Branding Strategies
Essay Preview: Branding Strategies
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Branding Strategies:
From Creation to Extinction
Outline
Introduction
Choosing the Brand Name
Take a Stand
Narrow the Focus
Beware of Brand Inflation
Expand the Business
Advertising the Brand Name
Logo Sizes
Attention Getting
Research
Mention the Product
Show the Product
Show the Name and Logo
Call Attention to the Logo
Headline Company Names
Use Theme Lines
Brand-Building
Build Brand without Mass Media
Let Brand Strategy Drive the Business Strategy
Clarify the Brands Identity
Create Brand Visibility
Involve the Customer
Make it Happen
Creative Brand Building
“Give Away the Farm”
Conduct “War” Using Public Relations
Work the Web
Make it Funny
Extend the Brand Name Across More Product Lines
Brand-Consumer Relationships
Love and Passion
Self Concept Connection
Interdependence
Commitment
Intimacy
Partner Quality
Nostalgic Attachment
Routes to Brand Extinction
Brands Must Satisfy Emotional Needs
Brands Decline When Fads and Trends are the Only Focus
Brands Fail When Emotional Need and Fads and Trends are not Satisfied
Conclusion
“A brand is a name and/or mark intended to identify the product of one seller or a group of sellers and differentiate the product from competing products (Etzel 242).”
Branding strategy is more than just the advertising of the product; it is finding what is the best name or mark that people will remember most when they need to buy that product. Branding strategies start with choosing the brand name, advertising the brand name, building the brand, finding the best brand-consumer relationship for the product, and avoiding brand extinction.
Choosing the Brand Name
Choosing the brand name is not as easy as choosing scrambled or poached eggs with a big slam breakfast at Dennys. It takes critical planning. There are four steps to follow when choosing the brand name.
First, take a stand. You cant stand for everything and stand for something. So ask yourself, “What does the brand stand for?” (Ries 30) An example is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola stands for the first cola, and everything else is an imitation Cola (Ries 30).
Second, Narrow the focus. If someone else was there first, narrow the focus towards another product (Ries30). Packard Bell is an example of this. They were not the leader in personal computers, so they focused on home computers, and are now the leading home computer brand with about 50 percent of the market (Ries 30).
Third, beware of brand inflation. Instead of doing step two, narrowing the focus, most companies have a habit of inflating the brand name so that the name means nothing to the customer (Ries 30). “Whats AT&T? According to chief executive Robert Allen, “AT&T is fundamentally a networking company.” (Ries 30) This is funny because people associate AT&T as being strictly a long-distance telephone company.
And fourth, expand the business. ” A company can keep a narrow focus, yet expand its business (Ries 31).” For example, Honda is the seller of imported Japanese cars, but they also started Acura, a line of luxury cars made in the United States (Ries31).
Advertising the Brand Name
The average person believes that advertising is everything when it comes to the marketing of a product. It might not be everything, but it is very important to advertise your brand in a good way so you dont kill your product by bad advertising.
According to Richard Evans, a writer for Advertising Age Magazine, companies do not advertise the logo or the name of their brand for more than three seconds at the end of their commercials. He came up with seven points to get the customers attention to the brand name of the product.
First, research the commercials to see how many people remember the brand name or logo when they view the advertisement on television or in a magazine (Evans 27).
Next, mention the product name orally and/or visually at least twice before the end of the advertisement (Evans 27).
Also, any tangible products being advertised should be shown at least twice during the advertisement (Evans 27).
Fourth, the advertisers name should be on the advertisement long enough so the viewer can see it (Evans 27). An Example of this would be the Western Union commercial when a woman is floating in her living room because the money she needed to fix her pipes was not sent Western Union. It flashes the Western Union name up for about two seconds not long enough