Some analysts see brands as the major enduring asset of a company, outlasting the company’s specific products and facilities. John Stewart, former CEO of Quaker Oats, once said, “If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would keep the brands and trademarks, and I would fare better than you.” A former CEO of McDonald’s declared, “If every asset we own, every building, and every piece of equipment were destroyed in a terrible natural disaster, we would be able to borrow all the money to replace it very quickly because of the value of our brand. . . . The brand is more valuable than the totality of all these assets.”27
Thus, brands are powerful assets that must be carefully developed and managed. In this section, we examine the key strategies for building and managing product and service brands.
Brands are more than just names and symbols. They are a key element in the company’s relationships with consumers. Brands represent consumers’ perceptions and feelings about a product and its performance—everything that the product or the service means to consumers. In the final analysis, brands exist in the heads of consumers. As one well-respected marketer once said, “Products are created in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.”28
A powerful brand has high brand equity. Brand equity is the differential effect that knowing the brand name has on customer response to the product and its marketing. It’s a measure of the brand’s ability to capture consumer preference and loyalty. A brand has positive brand equity when consumers react more favorably to it than to a generic or unbranded version of the same product. It has negative brand equity if consumers react less favorably than to an unbranded version.
Brands vary in the amount of power and value they hold in the marketplace. Some brands—such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Disney, GE, McDonald’s, Harley-Davidson, and others—become larger-than-life icons that maintain their power in the market for years, even generations. Other brands—such as Google, Zappos, Uber, GoPro, Instagram, and Wikipedia—create fresh consumer excitement and loyalty. These brands win in the marketplace not simply because they deliver unique benefits or reliable service. Rather, they succeed because they forge deep connections with customers. People really do have relationships with brands. For example, to devoted Nike fans around the world, the Nike brand stands for much more than just sneakers, apparel, and sports equipment. It stands for gritty sports inspiration, fitness, and achievement—a “Just do it” attitude. As Nike once stated, “It’s not so much the shoes but where they take you.”
Ad agency Young & Rubicam’s BrandAsset Valuator measures brand strength along four consumer perception dimensions: differentiation (what makes the brand stand out), relevance (how consumers feel it meets their needs), knowledge (how much consumers know about the brand), and esteem (how highly consumers regard and respect the brand). Brands with strong brand equity rate high on all four dimensions. The brand must be distinct, or consumers will have no reason to choose it over other brands. However, the fact that a brand is highly differentiated doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers will buy it. The brand must stand out in ways that are relevant to consumers’ needs. Even a differentiated, relevant brand is far from a shoe-in. Before consumers will respond to the brand, they must first know about and understand it. And that familiarity must lead to a strong, positive consumer-brand connection.29
Thus, positive brand equity derives from consumer feelings about and connections with a brand. A brand with high brand equity is a very valuable asset. Brand value is the total financial value of a brand. Measuring such value is difficult. However, according to one estimate, the brand value of Apple is a whopping $246 billion, with Google at $174 billion, Microsoft at $115 billion, IBM at $94 billion, AT&T at $92 billion, and Verizon at $86 billion. Other brands rating among the world’s most valuable include McDonald’s, Facebook, Alibaba, and Amazon.30
High brand equity provides a company with many competitive advantages. A powerful brand enjoys a high level of consumer brand awareness and loyalty. Because consumers expect stores to carry the particular brand, the company has more leverage in bargaining with resellers. Because a brand name carries high credibility, the company can more easily launch line and brand extensions. A powerful brand also offers the company some defense against fierce price competition and other competitor marketing actions.
Above all, however, a powerful brand forms the basis for building strong and profitable customer engagement and relationships. The fundamental asset underlying brand equity is customer equity—the value of customer relationships that the brand creates. A powerful brand is important, but what it really represents is a profitable set of loyal customers. The proper focus of marketing is building customer equity, with brand management serving as a major marketing tool. Companies need to think of themselves not as portfolios of brands but as portfolios of customers.
Branding poses challenging decisions to the marketer. Figure 8.5 shows that the major brand strategy decisions involve brand positioning, brand name selection, brand sponsorship, and brand development.
Marketers need to position their brands clearly in target customers’ minds. They can position brands at any of three levels.31 At the lowest level, they can position the brand on product attributes. For example, Whirlpool can position its major home appliance products on attributes such as quality, selection, style, and innovative features. In general, however, attributes are the least desirable level for brand positioning. Competitors can easily copy attributes. More important, customers are not interested in attributes as such—they are interested in what the attributes will do for them.
