Strategic brand management and Bangladesh

Branding has been there for centuries as a means to distinguish the goods of one producer from another. The word “brand” is derived from the Old Norse word “brandi” which means to burn, as brands are still how owners of livestock mark their animals to identify them.

Technically, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol for a new product, he/she created a ‘brand’. The key to creating a brand is to choose a name, logo, symbol, package design or other characteristics that identify a product and distinguish a product from others. The different components of a brand that identify and differentiate it are “brand elements”; brand names that are unrelated to the company name, like Procter and Gamble’s Tide, Pantene etc. Some brands are created based on the store name like Diner’s Club, Macy’s Alfani, and Charter Club. There are brand names based on people’s names like Chevrolet Tahoe SUV, and Porsche automobiles. Dove soap and Greyhound buses are based their names on birds or animals.

Some brand names use words with inherent product meaning or suggest important attributes or benefits such as Die Hard auto battery.

How do we contrast a brand and a product? A product is anything we can offer to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that satisfies our needs or wants. Thus a product could be physical good like cereal, airline, bank, insurance company etc. It could be a political leader, an actor, a professional player, an athlete and so on. To many marketers, most competitions take place at the product augmentation level, because most firms can build satisfactory products at the expected product level. According to Ted Levitt, a Harvard University Professor, “the new competition is not between what companies produce in their factories, but between what they add to their factor output in the form of packaging, services, advertising, customer advice, financing, delivery arrangement and others that people value”.

A brand is more than a product because it can have dimensions that differentiate it in some way from other products designed to satisfy the same need. A brand is related to the performance of the product as well as a symbol, emotion, and intangible satisfaction. What distinguishes a brand from an unbranded commodity counterpart and gives it equity is the sum total of consumers’ perceptions and feelings about the product’s attributes, what it stands for and the company associated with the brand. Some brands create competitive advantages with product performances. Other brands create competitive advantages through non-product-related means. For example, Coca Cola, Channel-5 and similar others have been leaders categories for decades by understanding consumer motivations and desires and creating relevant and appealing images surrounding their products.

By creating perceived differences among products through branding and by developing a loyal consumer franchise, marketers create value that can translate into financial profits for the firm .consumers

There is an obvious question ‘Why do brands matter and why are brands important?’

Let us look at it from the angles of consumers and marketers. We will talk about consumers first. To all consumers, brand provides important functions. Brand identifies the source or maker of the product and allows consumers to assign responsibility to a particular manufacturer. Because of the past experience with the product and its marketing programme over the years, consumers find out which brands satisfy their needs and which ones do not.

As such brands provide a shorthand device/means of simplification for product decisions. If consumers have some knowledge, they will not waste time looking for other products. As such from the economic perspective brands allow consumers to lower the search costs for products both internally (thinking time) and externally (time to look around). Based on what they already know about the brand—its quality, its characteristics and so forth, consumers can make the assumption and form reasonable expectations about what they may not know about the brand.

For consumers brand provides identification of the source of product, assignment of responsibility to the producer, risk reducer, lower search cost, creates a bond with producer, a sign of quality etc., while brand provides manufacturers—means of identification to simplify handling—means of legally protecting unique features, a signal of quality to satisfy customers, endowing products with unique characteristics, source of competitive strength and financial returns.

The meaning imbued in brands can be quite profound, allowing us to think of the relationship between a brand and consumers as a type of bond. Consumers offer their trust and loyalty with the implicit understanding that the brand will behave in a certain way and provide them utility through product performance as well as price. If consumers realize the advantages and benefits of purchasing the brand and as long as they derive satisfaction from the product consumption, they are likely to continue buying it. These benefits may not be purely functional in nature. Brands can serve as symbolic devices, allowing consumers to project their image. Certain brands are associated with certain types of people and thus reflect different values. Consuming such products is a means by which consumers can communicate with others. Brands also play a significant role in signalling certain product characteristics to the consumer. A brand can also reduce risks in product decisions.

Consumers can handle these risks in several ways.

One way is obviously to buy well-known brands, especially those with which consumers have had favourable past experience. Therefore, brands can be a very important risk-handling device, especially in Business to Business settings where risks can sometimes have quite profound implications. As such brands carry a special meaning to the consumers and can change consumers’ perceptions and experience with a product when consumers’ lives become more complicated, rushed and time-starved, the ability of a brand to simplify decision-making and reduce risk is invaluable.

