A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product offering as distinct from those of other sellers.
The objective of brand marketing is to create certain attitudes towards the product or service in the minds of consumers, such as:
awareness of the existence of the brand;
recognition of the brand;
persuasion to try the brand - make a purchase;
retention or loyalty to the brand - making repeated purchases in the future.
The digital world poses many new challenges to the successful marketing of brands – especially with the advent of social media – which we now devote an entire section of the knowledge centre to.
In this section we concentrate on the marketing of brands across the board.
There have been more brand valuations conducted in the last year or so than in the last decade. Companies like NBS, I&J, ABSA, The Sunday Times, M-Net and Vodacom, among quite a few others, have felt it necessary to employ the complex methodologies developed for this purpose as part of their business process. Their reasons for doing this have varied ... a fact alone that underlines the range of applications that these approaches reveal. Read More
The DMA net. Marketing Conference and Exhibition held this past March in Manhattan, provided information and guidance about many facets of marketing on the Internet and the Web. But, whenever the discussion focused on strategy, a central piece of advice emerged: build your brand! Read More
How much is your brand worth?' And can brands be measured? Yes, off course. One of the main reasons for valuation is that as markets become more global and transparent, more companies are beginning to recognise the importance of brand valuation and have started including this – as an asset - in their balance sheets. The same with customer databases, the value of which, are included as an asset in company balance sheets. Read More
From a slightly cynical peek at the daily horoscope, we've come a long way. And so a world of cosmic possibilities has started opening up. Yet this is but the beginning of an evolution that doesn't only affect us as individuals, but is fast encroaching on and encompassing the issues of marketing and brands. Read More
For any company to be successful in this new and ‘now’ emotional economy they need to create and build emotional loyalty. Companies will have to build and strengthen customer relationships – connecting on an emotional level. An article from the 2003 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Brands and Branding in South Africa.
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It’s interesting to me as a marketer how few brands are paying attention to the rise of consumer activism. In a world where consumers are speaking out, South African brands need to listen up or risk losing out. Read More
Interbrand's annual ranking of the ‘world’s most valuable brands’ published in BusinessWeek, shows US brands have weathered the storm of anti-Americanism. Read More
There are conventional tools of brand management and most brand managers get away with using the conventional tools. They run promotions, commission new adverts, enter into deals with the trade, and so on. But few can say with certainty why they do one thing rather than another. And any can be specific about what the return on their marketing spend will be. Read More
While almost 60 percent of consumers in emerging market countries would buy a local brand over an international brand if both products were of equal price, consumers in these ‘Hotspots’ countries have the same brand preferences for cars (Toyota), fast food (McDonalds) and hotels (Hilton) as developed market consumers, reveals global market research company Synovate. The main difference? Sony is the preferred manufacturer for MP3 players in Hotspots countries whereas Apple’s iPod rules in developed markets. Read More
“Now more than ever, consumers seek brands with names they know and trust.” So says David Shore, Associate Dean and Director of the Trust Initiative at Harvard University. "Trust is the essential ingredient when organisations shift from a product-centric to a promise-centric model. And a brand’s single most powerful position in any consumer’s mind is a position of trust.”
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There will always be room for more Davids than Goliaths, so maybe it’s time to consider whether emulating the giant is the right role model to choose for our brands? Read More
Here, the owner of Tim Girvin Design Inc., an international brand and image management organization in Seattle, shares some product marketing tips that will work as well for small businesses as for his big-name clients. Read More
Branding and customer loyalty are more important than price and speed to market in the online retail arena. eMarketer.com reports that online shoppers see buying from a familiar brand as a security blanket that minimises the risk of purchasing from an unfamiliar merchant. Read More
Brands are not things you can see, touch and feel. Those are the products they represent, or the banking branches they project. Brands exist in the mind. They help us reduce the anxiety of the unknown by providing the assurance of an old friend. They assist us in the complex task of deciding which choice to make. Often, the trust and reliability that we hold for them, justifies the payment of a premium price. Read More
The reality is that often it’s the high level executive that pushes an idea through, that does not fit demographic or physiographic profiles. Their decisions are based on dipstick and even in-depth research info. Sometimes the conclusions they arrive at, are based either on their belief that they themselves are the sole providers of success and not others around them, or from a researcher’s left-brain that lacks the entrepreneurial spirit of the right brain. They don’t have a Richard Branson whispering sweet advice into their right grey matter. Read More