A brand can be better positioned by associating its name with a desirable benefit. Thus, Whirlpool can go beyond technical product attributes and talk about benefits such as taking the hassle out of cooking and cleaning, better energy savings, or more stylish kitchens. For example, for years, Whirlpool positioned its washing machines as having “the power to get more done.” Some successful brands positioned on benefits are FedEx (guaranteed on-time delivery), Walmart (save money), and Instagram (capturing and sharing moments).
The strongest brands go beyond attribute or benefit positioning. They are positioned on strong beliefs and values, engaging customers on a deep, emotional level. For example, Whirlpool’s research showed that home appliances are more than just “cold metal” to customers. They have a deeper meaning connected with the value that they play in customers’ lives and relationships. So Whirlpool launched a major positioning campaign—called “Every Day, Care”—based on the warm emotions of taking care of the people you love with Whirlpool appliances. One ad shows a father leaving a note in his son’s lunch, accompanied by Johnny Cash singing “You Are My Sunshine” in the background. Another ad centers on a mom’s interactions with her daughter around their Whirlpool washer-dryer, and still another shows a couple cooking dinner together with the wish, “May your ‘tatoes be fluffy and white.” Warming up cold metal worked wonders for Whirlpool. Within just six months, the brand’s sales rose 6.6 percent, market share increase 10 percent, and positive social media sentiment surged sixfold.32
Advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi suggests that brands should strive to become lovemarks, products or services that “inspire loyalty beyond reason.” Brands ranging from Disney, Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola to Trader Joe’s, Google, and Pinterest have achieved this status with many of their customers. Lovemark brands pack an emotional wallop. Customers don’t just like these brands; they have strong emotional connections with them and love them unconditionally.33 For example, Disney is a classic lovemark brand. As one Walt Disney World Resort regular affirms: “I have a deep love and bond to all things Disney. Walking down Main Street and seeing Cinderella’s castle for the first time always makes my heart jump. It’s a moment I can guarantee and rely on. A constant in my life. No matter what I’m going through. . . suddenly the world is filled with magic and wonder and possibilities all over again and I feel a wave of happiness flow over me and a smile creep back onto my face easily, not forced or painted on. A real, true smile.”34
When positioning a brand, the marketer should establish a mission for the brand and a vision of what the brand must be and do. A brand is the company’s promise to deliver a specific set of features, benefits, services, and experiences consistently to buyers. The brand promise must be clear, simple, and honest. Motel 6, for example, offers clean rooms, low prices, and good service but does not promise expensive furnishings or large bathrooms. In contrast, the Ritz-Carlton offers luxurious rooms and a truly memorable experience but does not promise low prices.
A good name can add greatly to a product’s success. However, finding the best brand name is a difficult task. It begins with a careful review of the product and its benefits, the target market, and proposed marketing strategies. After that, naming a brand becomes part science, part art, and a measure of instinct.
Desirable qualities for a brand name include the following: (1) It should suggest something about the product’s benefits and qualities: Beautyrest, Slimfast, Snapchat, Pinterest. (2) It should be easy to pronounce, recognize, and remember: iPad, Tide, Jelly Belly, Twitter, JetBlue. (3) The brand name should be distinctive: Panera, Swiffer, Zappos, Nest. (4) It should be extendable—Amazon.com began as an online bookseller but chose a name that would allow expansion into other categories. (5) The name should translate easily into foreign languages. The official name of Microsoft’s Bing search engine in China is bi ying, which literally means “very certain to respond” in Chinese. (6) It should be capable of registration and legal protection. A brand name cannot be registered if it infringes on existing brand names.
Choosing a new brand name is hard work. After a decade of choosing quirky names (Yahoo!, Google) or trademark-proof made-up names (Novartis, Aventis, Accenture), today’s style is to build brands around names that have real meaning. For example, names like Silk (soy milk), Method (home products), Smartwater (beverages), and Snapchat (photo messaging app) are simple and make intuitive sense. But with trademark applications soaring, available new names can be hard to find. Try it yourself. Pick a product and see if you can come up with a better name for it. How about Moonshot? Tickle? Vanilla? Treehugger? Simplicity? Mindbender? Google them and you’ll find that they are already taken.
