multiple steps(Keller,2014).
 Identification of target audiences
 Brand mission
 Competition
 Value preposition
 Brand guidance
 Marketing the brand
These are the major stages of brand building which need to undertake by managers of Optimum
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Impressions Limited. With consideration of these stages, company can successfully define their
brand in front of their customers. Optimum impressions limited have to identify their target
audiences with clear mission of a brand. They are working as advertising company with clear
mission to provide effective advertisement of clients to minimise competition and propose a
value against their services. All these are essential brand building stages which enable them to
compete with their competitors in an effective manner.
Marketing department importance in brand equity: Marketing team plays an important role
to draft the brand equity. Marketing team defines certain programs and events like social media
campaign etc. to draft their brand value. Events are helpful to facilitate brand value for long
period of time. Marketing team can define certain surveys, events and promotional events so that
they can manage brand equity properly. Aaker’s Brand Equity Model has been used by
marketing team so that they can facilitate effective equity of brand:
 Brand Association
 Brand Awareness
 Perceived Quality
 Brand Association
 Another proprietary
Marketing team of Optimum Impressions Limited has determined these steps of brand equity model so
that they can enhance and explore their sales and revenue. It is essential to undertake relevant steps and
stages so that Optimum Impressions Limited become successful and proclaim effective competition to
other advertising companies of UK and Europe.
A brand can become successful with the use of different theories and elements. A company can
uses different models and theories to successfully initiate a company. Optimum Impressions
Limited is using Aaker’s Brand Equity Model so that they can become successful advertising
company of UK. Optimum Impressions Limited has signified their services different from others
which assist them to develop a brand association. Along with this, they also make services
efficient and end with some special appearance. It has helped their client to become aware for a
longer duration which facilitates company to generate more revenue. Customers of Optimum
Impressions Limited has perceived quality from services like decrease in chances of theft etc.
Moreover, Optimum Impressions Limited has to use brand extension aspect as well to generate
more and more revenue:
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 Optimum Impressions Limited can increase their brand with more range of products.
 Develop new range of services as well booking of tickets etc.
Conclusion: Branding is an important and essential aspect for marketing purpose. With the help
of branding, company can differentiate their products and services in an effective manner. With
branding, company can develop a core value of their products and services. Optimum
impressions Limited has to focus on brand value of their services to generate more sales and
revenue. Following are the certain aspects which describe and signify importance of branding as
marketing tool:
 With brand value and marketing of services, duplication can be minimised.
 Describe mission clearly to enhance revenue and image of a company.
Various firms’ uses brand value, brand extension strategies with brand equity model to develop
core value of products and services. Apple, Samsung, Volkswagen all uses these strategies of
branding to create and develop their brand perfectly in front of customers. Hence, Optimum
Impressions Limited can take reference of these companies and then develop their business
towards right direction and deal with any sort of brand crises.
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Task 2
P3, M1 and D1
Introduction:
Brand is an aspect which supports to describe the range of products and services. In this section,
it includes brand hierarchy and portfolio management so that all range of products and services
maintained effectively. The objective of this report is to present an analysis are Brand portfolios
and hierarchy management focusing specifically on Google as an organization and brand
portfolio models used by Google. The report goes on further to discuss about strategies used by
company to manage the equity of its brands.
Brand Portfolio and various models with focus on models used by Google
Brand Portfolio refers to an umbrella which encompasses all the brands and brand lines of an
organization to serve the different needs of different market segments. As per Wiles et. al.
(2012), brand portfolio exists when a firm operating in a consumer market owns more than 1
brand. According to Hseet. al.,(2010), brand portfolio is a complex set of number of brands
which are designed to respond to market segmentation, heightened competition, channel
dynamics, pressure to extend and leverage existing brand assets and global realities in cost
effective ways. Devlin and McKechnie (2018), ascertain that firms which have multiple product
categories must need to decide whether to use single brand to cover all categories or distinct
stand-alone brands or a combination of two. Following are the types of brand portfolio
management which need to undertake by managers of Google:
1) Branded House: It refers to using a single master brand across multiple categories and
products. The advantage of using branded house model is that it creates focus and helps
maximize scale. However, the key disadvantages are it constraints innovation and growth
and may result in loss of power to differentiate as all new products needs to fit with
primary brand.
2) House of Brands: Under this model a company owns and markets a number of different
brands and most often several number of brands in same category. It may contain
independent and disconnected brand. The advantages of using this approach is that each
brand can target different customer groups with distinct positioning and offering,
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Company can stretch the brand to cover more market segments and minimizes risk due to
diversification. The key disadvantages of using this approach are it become hard to
manage multiple brands due to complexities and leadership cannot focus on each brand
individually.
3) Sub brands: This strategy is depicting as a model where one master brand presents all its
sub brands properly. This approach is helpful to explore the range of products and
services in a right direction. Many companies use this approach to define their sub brands
like Virgin.
4) Endorsed brand: Under this strategy, all smaller brands are consideringunder big brand
and consider with single name. This approach is uses by large big firms where they
endorse smaller groups to maximise their sales and revenue.
Google is an example of sub-brands for managing its Brand Portfolio. It started itself as a search
engine and then it continued to establish the primary brand by creating more offerings such as
maps, Gmail and calendar. Later they started acquiring other tech companies like Picasa, Blogger
and YouTube. Through these acquisitions they maintained the existing brand of each but were
able to gain additional credibility through the parent brand Google. They applied a branded
house strategy with Google Glass, Google Play, books, maps etc. and house of brands strategy
for fibre and nest (Inc,2019). This brand portfolio strategy is helpful for Google so that they can
facilitate their services and maximise their client’s experience. It is helpful to recognise brands
easily so that they can build a trust of customers for further sales and revenue.
