This chapter looks at brand communication, emphasizing the importance of understanding involvement and motivation to the development of an effective brand message. It addresses how a brand should be positioned and explores how to develop an effective positioning for a brand within marketing communication. The chapter then surveys the strategies needed in executing effective marketing communication, specifically advertising. The roles of brand awareness and brand attitude strategies, and how they must reflect how consumers go about making product and brand decisions in the category are all discussed. Finally, the chapter looks at options for delivering the brand's message, with a particular emphasis on digital media.
Chapter
Brand Communication
Chapter
Brand Equity
This chapter explores the idea of brand equity. It starts by analysing how a name has the ability to provide value beyond the objective characteristics of an object. It demonstrates that there are many definitions of brand equity, all of which address this notion of ‘added value’, some in terms of financial considerations, but most from a consumer’s perspective. The chapter theorizes that these consumer-oriented definitions all seem to have in common the idea that brand equity is the result of positive experience with a brand. Many aspects of brands and their links to brand equity are introduced, illustrating the centrality of brand equity to effective strategic brand management, along with the idea of companies and corporations as ‘brands’.
Chapter
Brand Innovation and Digital Media
This chapter focuses on brand innovation and digital media. It discusses the relationship between brands and innovation. First, it explores how the use of digital, social media, and mobile marketing is influencing strategic brand management. It then highlights the importance of branding innovations before exploring how individual, personal, and sociocultural factors impact on the adoption of new offerings. Finally, it delves into the strategic brand management implications for a particularly dynamic innovation environment, the high-tech market.
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Brand Portfolio Management
This chapter looks into the broad framework of product and brand portfolio management. It addresses the fundamental questions that must be asked when considering a change in branding strategy. It explores brand stretching and how an evaluation of both category and brand development can help suggest how a manager makes brand stretching decisions. The chapter also introduces the concept of brand retrenching. What is involved in brand extensions and the different ways of dealing with a brand extension strategy is discussed. Various advantages and disadvantages associated with brand stretching and retrenching are presented. Finally, the chapter scrutinizes branding strategy in light of postmodern thinking and the emergence of metamodernism, and the role of nostalgia in retro-marketing.
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Brand Strategies 1—Symbolic Brands
This chapter discusses how managers might develop strategic plans for brands. It begins by proposing a basic model of how brands are built in mindspace over time. It demonstrates how advertising plays a key role in the process. Brand strategies based on personal meanings, on social differentiation, and on social integration are considered. The chapter emphasizes that the social language of the brand can provide a wide range of benefits to the consumer and help transform their experience of the brand.
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Brand Strategies 2—Low-Involvement Brands
This chapter surveys brand strategies for low-involvement brands. It illustrates the vital importance of top-of-mind awareness and brand salience to a functional brand. A range of ways in which brand associations can be built up through pre-conscious and minimal cognitive processes using all elements of communication is presented. The chapter also considers behavioural processes to increase penetration and/or frequency of purchase, and then discusses ways of managing consumer perceptions. It ends with a discussion on how choice situation can be managed. It also looks at approaches to building brand loyalty.
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Cultural Meaning Systems and Brands
This chapter studies how brands can be used as signaling systems to create and send meanings of social differentiation and social integration. It begins by presenting the basic analytical tools of semiotics. Then it discusses how products and consumption practices can be used in order to differentiate between social groups within a culture. The chapter also delves into neo-tribes and sub-cultures, which may use the consumption of symbolic brands to develop and communicate their identity. How sub-cultures may adopt and then hijack a famous brand image for their own purposes is also explored. Finally, the chapter introduces Aikido brands, which use the fame and image of a brand against itself.
Chapter
Emotion and Brands
This chapter deals with the importance of emotions in choosing brands and evaluating and forming opinions about them. It considers the complexity of emotions, and discusses how the symbolic meaning of consumption is fundamental to understanding the ability of brands to communicate social, psychological, and cultural messages. The chapter also shows how trust in brands develop over time. Finally, it demonstrates that it is possible to emotionalize a product or service that has little rational connection with emotions.
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Measuring Brand Performance and Equity
This chapter addresses specific ways to measure brand equity and performance. It shows that measuring brand performance is important for effective brand management. The chapter also suggests that a brand equity audit helps to uncover the elements of a brand and its market that are likely to affect its equity. It introduces qualitative and quantitative methods for measuring brand equity. How pre-testing marketing communication to ensure that the brand's communication objectives are being met is also explored. Finally, the chapter tackles how the role of continuous tracking is critically important in measuring brand performance and the effectiveness of a brand's marketing communication.
Chapter
People as Brand Touchpoints
This chapter highlights the people in the organization: employees who manage the brand touchpoints between firm and customer. It emphasizes the importance of employees in influencing customer perceptions of the brand. It also shows how organizational culture can be developed. The chapter also demonstrates that corporate brand strategy must be appropriate for different stakeholder groups. Finally, the role of corporate stories, symbols, sponsorship, employer brands, and managing corporate reputation are discussed.
Book
Richard Rosenbaum-Elliott, Larry Percy, and Simon Pervan
Strategic Brand Management is made of three parts. Part 1 is about the sociocultural meaning of brands. It looks at understanding the social psychology of brands, emotion and brands, the symbolic meaning of brands, and cultural meaning of systems and brands. The second part looks at brand equity and brand building. Chapters in this section look at brand equity, brand communication, and brand performance. The third part covers managing brands and looks at brand strategies, brand innovation and digital media, brand portfolio management, and people as brand touchpoints.
Chapter
The Symbolic Meaning of Brands
This chapter considers how in postmodernity, brands can become symbolic resources for the construction, communication, and maintenance of identity. It presents a variety of ways brands can acquire symbolic meaning. It shows how advertising can be a potent source of meaning, particularly through narrative and the construction of socially shared meanings. The chapter demonstrates that the symbolic consumption of brands can help establish and communicate some basic cultural categories, such as social status, gender, and age. Brands can acquire deep meaning through the socialization process and such brands can restore a sense of security. Mass-market brands can acquire individual meanings through ritual and personal interpretations of meaning.
Chapter
Understanding the Social Psychology of Brands
This chapter provides a foundational understanding of brands by discussing the breadth and depth of their individual and social influence. It outlines the history of brands. Then moves on to demonstrate that perceptions of brands must be the focus of managerial action. The chapter also reviews what is known about how consumers make choice decisions between brands and identifies the critical role played by levels of consumer involvement. The issue of how even low-involvement brands may be associated with low levels of emotion and non-rational preference is explored.
