Description
Describing about the issues of wrong branding and what happens to a product with wrong branding.
B
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randing, though taken as a very easy task, yet can lead to disaster in terms of destroying the overall image of product and then resulting into a “no market” kind of thing even for a “market takeover” kind of product. A brand in itself is a personification of a product, service, or even entire company. A tiny change
today brings a dramatically different tomorrow. It’s very important for a brand manager, to understand its customer, product and the competitive environment for the proper branding of his product. The wrong branding attitude can hamper the overall created image of his product and sometimes lend the product in hands of the untargeted market. Proper branding can result in higher sales of not only one product, but on other products associated with that brand. People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. This article tells about some of the insights for branding, which a brand manager needs to keep in his mind, before launching his product into the market.
Brand: Replica of Company and the product:
Branding is the medium to showcase the company right
attitude, personality and the true worth in front of the customers. . Brand recognition is most successful when people can state a brand without being explicitly exposed to the company's name, but rather through visual Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
signifiers like logos, slogans, and colours. The brand logo is a self explanatory mark in terms of attracting its targeted customers. Logo is the identities that are fundamental to building a brand and communicating with the target audience. Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies consisting of customers, staff, partners, investors etc. Many well-known corporate brand changes their logo to archive the perfect identification because identity’s creation is not an occasional activity, but a permanent one.
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A lady, sitting next to Raymond Loewy at dinner, struck up a conversation. 'Why', she asked 'did you put two Xs in Exxon?' 'But why have you asked it?' he asked 'Because', she said, 'I couldn't help noticing?' 'Well', he responded, 'that's the answer.'
- Source: Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways
Seeking Customers attention:
Branding a product needs
to be such that it has recall factor attached to it. If its logo, theme, colours, associations can create customers’ ability of recalling and recognizing the brand under different conditions, then one can say that it has done successfully in branding his product. When your brand is what pops into a consumers mind when asked to name brands in a product category, then you can be assured of that you have lead the market in terms of
creating brand loyalty into the market even in the state of tough competition. For example, when someone is asked to name a brand in milk or the butter and cream industry, the common answer is “AMUL”. Even in the condition when a consumer is shown a list of brands, and expresses familiarity with your brand only after hearing or seeing it which is a type of memory aide, there also you can have the market grabbing happiness. You can also create strategic awareness of your brand by introducing distinctive qualities that stick out to consumers as making it better than the other brands in your market. By introducing Unique Selling Point for your product, you can also grab the customer’s attention.
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Brand needs consistency:
Unless and until, all the delivery channels of the
brand work in a consistent manner, brand will fail to deliver its actual value and the mistake committed at any level of the chain will lead in a brand failure. Before launching the product, giving proper training to the delivery channels also play a crucial role in marketing the true value of the product to the customers. If the delivery channels do not know the true potential in the brand, brand will not able to tap the market. So the proper training must be provided to the delivery channels so that they themselves promote your brand to the consumers. Since the delivery channels are the one, who will finally showcase your product and brand to the consumers, so parting knowledge to the delivery channels about your brand deliverables is very important. Once the branding is started to target a specific set of customers, it should follow the same path only till it grab the total market share in that particular sector and thus it needs to be consistent enough to grab the opportunities. Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
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Some live examples of Brand Failure:
T
ata Nano is the live example of wrong branding. As quoted by Ratan Tata, “I think we wasted an early opportunity”. They have
targeted the wrong audience. Though it was meant for low income group families, yet it was branded as meant for the high income group or the youth. Tata said, “We've never pushed it as a poor man's car but an affordable, all-weather, family car”. Now they wanted to change the perception that it was a "poor man's" vehicle. Before launching a product into the market, it’s very important that the positioning strategies, marketing, delivery channels are all set from the day before launching of product. This was also a big mistake in case of Nano. As Tata said, “I don't think we were adequately ready with an advertising campaign or a dealer network."