Figure 1: Sub brands, 2018
However, as company started further moving into health care, driverless cars and other
businesses they started growing more distant from their corporate mission and brand promise.
This was the reason for creation of Alphabet. By creating Alphabet as the parent company
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enabled Google to hone their brand focus and leaving company’s broad portfolio of services,
products and innovations to Alphabet.
Provide an illustration of the hierarchy management of brands within organizations
portfolio
Hierarchy management of brands within an organisation portfolio is an essential task. A single
portfolio describes wide range of products and services to render effective quality services to
clients. Google is using sub-brands strategy where they present various sort of products like
Gmail, YouTube under one section. Hence, they can use different sort of techniques to manage
brands properly as well as to manage hierarchy of brands in an effective manner:
 Brand name: Under this strategy, company uses one single name to sale their products
and services. This hierarchy management is not appropriate for Google as products
consumes as per their availability. Many of the people use Yahoo rather than Gmail.
Hence, Google can use this strategy to present their wide range of products and services
to users and consumers.
 Range brands: This strategy is currently using by Google where all their services prefer
as per their own name. Hence, this strategy is relevant with operations of Google.
Analyse strategies used for managing the equity of the brands within the organization's
portfolio.
Strategies are essential factor for a business which response an association towards positive
direction. With the help of strategies, companies can maximise their sales and promote a good
reputation in front of customers. Google is using distinct strategies for managing their brands
equity and portfolio properly:
 Aaker’s Model of brand equity
 Keller's customer-based brand equity model
Google can use Aaker’s Brand equity model so that they can maximise their values in clients.
Google is an established brand which need a little care and focus by management so that they
can determine and define effective and efficient outcome.
Conclusion:
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Brand Portfolio refers to an umbrella which encompasses all the brands and brand lines of an
organization to serve the different needs of different market segments. Firms which have
multiple product categories must need to decide whether to use single brand to cover all
categories or distinct stand-alone brands or a combination of two. Google is an example of
House Blend approach for managing its Brand Portfolio and managing the brand equity for brand
portfolio needs to follow a stepped approach starting from defining brand roles, identifying
category and need states, brand differentiation and finally accounting for consumer perspective.
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Task 3 Brand extension and leverage
Introduction
Brand expansion is important for organizations to keep growing and leveraging their brand
equity. This part of the report covers some of the aspects of expansion via Brand Extensions and
Line extension and specifically discusses the strengths and weaknesses of a selected company.
For the discussion, famous company Google is selected. The report analyzes how it has been
able extend to multiple categories. At last, the report analyses the collaboration and partnerships
agreement approach for brands and specific co-branding examples from Google and benefits
Google has received from doing so.
Brand extension and Line extension
Brand extension refers to use of an existing brand for a new category of product. For example,
Apple started with personal computers and extended their brand to MP3 players and Smartphone.
Similarly, Google started as search engine and later extended the brand to hosted email service.
Line extension on the other hand refers to adding an additional product into the same product
category for e.g. diet coke is a line extension of Coke brand. Brand extension is very important
for company’s growth and survival. Brand extension has to be logical one to help a company
grow. If it is close to the company’s current expertise, it will not cost much to enter the new
market. Also it will be easy for consumers to trust.
Advantages of brand extensions in releasing new products are that it reduces risk and is less
costly than alternative launch strategies. Customers appear to attribute the quality associations
they have of the original brand to the new product. Line extensions can be useful to reach out to
new customer segments who seek new benefits, hitherto not being offered by the brand in the
category.
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Strengths and weaknesses of Google
Strengths- Google is one such brand which has been able extends into many areas successfully.
It is one of the strongest brands in the world today and they have positive and deep reservoir of
brand equity which is quite eminently extendable to many other categories. Given that many of
the today’s businesses have allowed entry to barrier it means that the speed, frequency and
probability of extension from Google are much higher than their historical equivalents
(Management Study Guide, 2019). Some of the strengths of the company are as follows:
 One of the strengths of Google is ability to adapt. Google is the leader in the technology
market which is used by people to search anything on the internet. The company is able
to extend the brand successfully to various areas of digit word. This extension has not just
been limited to different services and products online. Fibre optic networks, Nexus One
Smartphone, TV advertising etc are examples of ability of Google to continually extend
their brand. (Management Study Guide, 2019)
 The other strength of Google because of which these extensions have been possible is its
focus on building the brand around benefits and not around products. Google is used by
the customers for accessing information be it search, online documents, maps, tvs,
mobiles etc.(BenWise, 2019)
 Next, strength of the Google is its ability to maintain an emotional benefit in the minds of
consumer. All great brands always play on emotional benefit for example – Budweiser
makes one feel manly, Apple makes one feel cool and Google makes one feel Smart.
Matching an emotional benefit is much harder for a competitor then matching the
functional benefit. Maintaining an emotional benefit can be hard but Brands like Google
has many benefits by the brand extensions (BenWise, 2019)
Weaknesses- While Google has definite strengths over majority of brands in the market it does
run against a number of weaknesses which can be detrimental to its brand extension and
expansion.
 Google’s overdependence on its advertising revenue is biggest risk and weakness for the
organization. Revenues as high as 85% of total Google’s revenue are currently
contributed by Advertising. Any potential dip here can hurt the company extensively. In
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