Once chosen, the brand name must be protected. Many firms try to build a brand name that will eventually become identified with the product category. Brand names such as Kleenex, JELL-O, BAND-AID, Scotch Tape, Velcro, Formica, Magic Marker, Post-it Notes, and Ziploc have succeeded in this way. However, their very success may threaten the company’s rights to the name. Many originally protected brand names—such as cellophane, aspirin, nylon, kerosene, linoleum, yo-yo, trampoline, escalator, thermos, and shredded wheat—are now generic names that any seller can use.
To protect their brands, marketers present them carefully using the word brand and the registered trademark symbol, as in “BAND-AID® Brand Adhesive Bandages.” Even the long-standing “I am stuck on BAND-AID ’cause BAND-AID’s stuck on me” jingle has now become “I am stuck on BAND-AID brand ’cause BAND-AID’s stuck on me.” Similarly, a recent Kleenex ad advises advertisers and others that the name Kleenex should always be followed by the registered trademark symbol and the words “Brand Tissue.” “You may not realize it, but by using the name Kleenex® as a generic term for tissue,” says the ad, “you risk erasing our coveted brand name that we’ve worked so hard for all these years.”
Companies often go to great lengths to protect their names and brand symbols. For example, insurance company Travelers zealously pursues companies that infringe in even the slightest way on its familiar trademarked red umbrella symbol. It recently threatened a tiny consulting firm in Anchorage, Alaska—Human Resource Umbrella—with legal action for hanging an umbrella above the two l’s in its name. Such actions might seem unneeded, but they are serious business to Travelers. “Mary Poppins might want to consider lawyering up,” quips one industry lawyer.35
A manufacturer has four sponsorship options. The product may be launched as a national brand (or manufacturer’s brand), as when Samsung and Kellogg sell their output under their own brand names (the Samsung Galaxy tablet or Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes). Or the manufacturer may sell to resellers who give the product a private brand (also called a store brand). Although most manufacturers create their own brand names, others market licensed brands. Finally, two companies can join forces and co-brand a product. We discuss each of these options in turn.
National brands (or manufacturers’ brands) have long dominated the retail scene. In recent times, however, increasing numbers of retailers and wholesalers have created their own store brands (or private brands). Store brands have been gaining strength for more than two decades, but recent tighter economic times have created a store-brand boom. Studies show that consumers are now buying even more private brands, which on average yield a 25 percent savings.36 More frugal times give store brands a boost as consumers become more price-conscious and less brand-conscious.
In fact, store brands have grown much faster than national brands in recent years. In a recent survey, 65 percent of consumers indicated that they buy store brands whenever they are available in a supermarket. Similarly, for apparel sales, department store private-label brands have shot up. At Kohl’s, for example, private-label sales account for more than half of its annual revenue.37
Many large retailers skillfully market a deep assortment of store-brand merchandise. For example, Kroger’s private brands—the Kroger house brand, Private Selection, Heritage Farm, Simple Truth (natural and organic), Psst and Check This Out (savings), and others—add up to a whopping 25 percent of the giant grocery retailer’s sales, nearly $25 billion worth annually. At thrifty grocery chain ALDI, more than 90 percent of sales come from private brands such as Baker’s Choice, Friendly Farms, Simply Nature, and Mama Cozzi’s Pizza Kitchen. Even online retailer Amazon has developed a stable of private brands, including AmazonBasics (electronics), Pinzon (kitchen gadgets), Strathwood (outdoor furniture), Pike Street (bath and home products), and Denali (tools).38
Once known as “generic” or “no-name” brands, today’s store brands have shed their image as cheap knockoffs of national brands. Store brands now offer much greater selection, and they are rapidly achieving name-brand quality. In fact, retailers such as Target and Trader Joe’s are out-innovating many of their national-brand competitors. Kroger even offers a Kroger brand guarantee—“Try it, like it, or get the national brand free.” As a result, consumers are becoming loyal to store brands for reasons besides price. In some cases, consumers are even willing to pay more for store brands that have been positioned as gourmet or premium items.
In the so-called battle of the brands between national and private brands, retailers have many advantages. They control what products they stock, where they go on the shelf, what prices they charge, and which ones they will feature in local promotions. Retailers often price their store brands lower than comparable national brands and feature the price differences in side-by-side comparisons on store shelves. Although store brands can be hard to establish and costly to stock and promote, they also yield higher profit margins for the reseller. And they give resellers exclusive products that cannot be bought from competitors, resulting in greater store traffic and loyalty. Retailer Trader Joe’s, which carries approximately 90 percent store brands, largely controls its own brand destiny rather than relying on producers to make and manage the brands it needs to serve its customers best.