L
?
iril is the brand which fails due to the wrong branding strategies adopted. When the brand was launched the Liril girl became the talk of the town. Liril
was positioned on the freshness platform right from its birth. The girl and the waterfall with the unique jingle ensured that the freshness is experienced by the audience. But the brand did not change its position for 25 years. There was a flurry of brand launches during the past 10 years and Liril was sleeping all the time. Liril tried to introduce the Icy mint variant and that too with a different jingle. But it did not work and the product failed.
Learnings from the failed Brands:
LEARNING #1: Early Mover advantage is not really an advantage always. The industry can get the
late mover advantage from your failure. For example: Ford was the first successfully mass produced car in the United States. In 1921, Ford sold 900,000 Models capturing 60% market share as compared to General Motors 61,000 Chevys, a 6% market share. Over the next ten years, while Ford focused on cost reductions, General Motors built a diverse and differentiated product line. By 1931 GM had 31% of the market to Ford’s 28%, a lead it has never relinquished. Just to make the point that markets are never static, the issue is not being first to market, but understanding the type of market your company is going to enter. LEARNING #2: Diversify and Brand extension is must but not in all – together a different type of market. It can be a sure shot failure for your brand. For Example in case of Ponds toothpaste, people were not at all ready to accept Ponds entering into the toothpaste industry. Pond’s is always known for its feminine beauty and has its brand identity surrounded around the beauty. Pond’s is associated with freshness, fragrance, and clean skin, so when the Pond’s name was attached to the toothpaste, no-one was interested and it leads to a big failure. Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
LEARNING #3: Brands take years to build and are invaluable. Don’t kill an established brand simply to introduce a new one. For Example in case of Amul introducing Chocolates was not accepted by the customers. Amul’s association with milk, ice-cream and cheese was its USP. Just going to a different sector was a brand failure for the brand in that product category. Just the brand name cannot get you there in every category of product.
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References: o www.indiatimes.com o www.allaboutbranding.com o www.wikipedia.com o www.dummies.com o www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
doc_728407038.pdf
Describing about the issues of wrong branding and what happens to a product with wrong branding.
B
?
randing, though taken as a very easy task, yet can lead to disaster in terms of destroying the overall image of product and then resulting into a “no market” kind of thing even for a “market takeover” kind of product. A brand in itself is a personification of a product, service, or even entire company. A tiny change
today brings a dramatically different tomorrow. It’s very important for a brand manager, to understand its customer, product and the competitive environment for the proper branding of his product. The wrong branding attitude can hamper the overall created image of his product and sometimes lend the product in hands of the untargeted market. Proper branding can result in higher sales of not only one product, but on other products associated with that brand. People engaged in branding seek to develop or align the expectations behind the brand experience, creating the impression that a brand associated with a product or service has certain qualities or characteristics that make it special or unique. A brand is therefore one of the most valuable elements in an advertising theme, as it demonstrates what the brand owner is able to offer in the marketplace. This article tells about some of the insights for branding, which a brand manager needs to keep in his mind, before launching his product into the market.
Brand: Replica of Company and the product:
Branding is the medium to showcase the company right
attitude, personality and the true worth in front of the customers. . Brand recognition is most successful when people can state a brand without being explicitly exposed to the company's name, but rather through visual Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
signifiers like logos, slogans, and colours. The brand logo is a self explanatory mark in terms of attracting its targeted customers. Logo is the identities that are fundamental to building a brand and communicating with the target audience. Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies consisting of customers, staff, partners, investors etc. Many well-known corporate brand changes their logo to archive the perfect identification because identity’s creation is not an occasional activity, but a permanent one.
?
A lady, sitting next to Raymond Loewy at dinner, struck up a conversation. 'Why', she asked 'did you put two Xs in Exxon?' 'But why have you asked it?' he asked 'Because', she said, 'I couldn't help noticing?' 'Well', he responded, 'that's the answer.'
