University Branding Report: Levi's Brand Perception and Strategies

This report analyzes Levi's brand perception issues and the strategies employed to revitalize the brand. In the 1990s, Levi's faced declining sales due to a perception of becoming a 'dad's brand'. The report examines the importance of addressing this perception, the role of branding and marketing in driving organizational change, and the introduction of the 501 halo jeans as a product innovation to target a younger demographic. The report highlights the significance of consumer-focused marketing, situational analysis, and employee empowerment. It also provides recommendations for improving brand image and market reach, including the use of brand positioning strategies and customer-focused marketing activities. The report references the importance of innovation, such as the introduction of the 501 halo product, and how it helps to maximize the brand strategy. The report also includes examples of other brands such as Wal-Mart and Target Crops and their branding strategies. Overall, the report underscores the need for Levi's to adapt its marketing approach to resonate with consumer demand and maintain a strong brand presence.

Running head: BRANDING
Branding and Creative Innovation
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

2BRANDING
Importance for Levi’s to address the brand perception issue of becoming my Dad’s brand
Levi’s is a popular fashion organization for its innovative clothing products. They offer
latest jeans to the young people. In 1990, Levi’s faced challenges due to its wrong brand
perception. The sales began continued to grow in early 1990 but it began declining in the late
1990 (Businesscasestudies.co.uk 2018). It was important for Levi's to address the perception
issue of becoming my Dad's brand as it gave them an opportunity to deal with the issues, which
occurred in their marketing process. However, the brand manager of Levi's had decided to
revitalize the perception of the brand to cope with the challenges. The company failed to choose
the right way to revitalize their brand perception and they have wrongly been emphasizing their
role in wholesale merchandising. They sold a million pairs of jeans to their retailers to ensure the
high sales volume.
Brand perception refers to the perception of consumers and the firms’ understanding of
what their brand stands for the customers (Theurer et al. 2018). By addressing the brand
perception issue Levi’s was able to understand that their marketing should be based on the
consumer demand besides the retailer demand. After addressing the brand perception issue the
brand manager of Levi's had changed their viewpoints and developed consumer-focused brand
management. It was effective for Levi’s to address the brand perception issue as it helped them
to understand the importance of consumer-focused marketing strategy in their business. This
addressing process enabled them to protect their organization from severe loss.

3BRANDING
The way through which the brand activity and marketing drive broader organizational
change and its importance
In order to bring a change in an organization branding and marketing are important.
Branding and marketing activities bring change in a wider range (Businesscasestudies.co.uk
2018). In the context of Levi's the brand manager has introduced a new branding strategy to
improve the image of this organization. They include several marketing activities one of the
major activities is the situational analysis, which reveals the current positioning of Levi's. It has
been received from the situational analysis that consumer awareness of the brand is declining and
few retail stores contain Levi's product. This marketing activity allows Levi's to set new
objectives to improve their brand image. They have decided to establish 10 new stores in five
key cities.
According to their new branding strategy they try to measure the performance of the
brand implementers against the expectations. Therefore, they collect the feedback process to
improve their brand performance (Punjaisri and Wilson 2017). Such branding and marketing
activities expand the business of Levi’s by creating more stores. This ensures that the
organization has brought change in a wider range. This change is important as it develops an
effective communication in this organization. The employees are able to understand their
responsibilities to improve the brand image (Theurer et al. 2018). The market research evaluates
the current level of performance of Levi's. Therefore, the branding strategy enables them to
introduce a new product that is 501 halo in their new stores to make the change wider.

4BRANDING
Importance of 501 halo to maximize the brand strategy and examples of other brands
The new branding objective of Levi’s is to reclaim the brand. This is done by developing
product innovation to meet the needs of the target market. Introduction of halo 501 product is
their new innovation to broaden the brand strategy (Businesscasestudies.co.uk 2018). 501 is a
new jeans product, which targets the young aged people. Based on the needs of the customer's
such product has been launched. Product innovation is a big approach to boost the branding
strategy (Davis 2017). Introduction of this item influences the youth culture. This twisted jeans
supports the young fashionable consumers and it represents the new way of thinking of Levi's.
They also offer a discount on this product, which captures the attention of the young consumers
easily. This innovation creates the brand awareness among the international consumer domain.
For example, other brands such as Wal-Mart and Target Crops are popular as the discount
retailers. Levi's another band is Dockers brand, which follows the selling process and the
branding process of Wal-Mart and Target Crop to boost their branding strategy and make it
wider (Hunt 2018). By following the branding strategy of these two brands they offer a discount
for their new innovative product and make the branding strategy wider.
Recommendations
 Use of brand positioning strategy will be effective for Levi's to improve their brand
image and introduce their brand to the international market. This brand positioning
strategy will allow this organization to understand their current brand positioning based
on which they can bring innovation in their branding.

5BRANDING
 Levis needs to develop a customer-focused marketing activity to bring a wider change in
their organization. Customer focused marketing activity is effective to maximize the
brand awareness and to increase the customer numbers.
 Employee empowerment is crucial for Levi's. However, the managers fail to revitalize the
brand perception issue. Hence, by empowering the employees the brand manager will be
able to involve the employees in the decision-making process, which enables the
employees to address the issues regarding brand perception.

6BRANDING
References
Businesscasestudies.co.uk. 2018. Reclaiming the identity of a brand A Levi's case study. [online]
Available at: https://businesscasestudies.co.uk/levis/reclaiming-the-identity-of-a-brand/
introduction.html [Accessed 28 Jul. 2018].
Davis, M., 2017. The fundamentals of branding. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Hunt, S.D., 2018. Advancing marketing strategy in the marketing discipline and beyond: from
promise, to neglect, to prominence, to fragment (to promise?). Journal of Marketing
Management, 34(1-2), pp.16-51.
Punjaisri, K. and Wilson, A., 2017. The role of internal branding in the delivery of employee
brand promise. In Advances in Corporate Branding (pp. 91-108). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Schroeder, J.E., 2017. Corporate branding in perspective: a typology. European Journal of
Marketing, 51(9/10), pp.1522-1529.
Theurer, C.P., Tumasjan, A., Welpe, I.M. and Lievens, F., 2018. Employer branding: a brand
equity‐based literature review and research agenda. International Journal of Management
Reviews, 20(1), pp.155-179.