To compete with store brands, national brands must sharpen their value propositions, especially when appealing to today’s more frugal consumers. Many national brands are fighting back by rolling out more discounts and coupons to defend their market share. In the long run, however, leading brand marketers must compete by investing in new brands, new features, and quality improvements that set them apart. They must design strong advertising programs to maintain high awareness and preference. And they must find ways to partner with major distributors to find distribution economies and improve joint performance.
For example, in response to the surge in private-label sales, consumer product giant Procter & Gamble has redoubled its efforts to develop and promote new and better products, particularly at lower price points. “We invest $2 billion a year in research and development, $400 million on consumer knowledge, and about 10 percent of sales on advertising,” says P&G’s CEO. “Store brands don’t have that capacity.” As a result, P&G brands still dominate in their categories. For example, its Tide, Gain, Cheer, and other premium laundry detergent brands capture a combined 60 percent of the $7 billion U.S. detergent market.39
Most manufacturers take years and spend millions to create their own brand names. However, some companies license names or symbols previously created by other manufacturers, names of well-known celebrities, or characters from popular movies and books. For a fee, any of these can provide an instant and proven brand name. For example, consider the Kodak brand with its familiar red and yellow colors, which has retained its value even after the company went bankrupt and discontinued its consumer products:40
Consumer products carrying the Kodak name are no longer made by Eastman Kodak, which now focuses exclusively on printing-related commercial equipment and technology following its bankruptcy a few years ago. But the Kodak brand name and associated “Kodak moments” still resonate powerfully with consumers. So even though Eastman Kodak has dropped its consumer lines, we’ll still be seeing a lot of Kodak-branded consumer products made by other companies under licensing agreements with Eastman Kodak. For example, Sakar International now makes Kodak cameras and accessories, and the Bullitt Group will soon launch a variety of Kodak electronics, including an Android smartphone and a tablet computer. Video monitoring company Seedonk makes and sells a Kodak Baby Monitoring System.
Thus, the venerable old Kodak name still has value to both Eastman Kodak and the licensees who put it on their products. For Kodak, brand licensing agreements earn the company upward of $200 million a year. In turn, licensees get a name that’s immediately familiar and trusted—it will be a lot easier to market a Kodak phone than a Bullitt phone or a Kodak baby monitoring system than a Seedonk one. “It was difficult to find a brand that resonated—family values, taking care of loved ones,” says a Seedonk executive. “Then the Kodak opportunity came up. Kodak Moments, these are things that are important to our customers.”
Apparel and accessories sellers pay large royalties to adorn their products—from blouses to ties and linens to luggage—with the names or initials of well-known fashion innovators such as Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Gucci, or Armani. Sellers of children’s products attach an almost endless list of character names to clothing, toys, school supplies, linens, dolls, lunch boxes, cereals, and other items. Licensed character names range from classics such as Sesame Street, Disney, Star Wars, Scooby Doo, Hello Kitty, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Dr. Seuss characters to the more recent Doc McStuffins, Monster High, Frozen, and Minions. And currently, numerous top-selling retail toys are products based on television shows and movies.
Name and character licensing has grown rapidly in recent years. Annual retail sales of licensed products worldwide have grown from only $4 billion in 1977 to $55 billion in 1987 and more than $259 billion today. Licensing can be a highly profitable business for many companies. For example, Nickelodeon’s hugely popular SpongeBob SquarePants character by itself has generated some $12 billion worth of endorsement deals over the past 15 years. Disney is the world’s biggest licensor with a studio full of popular characters, from the Disney Princesses and Disney Fairies to heroes from Toy Story and Star Wars and classic characters such as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Disney characters reaped a reported $45 billion in worldwide merchandise sales last year.41
Co-branding occurs when two established brand names of different companies are used on the same product. Co-branding offers many advantages. Because each brand operates in a different category, the combined brands create broader consumer appeal and greater brand equity. For example, Benjamin Moore and Pottery Barn joined forces to create a special collection of Benjamin Moore paint colors designed to perfectly coordinate with Pottery Barn’s unique furnishings and accents. Taco Bell and Doritos teamed up to create the Doritos Locos Taco. Taco Bell sold more than 100 million of the tacos in just the first 10 weeks and quickly added Cool Ranch and Fiery versions and has since sold more than a billion. More than just co-branding, these companies are “co-making” these products.