- Source: Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways
Seeking Customers attention:
Branding a product needs
to be such that it has recall factor attached to it. If its logo, theme, colours, associations can create customers’ ability of recalling and recognizing the brand under different conditions, then one can say that it has done successfully in branding his product. When your brand is what pops into a consumers mind when asked to name brands in a product category, then you can be assured of that you have lead the market in terms of
creating brand loyalty into the market even in the state of tough competition. For example, when someone is asked to name a brand in milk or the butter and cream industry, the common answer is “AMUL”. Even in the condition when a consumer is shown a list of brands, and expresses familiarity with your brand only after hearing or seeing it which is a type of memory aide, there also you can have the market grabbing happiness. You can also create strategic awareness of your brand by introducing distinctive qualities that stick out to consumers as making it better than the other brands in your market. By introducing Unique Selling Point for your product, you can also grab the customer’s attention.
?
Brand needs consistency:
Unless and until, all the delivery channels of the
brand work in a consistent manner, brand will fail to deliver its actual value and the mistake committed at any level of the chain will lead in a brand failure. Before launching the product, giving proper training to the delivery channels also play a crucial role in marketing the true value of the product to the customers. If the delivery channels do not know the true potential in the brand, brand will not able to tap the market. So the proper training must be provided to the delivery channels so that they themselves promote your brand to the consumers. Since the delivery channels are the one, who will finally showcase your product and brand to the consumers, so parting knowledge to the delivery channels about your brand deliverables is very important. Once the branding is started to target a specific set of customers, it should follow the same path only till it grab the total market share in that particular sector and thus it needs to be consistent enough to grab the opportunities. Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
?
Some live examples of Brand Failure:
T
ata Nano is the live example of wrong branding. As quoted by Ratan Tata, “I think we wasted an early opportunity”. They have
targeted the wrong audience. Though it was meant for low income group families, yet it was branded as meant for the high income group or the youth. Tata said, “We've never pushed it as a poor man's car but an affordable, all-weather, family car”. Now they wanted to change the perception that it was a "poor man's" vehicle. Before launching a product into the market, it’s very important that the positioning strategies, marketing, delivery channels are all set from the day before launching of product. This was also a big mistake in case of Nano. As Tata said, “I don't think we were adequately ready with an advertising campaign or a dealer network."
L
?
iril is the brand which fails due to the wrong branding strategies adopted. When the brand was launched the Liril girl became the talk of the town. Liril
was positioned on the freshness platform right from its birth. The girl and the waterfall with the unique jingle ensured that the freshness is experienced by the audience. But the brand did not change its position for 25 years. There was a flurry of brand launches during the past 10 years and Liril was sleeping all the time. Liril tried to introduce the Icy mint variant and that too with a different jingle. But it did not work and the product failed.
Learnings from the failed Brands:
LEARNING #1: Early Mover advantage is not really an advantage always. The industry can get the
late mover advantage from your failure. For example: Ford was the first successfully mass produced car in the United States. In 1921, Ford sold 900,000 Models capturing 60% market share as compared to General Motors 61,000 Chevys, a 6% market share. Over the next ten years, while Ford focused on cost reductions, General Motors built a diverse and differentiated product line. By 1931 GM had 31% of the market to Ford’s 28%, a lead it has never relinquished. Just to make the point that markets are never static, the issue is not being first to market, but understanding the type of market your company is going to enter. LEARNING #2: Diversify and Brand extension is must but not in all – together a different type of market. It can be a sure shot failure for your brand. For Example in case of Ponds toothpaste, people were not at all ready to accept Ponds entering into the toothpaste industry. Pond’s is always known for its feminine beauty and has its brand identity surrounded around the beauty. Pond’s is associated with freshness, fragrance, and clean skin, so when the Pond’s name was attached to the toothpaste, no-one was interested and it leads to a big failure. Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
LEARNING #3: Brands take years to build and are invaluable. Don’t kill an established brand simply to introduce a new one. For Example in case of Amul introducing Chocolates was not accepted by the customers. Amul’s association with milk, ice-cream and cheese was its USP. Just going to a different sector was a brand failure for the brand in that product category. Just the brand name cannot get you there in every category of product.
?
References: o www.indiatimes.com o www.allaboutbranding.com o www.wikipedia.com o www.dummies.com o www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
Submitted By: Aashima Gupta & Pankaj Garg (PGDM 11-13, IMT- Nagpur)
doc_728407038.pdf