Brand Management

Chapter 4
CHOOSING BRAND ELEMENTS TO BUILD BRAND EQUITY
Lecture 12
Date: September 17, 2018
Building Customer-Based Brand Equity

The contents which marketers will use to position in the market are discussed in this chapter. Brand
knowledge is the key to positioning and resonance and brand knowledge is created based on brand
elements. Components of brand knowledge:
 Brand elements
 Marketing mix elements
 Secondary associations: Click is associated with RFL to transfer the equity.
Brand elements, sometimes called brand identities, are those trademarkable devices that serve to identify
and differentiate the brand. All elements must be integrated to push the positon of a brand. Taste and
experience are not considered as brand elements as these can’t be patented and there is no visibility of
taste and experience. Copyright entails exclusive right to use this brand elements for example the color of
Google logo is trademarked and others can’t copy this.
The main brand elements are brand names, logos, symbols, characters, slogans, jingles, and packages.
Now a days, URL is the most important brand elements used by different companies such as
www.facebook.com.
Criteria for Choosing Brand Elements
Six criteria which help to assess the most effective set of brand elements.
1. Memorability: the brand elements should be easily remembered otherwise the knowledge will not
transfer to the long term memory. Telenor has changed their brand name to ‘Grameen’ as the name
has inherent memorability. The character must be common and should be taken from culture.
Unusual combination also possible such as Apple and technology.
2. Meaningfulness: Meaning can be emotional and function meaning. What the brand elements stand
for? Such as Nike. Among different spice brands, Radhuni is most successful as the name indicates
something related to cooking, specific and relevant.
Two particularly important criteria: General information about the nature of the product category and
Specific information about particular attributes and benefits of the brand.
3. Liability: brand element has to be aesthetically appealing? Brand slogan, jingles etc. has to be
likeable and appealing so that customers transfer the information in the long term memory.
For example, Radhuni has more memorability, meaningfulness and likability.
4. Transferability: elements should be transferable across time, product category and geographic
boundary as branding an expensive exercise. For example, Radhuni spice can’t be transferred to other
countries. As the name of Radhuni indicates ‘Chef’ which indicates a professional feel but Radhuni
family feel. ACI can be transferred across product category and geographic boundaries. Radhuni
can’t be transferred to other product category other than spice. Appeal of existing brand needs to be
transferred to other new brands.
5. Adaptability: need to change brand elements as situation and people change. Changes in peoples
thought process, lifestyle etc. For example, Grameenphone changed their previous logo in 2006 as it

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 was limited to specific time and not relevant. Best example of adaptability is Google which can
customize according to county or events.
6. Protectability: Taking legal protection from authority. Akij tobacco has been sold as a brand for
3200 crore BDT to Japan tobacco. WIPO (World intellectual property organization) provides legal
protection and has branch in 117 countries.
First three criteria are offensive strategy and the later three criteria are considered as defensive strategy.
Why we need to make a trade off among overall evaluation of brand elements?
It is not possible to maximize all criteria such as Radhuni is good at first three criteria but doesn’t
perform well at transferability and adaptability criteria. Firms need to balance among these criteria.

Brand name
It the most important brand element. It is difficult to select brand name because of brand proliferation. In
dictionary, 20,000 are used for business and only 7000 words are used in communication. Prothom alo
name was taken from the regular readers. In a movie 3 hours, in a drama 45 minutes, Infomercial which
consists of information and commercials has 30 minutes, in an advertisement 30 to 40 seconds, but 2 to 3
seconds to tell a story. New brands are generating each and every day as brand is not confined with
boundary.
Naming guidelines:
1. Brand awareness
 Simplicity and ease of pronunciation and spelling: to easy registration in mind, brand name must
be easily pronounceable. Matsushita was not used their name and changed to Panasonic and
national. Don’t give paint to customers to pronounce.
 Familiarity and meaningfulness: Apple
 Differentiated, distinctive and unique: conflict with first two guidelines. A strategy may be using
unorthodox combination such as used by Apple, Grameenphone, Robi. Unusual and unique
product category using.
2. Brand association
Brand name must be reinforced to create brand awareness and brand image. Every brand must express
some Implicit and explicit meaning of brand name such as Radhuni.

