Abstract
The brand is more than a symbol. The real strength of a company resides in the brand’s personality, and one of the most straightforward approaches to discover the true meaning of a brand is to grasp the character archetype of the brand. In today’s dynamic environment, outside the logo, a company asset that adds identity and personality to goods broadens customer expectations and directs customers’ purchase choices. A brand is not a real commodity or intangible service, such as a web program. The value of branding in recent years has increased. While brand archetypes are far from scientific, they are a fun and useful way to reflect on what your brand is about and how it relates to your market. The study aims to underline the brand strategy framework and its rentability worldwide.
Keywords: brand ambassador; personal branding; rebrand; brand equity; brand strategy; branding strategy; brand development strategy; brand strategy framework
Introduction
Despite the critical position branding plays in marketing, significant empirical study in marketing has generally overlooked the branding concept and its increase in use. The growth of brand management and the everyday use of the term have disseminated the idea that everything and everyone has a brand image. The modern usage of branding is equated with achieving and managing a reputation and has in several contexts supplanted the term selling, presumably because the former word is less stigmatic. The central theme of the brand definition, its relation to symbolism, fantasy, and nature, the vitality it gives to inanimate objects, and the differentiation and complexity it adds to living ones render it more attractive than the sheer ads commonly identified with the concept of marketing. Today’s branding makes the malleability, freedom and opportunity for the play of meanings. These characteristics are valuable in today’s liberatory post-modern days. A quality reputation indicates high awareness, high demand, high revenue, and high sales income. Being a brand is the product of actions undertaken by the company. Brands are developed, stimulated, and applied by people in companies trying to develop meaningful consumer interactions that can contribute to loyal and successful customer actions. Brands also provide consumers with rewards by making things easier to pick and providing reward services.
Definition A brand is an identifying symbol, mark, logo, name, word, and/or sentence that companies use to distinguish their product from others. A combination of one or more of those elements can be utilized to create a brand identity. Legal protection given to a brand name is called a trademark.
Brand Identity
Modern corporate structures, new marketing networks, the fragmentation of mainstream media and mass retail, deregulation of sectors and converging markets – some claim this will mean the death of brands as we know it.
An integrated brand identity that starts with name, logo and slogan must distill the brand promise uniquely and memorably. Delivering on the promise of “brand as experience” becomes the key to building trust and long-term brand equity. Due to an increasingly global environment, businesses that rely solely on the domestic market must become globally successful to succeed and expand.
Jean-Noël Kapferer has developed a model called “The Brand Identity Prism” reflecting the different aspects of building brand identity. The model is quite extensive, and I plan to concentrate on the most critical aspects that decide how people view themselves. The brand identity prism evolves under the idea that products can only survive by contact and that interactions can form brand identities.
To excel in brand identity, a brand has to serve three fundamental roles. First, it has to be in line with the consumers; second, it can separate the brand from rivals, and third, it needs to comply with its priorities and strategic role.
A brand name is how the brand owners or advertisers like the brand to be viewed, while a brand profile is how the consumer interprets the brand.
The company’s popularity is distributed across different channels and sometimes, the brand needs to contend with others. The message obtained is not necessarily the same as the marketer’s message, which may result in varying brand recognition and brand appearance.
Elements Important to Brand Identity
- Meaning: Great brands stand for something. A brand’s identity must express its unique mission, history, culture, values, and personality.
- Differentiation: Brands are always competing with each other within their business category that wants consumers’ attention. Because of all of this competition, it is not enough to just be different. Brands need to demonstrate and communicate their difference, making it easy for customers to understand that difference.
- Durability & Flexibility: Brands need to commit to a central idea over time to transcend change and remain recognizable. An influential brand identity positions a company for change and growth in the future. It supports an evolving marketing strategy.
Importance Of Branding Strategies
Brand strategies are the foundation of long-term brand plans built with financial value measurement, legal security, building brand loyalty, branding, and strong brand impact. Name tactics to come up in the debate around business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) strategies.
To be effective, brand campaigns must be accompanied by other kinds of marketing techniques. Businesses who wish to use the brand as a marketing variable should solve their policy issues such as brand usage, do an operation in foreign regions, utilizing their producer brand etc.
There are four fundamental brand strategies for the selection of brand managers for their products:
- New Branding
- Multiple Branding
- Brand Extension
New Branding
This corporate branding creation is a modern brand. A new brand is created while a company is expanding due to the inclusion of a new product range, prompting a new brand’s development. The most vital benefit of this approach is that the company can engage with its rivals at a lower price without destroying its customer market value. However, it also should be considered that one branding for each item would trigger an expense and difficulties since any new logo implies a separate identity, which should be developed for the company.
Line Extension
A product line extension introduces a new product – that is similar to what the company already offers (that is, within an existing product line/category) that is targeting an existing market by using the current brand name.
The main reasons for preferring this strategy are the followings:
- Increase brand and advertisement efficiency by launching new goods and services.
- Raising profitability by attracting potential consumers to business products via brand
- Creating a powerful brand image
- Raising the added value provided by the brand to the highest rank
Multiple Brand Strategy
An illustration of one of the product lines below being used within the same market. By using a multi-brand model, an organization may have several products operating in the same product segment.
A company with multiple trademarks will have more goods distributed in supermarkets, making it less open to its competition. Â A firm that uses multiple brand strategy gains an advantage over rivals by concentrating on multiple consumer segments and saturated markets. Generally, practices in the automotive industry are in the direction of that strategy
Brand Extension Strategy
A brand extension involves broadening the market’s understanding of the brand. This is achieved by offering more products (of a different nature/category) under the existing brand name.
Brand extension can be presented as both giving the brand name to a different category product (horizontal brand extension) and giving the brand name to the product that is in the same category but has a different price and quality (vertical brand extension). For example, Sony’s mobile phone production is an example of horizontal brand extension, while new model autos of Nissan are examples of vertical brand extension.
Brand Ambassador
Brand ambassador authenticates the validity of features that distinguish products and give them attractiveness and affect other networks and relationships through word of mouth effects. The use of brand ambassador is more cost-effective, but it is also more effective than other marketing tools such as advertising Brand ambassadors, who are often known as market makers, build momentum about a new product by their strong support. Recent studies have been done on brand ambassadors, for example, one research discusses how workers should be successful and remembered as brand ambassadors, and another study explores the influence of sports players as brand ambassadors on soda brand management. Another study examines the positive and negative impact that famous personalities have on brand perception and reputation, and another study investigates celebrities’ positive effects on brand awareness.
In this digital and social age, virtually every employee has a sizeable professional network. Besides that, many are already sharing about your company, whether executives realize it or not. 98% of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50% are already posting about their company. Among social networking, email, and other resources, B2B workers have many people to connect with and with whom they have rapport and confidence.
Conclusion
Today’s companies compete to retain their investments in an increasingly aggressive sector. For these reasons, they are in quest for productivity advantage over other groups. Branding is the most critical factor influencing the effectiveness of the initiative. Besides the legal security for manufacturers and a way to discourage counterfeits, it also supports customers by bringing reputation, protection, underwritings and maintenance opportunities.
All profitable firms have a proven brand plan to prepare for the dynamic marketplace. Any company will profit from crafting a brand that portrays the organization as unique, trustworthy, entertaining, efficient, or whatever helps the organization. The brand will build an emotional “resonance” in consumers’ minds that select products and services using emotional and pragmatic decisions.
