This chapter looks into advertising to different cultures. It lists the basic sources of various cultural assumptions ranging between sources of culture, cognitive organization, and cultural expressions. The chapter uses Hofstede’s dimensions and definitions framework on cultural values citing power distance, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and long-term orientation as dimensions. It also includes the different approaches to communication, which are divided between high-context culture and low-context culture. Moreover, the chapter explores other cultural dimensions such as Schwarz’ Universal Value Structure. It highlights how culture impacts the process and effectiveness of advertising and brand perceptions.
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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.
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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’.
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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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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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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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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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This chapter focuses on branding strategies, presenting a series of suggestions to help the brand strategist to create, maintain, and enhance this valuable company asset. A brand is a ‘name, term, sign, symbol (or a combination of these) that identifies the maker or seller of the product’. It allows the consumer to develop a relationship with a product/service. Strategic brand management requires a sophisticated understanding of, first, industry cost structure, brand efficiency, and brand profitability, and second, consumer perceptions of brands and the potential for differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage. The chapter then looks at some examples of the strongest brands in the market, before reviewing various tools and techniques used in branding. It also considers some of the latest thinking regarding brands: scent branding and brand vulgarity.
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This chapter discusses campaign strategy. It highlights how campaign strategy is built upon the strategic planning process which takes into account market conditions on how advertising and promotions are used. The chapter then argues that a review of the consumer decision process is vital in order to determine target audiences and decision processes such that the stages of advertising and promotion will be effective. It looks into the unique advantages of advertising and promotions. Additionally, the chapter mentions the effectiveness of direct marketing. It includes how campaign budgets should be in line with sales goals. The chapter explains the significance of monitoring the programme while the campaign is underway.
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This chapter focuses on creative execution. It looks into the sources of creative ideas such as crowdsourcing. Additionally, the chapter highlights the importance of clear communication with the creative team amidst a campaign. It also notes the important requirements of creative ideas such as dramatized benefit claim, attention-grabbing, consistency, the requirement to be categorically relevant and adaptability across media. Moreover, the chapter explores how creative executions must match the roles that the target audience perform in the decision process. It differentiates logos, slogans, and taglines as well. The chapter then explores the concept behind social marketing communication. It narrates the role of creative research.
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This chapter explores creative tactics. It notes how pictures and words are effective in advertising in terms of increasing the probability of attention to an advert. The chapter cites the general creative tactics based on how the mind processes words and pictures in an effort to increase attention, learning, and memory. It points out the effectiveness of using nostalgia in advertising. The chapter includes music in facilitating the process of an advert as it could rouse attention and emotion. It notes that creative tactics for brand awareness strategies should consider the difference between recognition and recall brand awareness objectives. Moreover, the chapter looks into informational brand attitude strategies and transformational brand attitude strategies.
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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.
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This chapter looks into the third step of the strategic planning process. It explores the positioning strategy for advertising in line with the marketing plan. Additionally, the chapter highlights the importance of understanding how consumers define the market and brand competition. It notes products, price, place, and promotion as consumer benefits linked to the four marketing mix components. The chapter then explores the target market and effective brand positioning strategy. It narrates perceived similarity and the hierarchical market as ways of defining markets. Moreover, the chapter explores the expectancy-value model of attitude, which looks into a person’s attitude, belief and product. It also notes the significance of benefits in the expectancy-value model.
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This chapter explores how to develop a communication strategy, which is the fourth step in the strategic planning process. It highlights the importance of brand awareness, brand attitude, and brand purchase intention. Communication objectives are determined depending on which communication effects are needed: category need, brand awareness, brand attitude, and brand purchase intention. On the other hand, the chapter looks into recognition brand awareness and recall brand awareness in line with the brand awareness strategy. It notes that promotion strategy is considered when brand purchase intention is a communication objective. The chapter also includes the cognitive and affective components of brand attitude. It notes the significance of involvement and motivation while referencing the Rossiter–Percy Grid.
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This chapter discusses digital media. It notes the increasing doubt over the effectiveness of digital media in delivering messages despite growth in areas such as privacy concerns. Additionally, the chapter explains the history and development of the internet. It also includes the brand competition between Google and Amazon. The chapter highlights how digital media would need to conform to the processing requirements of a communication strategy. It also explores the rise of programmatic buying of advertising which sparked the increase of fraud, fake website traffic, and other unethical behaviour. The chapter then cites the cognitive consequence of smartphones.
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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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This chapter discusses the first part of the strategic marketing management (SMM) process, namely strategic analysis. Strategic analysis is concerned with understanding the strategic position of the organization in terms of its external environment, its internal resources and competencies, and the expectations and influence of stakeholders. For proper conduct of strategic analysis, different sets of market information and competitive intelligence should be gathered, scanned, and analysed. Many analytical models and frameworks are available to support such an analysis, and strategic managers should make their choice based on their understanding of how to operationalize the selected model. To conclude their strategic analysis and to inform the subsequent decision of strategic choices, strategic managers should attempt to find a strategic fit between external opportunities and internal strengths while working around external threats and internal weaknesses.
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This chapter highlights marketing communications (marcoms). Marcoms primarily operate in four areas: advertising, direct marketing, public relations (PR), and sales promotions, which can be used in marketing strategy either singularly or holistically with IMC (integrated marcoms). While marcoms can enable organizations to reduce costs in the medium to long term, their main strategic use is in helping to differentiate and position a product or service in the market. Indeed, marcoms can be defined as a management process where an organization attempts to convey messages that contain meanings related to its strategic objectives with the intent of changing or reinforcing consumer attitudes and ultimately consumer behaviour. The process of undertaking a marcoms strategy involves conducting an audit, developing the central strategy, and then deciding upon the appropriate creative and media choices.
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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.
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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.