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Lecture 13
Date: September 24, 2018
Brand Names
 Descriptive- describe functions literally; generally unregisterable and only state can register. E.g.
Singapore airlines
 Suggestive- suggestive of a benefit or function. E.g. Agilent technologies
 Compounds- combination of two or more, often unexpected words. E.g. redhat
 Classical- based on Latin, Greek. Eg. Meritor
 Arbitrary- real words with no obvious tie-in with the company. E.g. Apple, Grameen
 Fanciful- coined words with no obvious meaning. E.g. avanade

Brand Naming Procedures

The brand name development is as difficult as a product development process.
1. Define objectives: consider 6 general criteria of brand element selection and tradeoff should be made
among these.
2. Generate names: generate as many name as possible and no specific amount of name are suggested.
There are other stages in this process which may require many names. Potential sources of brand
names: company management, employees, ad agencies, professional name consultants such as Inter
brand, specialized computer-based naming companies.
3. Screen initial candidates: Screening of these ideas based on some screening criteria.
 Avoid unintentional double meaning names: as it may generate unintentional complicacies. Sony
name came from Sonus which means sound.
 Avoid names that are unpronounceable: people may pronounce name differently such as Purchx.
 Already in use or too close to an existing name:
 Names that have obvious legal complications: Church Law and Tax, in this name law and tax
don’t go with church.
 Names that represent an obvious contradiction of the positioning: such as Pee Cola will not be
accepted by people other countries.
4. Study candidate names: 5 to 10 names are considered. Across product category, across time and
across geographic boundaries. The brand name has to be think from different perspective such
culture. Such as Nova brand different meaning in china which was not good.
5. Research the final candidates
6. Select the final name
URLs
It is getting much more popularity and second most popularity among brand elements. It must be legally
protected to avoid cybersquatting as it is a threat for big brands like Nike, Gap etc.
Logo and symbols
Brand name with word mark is called logo, non-word mark is called symbol. Such as Bentley is a
combination of logo and symbol. Logos and symbols must be adaptable such as previous logo of
Grameenphone has to be changed.

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Characters
Characters are used to break through the clutter and can be human, real life or animated character.
Slogan
Advertisement slogan is specific campaign related vs brand slogan has high durability than ad slogan.
Nike’s slogan: ‘Just Do It’ which initially was a campaign slogan. Slogan is different from brand mantra
as there must be three components: Emotional modifier, Descriptive modifier and Brand function. Brand
slogan is extracted from brand mantra and Brand mantra is extracted from brand positioning.
Jingles
Jingles of RC cola, Danish etc. are big hit among the people. Jingles make the brand live again and
complement to other brand elements.
Packaging
Packaging is considered to be the last sales person as it helps to convince the customers. They inform and
persuade customers about brands. Types of packaging: primary package, secondary package and shipping
package.
From the perspective of both the firm and consumers, packaging must:
 Identify the brand
 Convey descriptive and persuasive information: country of origin, information about brands
 Facilitate product transportation and protection
 Assist in at-home storage
 Aid product consumption

Lecture 14
Date: September 27, 2018
Convey descriptive and persuasive information delivered by package serve the task of sales person.
That’s why it is considered to be the last sales person.
Benefits of packaging:
 Structural packaging innovations can create a point of difference that permits a higher margin: it
impact on customers’ knowledge and image of brand. There are several brands which bring
innovation to their packaging for easy handling, space utilization, to indicate target market such
as Warrior.
 New packages can also expand a market and capture new market segments.
 Packaging changes can have immediate impact on customer shopping behavior and sales.
 Packaging hit the brand equity directly or indirectly such as packaging of Rolex, Apple are
elegant.
 Color of package has immense importance. For example, color of cola is red.
 Packaging can also influence the taste.
 Packaging can influence value.
 It can influence consumption. When package size is large, consumption rate of customers
increases.
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  Packaging can influence how a person uses a product.
 Sometimes total purchase decision of customers made at store (AIDA model).
GUIDELINES FOR CREATING HIGH IMPACT PACKAGING
 Know your customer: The target market of Cosco Glycerin Soap and Dove soap are different.
 Take the big picture approach: Packaging is primarily the responsibility of marketing department.
But all the departments should give insights.
 Understand that package aesthetics and function are both critical: both aesthetics and function are
important.
 Know your distribution channel: the channel which will carry the product from manufacturer to
the end customers will be known properly.
 Educate management: significance and importance of packaging should be educated to the
management especially in the local brand managers of Bangladesh. Around 50% decisions of
products are made before aisles in retail stores. The total purchase decisions are made at store.
The purchase decision is denoted by AIDA model (Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action).
Each element has its unique characters. Each element complements one another. One element can’t be
replaced by others, mixing and matching of all of these elements are important.

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