The word ‘brand’ has become one of the most frequently used terms in the business lexicon. A brand can do much more than merely selling a product. Strong brands not only command big market share , but also enhance shareholder value.
Business is a battle for annexing market territory, which in turn brings better margins. Brands with high market share are often more popular, precisely because they are more popular. Shareholder value is the driving imperative of modern marketing management. It is the lingua franca that everyone in the boardroom understands.
First-time consumers of a product always want to know, which particular brand of that product is moving fast, and why. Fast-moving brands denote low risk and, hence, enjoy high preference in the market. Strong brands mesmerise, and even hypnotise, customers into accepting price escalation.
Traditionally, brands have been viewed as a tool to achieve marketing objectives. Besides providing a focus for the awareness of a product, a brand can influence repeat purchase by building an enduring relationship and rapport with the customers.
There is a fundamental fact about brands: it is the people who bring the brands into life, and not the organisations. Brands are not in the factory, not even at the marketplace; they are in the minds of the customers. Stephen King wrote famously that “A product is something that is made in a factory. A brand is something that is bought by a consumer.”
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A brand strategy must be totally in tune with the overall business strategy. A brand may have its own intrinsic marketing muscle, but unless the business strategy of the company is in tune with the brand image, the entire exercise will be rendered futile. It is like the maxim in martial arts: a good punch must emanate from the belly, and not from the arms.
Brand strategy must ensure that what a business claims and proclaims about the attributes of a brand is in consonance with its performance; that the reality is as good as the rhetoric. No matter how carefully crafted the message may be about a brand, it only takes just one bad experience, or one negative story, for the entire image to come crashing down.
When a business becomes a cash cow thanks to a unique brand, the competition wends its way to make inroads into that profit domain. The safeguard against such threats is usually done in three ways. The first technique is to invest heavily on publicity and advertisements by the incumbent brand, which others will find prohibitive. Another method is to engage in a price war. The incumbent brand brings down its price to such an abysmal level that the new entrant finds it impossible to meet and match.
Authentic, comprehensive The third alternative is to attain a pinnacle point in terms of quality and reliability, which will be above the reach of a novice in the game. The brand will gain such a phenomenal market image that more often the customer will equate the brand itself with the product. Xerox is synonymous with photocopying. Godrej is identified with steel cupboard. Dunlopillo , in its heyday, was the byword for foam cushion.
The book under review is a compendium of 18 essays, spread over five sections. These essays, which are on different aspects of branding like “new interpretations of branding, new approaches to branding, and the discovery of new nuances to branding”, make this book both authentic and comprehensive.
All the writers are experts – some of them pioneers – in the fields that they have written about, besides publishing at least one book on that subject. On the whole, the volume is a classic contribution, enriching contemporary literature on marketing management.
The first section deals with two basic issues in branding viz., ‘positioning’, and how to make brands more ‘meaningful’. Some of the topics covered in the second section are verbal identity vis-à-vis visual identity; restoring the lost value of a brand e.g., Dunlop Volley Shoe in the continent down under; ‘feeling’ and not ‘thinking’ is the criterion in customer response; ‘No innovation, No brand’ is the war cry in brand management.
The editor of the book, Kartikeya Kompella, himself an authority on branding, has written the last piece in this section – Branding with a cause. He advocates the need for balancing business objectives with corporate social responsibility. The world has come a long way, and far away, from what Milton Freidman once avowed: “The business of business is business.”
The third section examines those aspects of branding, which have their roots outside the marketing discipline. Collaboration is the sum and substance of the fourth section in the book. Co-branding and co-creation, the most recent advances in brand management, are discussed in this section. Belief has emerged to be a powerful source in building brands.
The fifth and final section sheds light on the role that belief plays in creating brands.
