Grade11-ABM

Principles of Marketing
Module 1
1 Quarter (2nd Semester)
Week7-8
LESSON 3: BRANDING
LESSON 4: DEVELOPING THE BRAND

The following are some reminders in using this module:

1. Use the module with care. Do not put unnecessary mark/s on any part of the module. Use a NOTEBOOK
answering the exercises.
2. Read the instruction carefully before doing each task.
3. Observe honesty and integrity in doing the tasks and checking your answers.
4. Finish the task at hand before proceeding to the next.
If you encounter any difficulty in answering the tasks in this module, do not hesitate to consult your teacher or facilitator.
Always bear in mind that you are not alone.

We hope that through this material, you will experience meaningful learning and gain deep understanding of the relevant
competencies. You can do it!
 Lesson
BRANDING

3
At the end of this topic, the student will:

1. Understand the nature of the brand;

2. Understand the concept of the brand equity; and
3. Know the fundamentals for estimating brand value.

Preliminary Discussion
Give an example of a local brand that has managed to impress you.

Give your reasons why.

Brand:
WH

Reasons:

2. Identify three brands that you feel seem to fit your own personality very well. State these
brands and describes their “personalities.”

a.

b.

c.

What is in Brand?
The social contract that lies behind every brand.
You may say that modern marketing is pretty much obsessed about the brand. Brands are developed,
nurtured, grown, expanded, and generally manage in order to maximize their value both to the business and to
their consumers at large. Well managed brands reward their owners with generous business valuations and
brands can even become cultural movers and shakers.

Seeing that it is the symbol, the shortcut, and the cerebral device that connects customers with a
manufacturer's products, a brand has to be manage with utmost fervor.

A brand is a mark of distinction that can be sensed usually in the form, of names or terms, signs or
symbols, design elements, or even a combination of these, end is utilized for the purpose of identifying and
distinguishing the goods or services of one provider from another.

Most people tend to think of a brand as being simply a label. But the truth us, brands go beyond just
being quick references for labeling goods and service, A brand, in fact, represents a concise and imputed
contract between the producer and the consumer It consists of everything that comes to the customer or
potential customer's mind when they see or hear the name or logo. (Drew 2013)
 Here 1s how it works: a consumer has a need that has to be addressed. The consumer searches for
possible solutions (competing products) and tries your product. The consumer really likes your product. The
consumer then remembers your product's brand so that in the future, the consumer will know to just pick your
product.

This scenario has two implications: first, it implies that a key purpose of a brand 1s to serve as a
mnemonic device that facilitates the reconnection of a customer with a particular experience that has proven to
be satisfying Second, it also implies that there will be consistency in the experience—that if the customer buys
the product again, there is implied assurance from the producer that the experience will still be the same.

Consistency is a significant factor in brand management. Consistency, in fact, is what makes the
imputed contract between producer and consumer possible.

The following are the functions of a brand:

● It identifies the product or service, enabling consumers to accept, reject, or communicate their
opinions about it to others.
● It communicates messages to the markets and to the public at large, whether the messages are
intentionally or unintentionally generated.
● It functions as a legal property, allowing its owners to invest 15 building up the value of the brand.

Origins of Branding

The etymology of the word brand itself provides glimpses into the origins of branding. Back in the
days of Medieval Europe, it was a common practice to claim ownership of cattle and other chattel by branding
or marking them with a hot iron brand burn in German) Since literacy was rare, brands were generally in the
form of visual symbols. This also held true for heraldry, winch was the complex system of coats of arms and
heraldic badges that were used to signify membership to a particular family, location, or organization.

While branding in that respect reflected issues of ownership and belonging, gruel signifiers were also
eventually used to distinguish the products of specific artisans such as on tools by blacksmiths and
metalworkers. Visual signifiers also made it easy for people to identify specific commercial establishments,
such as market stalls, butchers, and taverns.

Branding as-we know it today, however, was a necessary outcome of industrialization. As products
were produced in bulk for wide distribution, There came the need to identify the source of the product in order
to properly trace their origins. Before products became individually packaged, manufacturer logos were
typically branded onto the crates and barrels that were used for shipping

The brand activist book No Logo explains the origin of branding this way:

‘The first task of branding was to bestow proper names on generic goods, such as sugar, flour, soap and
cereal, which had previously been scooped out of barrels by local shopkeepers. In the 1880s, corporate logos
were introduced to mass-produced products like Campbell's Soup, HJ Heinz pickles and Quaker Oats cereal. As
design historians and theorists Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller note, logos were tailored to evoke familiarity
and folksiness ... in an effort to counteract the new and unsettling anonymity of packaged goods.” (Klein 2009)