Brands provide some valuable services to their firms. Brands serve as identifiers of products to simplify product handling or tracing. Brands also help to organize inventory and accounting records. A brand offers the firm legal protection for unique features of the product. A brand can retain intellectual property rights giving legal title to the owner of the brand. The brand name can be protected through registered trademark, patent, copyright and design. These intellectual property rights ensure that the firm can safely invest in the brand and reap the benefits of a valuable asset.

Brand loyalty provides predictability and security of demand for the firm and created a barrier to entry and makes it difficult for other firms to enter the market. To firms, brands represent an enormously valuable piece of legal property, capable of influencing consumer behaviours, to be bought and sold and providing security of sustained future revenues. At times a huge amount of money is paid for brands in mergers and acquisitions. The price premium paid for the brand by many companies is clearly justified because of the opportunity to earn and sustain extra profits from their brands.

Brands clearly provide important benefits to both consumers and firms. An obvious question then is how are brands created? Although firms provide the impetus for brand creation through their marketing programmes and other activities, ultimately ‘a brand is something that resides in the minds of the consumers’. A brand is a perceptual entity rooted in reality, but it is more than that, it reflects the perceptions of the consumers.

Many physical goods are traditionally associated with brands and include many of the best-known and highly regarded consumer products such as Coca Cola, Mercedes Benz, Nescafe, etc.

As more and more different kinds of products are sold or promoted directly to consumers, the adoption of modern marketing practices and branding has spread further. Companies selling industrial products or durable goods are recognizing the benefits of developing strong brands. Business to Business branding creates a positive image and reputation for the company as a whole. A strong brand can provide valuable reassurance to business customers. A strong business-to-business brand can provide a strong competitive edge. Business-to-business branding is complex because there are many people involved both on the company side and in the market segments. Marketing skills are playing an important role to create a brand of successful high-tech products. In the case of business-to-business, the role and importance of branding should be tied directly into the industrial marketers’ business/ profit model and value delivery strategy. It should be kept in mind that the basic value proposition has relevance for all significant players in the decision-making process.

To build a brand strategy for high-tech products one must know who the customers are. High-tech brands are owned by customers. High-tech brands are created by customers and external forces and not by companies themselves. For this one must stay tuned with the internal and external environment in the rapidly changing global trading arena.

It is now clear from the discussion we have, we can say that virtually anything can be branded. It’s easy to identify several brands with staying power that have been market leaders in their categories for decades. Many brands were in the number one position for decades like Cadbury’s chocolates, Gillette razors, Brook Bond tea. However, these brands have evolved over the years and made several changes to stay on top. Most of them barely resemble their original forms.

Therefore, the strategic brand management process involves the design and implementation of marketing programmes and building, measuring and managing brand equity.

Maintaining and expanding brand equity can be quite challenging. Brand equity management activities take a broader and more diverse perspective of brand equity. The branding strategy provides guidelines about which brand elements are applied. Therefore, effective brand management requires a long-term view of marketing decisions.

Branding has become a prominent issue in Bangladesh recently. It has gained huge attention among marketers, business communities and consumers. The concept of ‘Nation Branding” also attracted policymakers, diplomats, bureaucrats and other stakeholders. Bangladesh is a market where brands of the country stand with pride.

All the successful brands have one thing in common-‘Differentiation Novelty’. The brand of Bangladeshi ‘Maslin’ reflects the long heritage of success. The brands of Bangladesh are a clear reflection of the premise based on which branding, in general, is to succeed. Now it is obvious that “me too” products and those having no unique value proposition are likely to fail in the market.

Bangladesh is a market where brands will succeed if marketed with a clear divergent and natural differentiation strategy and supported through scientifically managing and caring for the brand. In addition, patriotic emotion must be associated to ensure long-term sustainability. If we properly nurture our brands it will create a positive image globally. The occasional attempt to ‘Brand Bangladesh’ should be a regular feature in foreign countries.

The writer is former Director General of EPB. He can be contacted at hassan.youngconsultants@gmail.com