Co-branding can take advantage of the complementary strengths of two brands. It also allows a company to expand its existing brand into a category it might otherwise have difficulty entering alone. For example, Nike and Apple co-branded the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, which lets runners link their Nike shoes with their iPods to track and enhance running performance in real time. The Nike+iPod arrangement gave Apple a presence in the sports and fitness market. At the same time, it helps Nike bring new value to its customers.
Co-branding can also have limitations. Such relationships usually involve complex legal contracts and licenses. Co-branding partners must carefully coordinate their advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts. Finally, when co-branding, each partner must trust that the other will take good care of its brand. If something damages the reputation of one brand, it can tarnish the co-brand as well.
A company has four choices when it comes to developing brands (see Figure 8.6). It can introduce line extensions, brand extensions, multibrands, or new brands.
Line extensions occur when a company extends existing brand names to new forms, colors, sizes, ingredients, or flavors of an existing product category. For example, over the years, KFC has extended its “finger lickin’ good” chicken lineup well beyond original recipe, bone-in Kentucky fried chicken. It now offers grilled chicken, boneless fried chicken, chicken tenders, hot wings, chicken bites, chicken popcorn nuggets, a Doublicious chicken-bacon-cheese sandwich, and KFC Go Cups—chicken and potato wedges in a handy car-cup holder that lets customers snack on the go.
A company might introduce line extensions as a low-cost, low-risk way to introduce new products. Or it might want to meet consumer desires for variety, use excess capacity, or simply command more shelf space from resellers. However, line extensions involve some risks. An overextended brand name might cause consumer confusion or lose some of its specific meaning.
For example, in its efforts to offer something for everyone—from basic burger buffs to practical parents to health-minded fast-food seekers—McDonald’s has created a menu bulging with options. Some customers find the crowded menu a bit overwhelming, and offering so many choices has complicated the chain’s food assembly process and slowed service at counters and drive-thrus. In response, McDonald’s has recently begun efforts to cut items and simplify its menu, especially at its drive-thrus, which account for 70 percent of sales.42
At some point, additional extensions might add little value to a line. For instance, the original Doritos Tortilla Chips have morphed into a U.S. roster of more than 20 different types of chips and flavors, plus dozens more in foreign markets. Flavors include everything from Nacho Cheese and Pizza Supreme to Blazin’ Buffalo & Ranch, Fiery Fusion, and Salsa Verde. Or how about duck-flavored Gold Peking Duck Chips or wasabi-flavored Mr. Dragon’s Fire Chips (Japan)? Although the line seems to be doing well with U.S. sales of more than $1.3 billion, the original Doritos chips now seem like just another flavor.43 And how much would adding yet another flavor steal from Doritos’ own sales versus those of competitors? A line extension works best when it takes sales away from competing brands, not when it “cannibalizes” the company’s other items.
A brand extension extends a current brand name to new or modified products in a new category. For example, Nest—the maker of stylish, connected, learning thermostats that can be controlled remotely from a phone—extended its line with an equally smart and stylish Nest Protect home smoke and carbon monoxide alarm. It’s now extending the Nest line to include “Works with Nest,” applications developed with a variety of partners that let its smart devices interact with and control everything from home video monitoring devices, smart door locks, and home lighting systems to home appliances and fitness tracking bands. All of the extensions fit together under Nest’s smart homes mission.44
These days, a large majority of new products are extensions of already-successful brands. Compared with building new brands, extensions can create immediate new-product familiarity and acceptance at lower development costs. For example, it’s not just any new wireless charging mat for your mobile devices, it’s a Duracell Powermat. And it’s not just a new, no-name over-the-counter sleep-aid, it’s Vicks ZzzQuil. Extensions such as the Duracell Powermat and Vicks ZzzQuil make good sense—they connect well with the core brand’s values and build on its strengths.
At the same time, a brand extension strategy involves some risk. The extension may confuse the image of the main brand—for example, how about Zippo perfume or Fruit of the Loom laundry detergent? Brand extensions such as Cheetos lip balm, Heinz pet food, and Life Savers gum met early deaths.45 Furthermore, a brand name may not be appropriate to a particular new product, even if it is well made and satisfying—would you consider flying on Hooters Air or wearing an Evian water-filled padded bra (both failed)? And if a brand extension fails, it may harm consumer attitudes toward other products carrying the same brand name. Thus, a company can’t just take a familiar brand name and slap it on a product in another category. Instead, a good brand extension should fit the parent brand, and the parent brand should give the extension competitive advantage in its new category.