As products expanded their reach toward territories that were new grounds, there came a need for
products to “explain themselves” or else face difficulty competing with the existing local competition. This,
along with increasing literacy, led to the development of packaging that both sought to attract customers on an
aesthetic level while seeking to also explain the product’s benefits.
Elements of the Brand

A brand is not just a name. Today’s brands are composites of various elements including:

● Trade name: the trademarked name by which the product is to be known as, such as Coca-Cola,
Google, and Jollibee. Trade names are registered through the Intellectual Property Office.
● Generic category: the category in which the brand would fall under such as beverage, search
engine, or quick service restaurant. Intellectual Property Office requires that brands explicitly
specify the categories that they would fall under.
● Logo: the visual symbol or image that will identify the product, such ay the distinctive partially
bitten apple image for Apple, the stylized Scrip, letters of Coca-Cola, or the three-point star of
Mercedes-Benz. Logos any also registered alongside the trade name.
● Tagline: an optional catchphrase, such as BDO’s “We find ways.”
● Visual cues: aside from the actual logo, brands can also be represented with distinctive visual
identifiers, such as the red and green bands that, wrap around the outside of a Seven-Eleven
store.
● Shapes: the actual shape or form of the product or packaging, such as the pinched contour of a
bottle of Yakult.
● Colors: a Yellow Cab store is quickly distinguishable from afar thank, to its bold yellow signs
with black letterings.
● Sounds: such as advertising jingles, or even very short intro sound, such as those heard upon
starting up a computer.
● Scents: establishments such as Rustan’s and the Shangri-La Hotel have signature fragrances
made that help to create distinctive atmospherics in their premises.
● Tastes: this includes special recipes or secret ingredients, such as Max’s distinctive fried
chicken formulation.

Anything that can be sensed can be an opportunity for branding, as these could help to establish both
recall and expectations.

Why pay so much attention to brands? The answer is that consumers peg a lot of value on the brand
itself. Studies show that when people were unaware of the brands of the products that they were sampling, their
preference levels and neurological responses to these items tended to be similar. But once they were made
aware of the brand of the product that they were about to sample. They suddenly had a greater preference for it
(Praet 2014). In other words, UF historical experiences with particular brands immediately give even greater
value to the products on which they are applied to.

Elements of Logo Design

Graphic design guide Logo Design Love gives important tips on what makes for a great brand logo
(Airey 2010):

● Keep it simple. Simplicity gives the logo design versatility, allowing 1b to be used in a wide
range of media—from business cards to billboards.
● Make it relevant. The design should be appropriate to the business it is identifying—to the
industry, to the market, and to the audience it is addressing.
 ● Incorporate tradition. Logos should not strive to be trendy but rather contain the symbolic
elements that are timeless as far as the nature of the business is concerned.
● Aim for distinction. The logo should easily stand out versus the competition. Prioritize shape
and form over color. A tip is to work first in just black and white so that distinct: form is
emphasized over anything else.
● Commit to memory. Great logos should be memorable even after just one quick glance. This is
useful given the rapidly moving nature of the world that we live in—with people flipping
through magazines, clicking through web pages, and driving past billboards at high speed.
● Think small. Logos may look great on a billboard but they should also be recognizable in small
executions, which will be useful when placing the logo on small items such as zippers and coffee
stirrers. A tip is that the design should still be easily recognizable even at a minimum size of just
one inch, which means that simplicity is key.
● Focus on one thing. The most iconic logos have just one feature that helps them to stand out.
Incorporating more than one key element will only clutter the mark and make it less memorable.

Levels of Meaning

A brand is just a signifier. But as a signifier, it can manage to have several layers of meanings. The
following are six levels of meanings that a brand can have:

● Attributes. Characteristics of the product itself, such as softness, engine power, physical size,
friendliness (for services), locations, design, and colors.
● Benefits. What consumers stand to gain from patronizing the brand, such as shinier hair, peace
of mind, comfort, time savings, and happiness.
● Values. The core values that the brand is identified with, such as family ties, independence,
creativity, innovation, and risk-taking.
● Culture. The culture or sub-culture that a brand is identified with. Culture and values have a lot
of interdependencies but culture can refer to regional identities, such as Bacolod Chicken Inasal
being expressly associated with its titular province.
● Personality. If the brand was a person, it could have a personality such as being adventurous,
youthful, energetic, formal and proper, brutally candid or fun. The underlying premise here is
that like attracts like. Consumers who aspire to have a particular kind of personality become
attracted to products with similar personalities.
● User The specific target market or aspirational group that the brand becomes associated with.
Such as romantic youth for Close-Up toothpaste, or concerned mothers for Safeguard soaps.

Brand Equity

If there is one end goal for all of a marketer’s duties and responsibilities, it would be the building up of
brand equity.

