PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BRAND MANAGEMENT: ART, SCIENCE, CRAFT
PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BRAND MANAGEMENT Every brand is a promise. And like any promise, brands attract and excite us; they capture our hearts and minds; they give us a glimpse of a better life. But most importantly, brands create tangible value. They are a retailer’s most powerful connection to the outside world. Brands enable retailers to form deep and lasting attachments to customers and potential employees, and even investors, that translate into higher sales, stable profits, superior capabilities, and above-average stock market performance.
Three principal elements of superior brand management – art, science, and craft – and presents a wide range of case examples, illustrating how leading retailers bring these elements to bear on the management of their brands.
Branding is the secret weapon of retail marketing: it can create substantial value, but it is under-leveraged by most retailers.
Brands have many benefits, but above all, they create value. Brands help companies achieve price premiums, and they save costs due to their inherent appeal to customers. Companies with strong brands consistently outperform their peers in the stock market.
PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL BRAND MANAGEMENT
Impact on Retail brands on consumer decision:-
• Image: Retail brands help consumers express who they are, effectively making their choice of retail brands a lifestyle statement – think of IKEA.
• Orientation: Retail brands provide consumers with orientation. They make it easier to process information and help consumers save time – think of Amazon.
• Risk reduction: Retail brands reduce the perceived risks involved in making a purchase. They provide consumers with a “safe choice” – think of John Lewis.
For decades, retailers have not made branding their priority. Until very recently, many retailers, especially those in Europe, have been focused on price, with leaflets promoting low prices being their most important marketing instrument. But retailers around the globe are gradually waking up to the challenge of professional brand building and management
For example, eBay, Sears, and 7-Eleven have received EFFIE awards in recognition of the effectiveness of their advertising.
Three elements to build and sustain a strong brand in retail: art, science, and craft
• The art is about endowing the brand with a relevant, credible, and unique value proposition that is up-to-date, consistent, and executed in a creative way.
• The science is about understanding and measuring relevant consumer needs, as well as the performance of the brand in the targeted customer segments.
• The craft is about managing the brand rigorously in all its individual aspects throughout the organization and across all customer touch points.
The art is about balancing creativity with consistency to endow a brand with an emotional appeal that builds on its heritage
To succeed, retail brands must strike the right chord to make them appeal to consumers and generate demand. They need to engage consumers emotionally, yet their claims must also be credible and trustworthy. But with which brand elements should you start as a retailer? Should you focus on rational elements, like price or location, which give consumers concrete reasons to buy or at least to visit a store? Or should you prioritize emotional elements like honesty or modernity that speak to consumers’ feelings?
In fact, strong brands always do both, although the balance between the two varies. There are hardly any strong products or services that are not at least as good as the competition in their rational elements, and they are usually better in one or two attributes. At the same time, real brand champions, like IKEA, H&M, Nespresso, or Apple, stand out because of their emotional appeal. Although the products they offer may not be superior in all cases to competitors’ alternatives, it is the way they make consumers feel about themselves and their purchases that differentiates these brands from others.
But the importance of the art element should not be misread as a license to go crazy. Frequent changes to a brand’s positioning, target group, or communication style will eventually destroy its value. In fact, consistency is an important element of artful brand propositions
Germany’s Hornbach would never have become the premium brand it is today. In effect, consistency is about balancing relevant innovation and originality with a brand’s heritage. A now-legendary example is that of how Roberto Menichetti and Christopher Bailey rejuvenated the Burberry brand over a ten-year period. In 1998, Menichetti famously laid bare the company’s traditional tartan lin-ing and started using it as a prominent pattern for apparel and accessories. By turning a hidden asset into a tangible brand differentiator, his approach was original and creative, yet fully in line with the brand’s heritage.
Another key prerequisite for bringing a brand’s emotional appeal to life is the creativity of its communication. Some brands achieve consistent competitive advantage by means of superior creativity in their communication; they have mastered the art of placing the bait exactly where the fish will bite. Strong brands are highly effective in the use of creative campaigns that distinguish them from the competition, strengthen their brand image, and leverage this image to generate sales.
There is more to strong brands than awareness: the science is in measuring a brand’s strengths and weaknesses across the entire purchase funnel
Science is the second element of superior brand management. Most retail marketing managers and agencies still use brand awareness and advertising recall as the primary or even exclusive indicators of brand performance. While there is nothing wrong with these metrics in themselves, we believe they are insufficient to capture the specific strengths and weaknesses of a brand, let alone the root causes of its performance. In some cases, the focus on awareness and recall may even create the illusion of a healthy brand, when in fact the brand is in trouble. Retailers should expand their brand management toolbox and then use the extended toolkit comprehensively in their brand management decisions.