Companies often market many different brands in a given product category. For example, in the United States, PepsiCo markets at least eight brands of soft drinks (Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Mountain Dew, Manzanita Sol, Mirinda, IZZE, Tropicana Twister, and Mug root beer), three brands of sports and energy drinks (Gatorade, AMP Energy, Starbucks Refreshers), four brands of bottled teas and coffees (Lipton, SoBe, Starbucks, and Tazo), three brands of bottled waters (Aquafina, H2OH!, and SoBe), and nine brands of fruit drinks (Tropicana, Dole, IZZE, Lipton, Looza, Ocean Spray, and others). Each brand includes a long list of sub-brands. For instance, SoBe consists of SoBe Teas & Elixers, SoBe Lifewater, SoBe Lean, and SoBe Lifewater with Coconut Water. Aquafina includes regular Aquafina, Aquafina Flavorsplash, and Aquafina Sparkling.
Multibranding offers a way to establish different features that appeal to different customer segments, lock up more reseller shelf space, and capture a larger market share. For example, although PepsiCo’s many brands of beverages compete with one another on supermarket shelves, the combined brands reap a much greater overall market share than any single brand ever could. Similarly, by positioning multiple brands in multiple segments, Pepsi’s eight soft drink brands combine to capture much more market share than any single brand could capture by itself.
A major drawback of multibranding is that each brand might obtain only a small market share, and none may be very profitable. The company may end up spreading its resources over many brands instead of building a few brands to a highly profitable level. These companies should reduce the number of brands they sell in a given category and set up tighter screening procedures for new brands. This happened to GM, which in recent years has cut numerous brands from its portfolio, including Saturn, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Hummer, and Saab. Similarly, as part of its recent turnaround, Ford dropped its Mercury line, sold off Volvo, and pruned the number of Ford nameplates from 97 to fewer than 20.
A company might believe that the power of its existing brand name is waning, so a new brand name is needed. Or it may create a new brand name when it enters a new product category for which none of its current brand names is appropriate. For example, Toyota created the separate Lexus brand aimed at luxury car consumers and the Scion brand targeted toward millennial consumers.
As with multibranding, offering too many new brands can result in a company spreading its resources too thin. And in some industries, such as consumer packaged goods, consumers and retailers have become concerned that there are already too many brands with too few differences between them. Thus, P&G, PepsiCo, Kraft, and other large marketers of consumer products are now pursuing megabrand strategies—weeding out weaker or slower-growing brands and focusing their marketing dollars on brands that can achieve the number-one or number-two market share positions with good growth prospects in their categories.
Companies must manage their brands carefully. First, the brand’s positioning must be continuously communicated to consumers. Major brand marketers often spend huge amounts on advertising to create brand awareness and build preference and loyalty. For example, worldwide, Coca-Cola spends more than $3 billion annually to advertise its many brands, GM spends nearly $3.4 billion, Unilever spends $7.9 billion, and P&G spends an astounding $11.5 billion.46
Such advertising campaigns can help create name recognition, brand knowledge, and perhaps even some brand preference. However, the fact is that brands are not maintained by advertising but by customers’ engagement with brands and customers’ brand experiences. Today, customers come to know a brand through a wide range of contacts and touch points. These include advertising but also personal experience with the brand, word of mouth and social media, company web pages and mobile apps, and many others. The company must put as much care into managing these touch points as it does into producing its ads. As one former Disney top executive put it: “A brand is a living entity, and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”47
The brand’s positioning will not take hold fully unless everyone in the company lives the brand. Therefore, the company needs to train its people to be customer centered. Even better, the company should carry on internal brand building to help employees understand and be enthusiastic about the brand promise. Many companies go even further by training and encouraging their distributors and dealers to serve their customers well.
Finally, companies need to periodically audit their brands’ strengths and weaknesses. They should ask: Does our brand excel at delivering benefits that consumers truly value? Is the brand properly positioned? Do all of our consumer touch points support the brand’s positioning? Do the brand’s managers understand what the brand means to consumers? Does the brand receive proper, sustained support? The brand audit may turn up brands that need more support, brands that need to be dropped, or brands that must be rebranded or repositioned because of changing customer preferences or new competitors.
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