Brand equity refers to the value of the brand. Ideally, this value would be expressed in the form of peso
values. Unfortunately, figuring out the peso value of a brand is not quite that simple to do. This is because brand
equity is, for the most part, intangible and near-speculative. That is to say, there is really no way to figure out
the exact value of a brand in real time.
Well, actually there could be a way, but it is all highly theoretical. Brand equity can be calculated using
the following ingredients:

● * The Present Value (PV) of the income stream from an average customer of the brand, also
known as the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). CLV is the present value of the anticipated profit
stream S (anticipated revenues minus anticipated costs) throughout the customer’s lifetime
relationship with the brand.
● The current market size of the brand (MS).
 ● The average expected growth rate of the brand from here on (G).
● The expected commercial lifespan of the brand (LS), which is pretty much a rough estimate but
can be set to 20 years for practical purposes.

To determine the value of the brand at any point in time, multiply first customer lifetime value CLV by
the market size MS to derive the Current Market Lifetime Value (CMLV). This represents the present value of
the total market that the brand has at the moment.

Next, the expected growth rate G shall be factored in the CMLV, and this will yield the Market-Based
Brand Value (MBBV).

The following set of equations summarizes how the brand value can be calculated:
Y

CLV(i, Y)=∑ ❑ S t
❑

t =0 (1+i)t
where:

CLV = Customer Lifetime Value

Y =average expected number of years of loyalty of customer to brand
S =Anticipated average annual profit per customer, in pesos
i =interest rate (for opportunity costs)
t =time period 0..Y (years from year 0 to year Y)

Note: For simplicity, we can set Y = LS, implying that customers will be loyal to the brand until the end of the
brand's life.

CMLV=CLV x MS
where:

CMLV = Current Market Lifetime Value, in pesos

MS = Market size, in number of currently engaged customers

MBBV=CMLVx(1+i )LS

where:

MBBV = Market-Based Brand Value, in pesos

LS = Expected commercial lifespan of the brand, in years

Example:

Project Pancake, a breakfast diner, has around 100 customers. It has an average per-person sale of 200
pesos and average cost per-person of 80 pesos Each customer eats at an average of ten times a year. The going
interest rate for investments is three percent, while sales growth averages around five percent a year. The brand
1s expected to have a commercial life of 20 more years. How much is the brand value at the moment?

Solution:

With each average customer sale netting a profit of 120 pesos (200 — 80) and the average customer
patronizing the diner ten times a year, the average profit per customer per year is 1,200 pesos. Therefore:

CLV(.03, 20) =
 Here, we see that the CLV of a customer who patronizes the store for the rest of the company’s life
(which we have conservatively set at 20 years) is 17,852.97 pesos. The CLVs for the 100 patrons, or CMLV, is
therefore 17,852.97 x 100 = 1,785,297. Finally, when the growth rate for the twenty years of commercial
operations is factored in, the market value for the brand comes out at 3,224,444.94.
As with many quantitative models, quite a few assumptions had to be made in order to reach our
solution. For one thing, the model assumes a steady growth rate—whereas most business histories show that
brands typically experience erratic growth rates, with occasional rises and occasional falls. Next, it assume, that
customers are loyal up until the very end of the business operations or, at the least, there will be a regular
“churn” of customers. Once a customer leaves for other brands, someone comes in to take that person's place.
Again, this is all for simplification’s sake.

While this model can approximate a real-time estimate for the brand’, value from a purely financial
perspective, it misses out on calculating a crucial metric. The brand’s potential. After all, brand equity is not just
about predictable, income streams. It is all about the brand's potential to capture new customer new markets,
new product categories, and new meanings—none of which can be factored into the straight financial
calculation above.

The only way to get a valuation for brand equity, including its long term potential, is by gauging how
much others are willing to pay for it. Here are two possible scenarios:

● There is an offer to buy the brand. In this case, the valuation for the brand would have been set
by the potential buyer. The underlying assumption here, however, is that the buyer has somehow
figured out the market value of the brand’s potential. But then we have just established that there
is no way to figure this out, so this offer is likely purely speculative as well on the part of the
buyer. To get a fair estimate, there will have to be multiple potential buyers, each of whom will
bid for acquisition of the brand. When this happens, then the market value of the brand may be
approximated through the “wisdom of the crowd.”

● The brand happens to be owned by a publicly traded firm. Considering that the firm is publicly
traded, a quick way to estimate the brand value is by checking the current market value of the
company (based on share price). From this, subtract the company’s book value (i.e., the value of
its tangible assets). The result should be an approximation of the brand value. The problem with
this approach, however, is that (1) it assumes that the company only has one principal brand—if
it manages multiple brands, then this technique fails because there is no way to properly allot the
surplus value among the brands, and (2) it assumes that all of the surplus value is explained by
the brand—this fails when the company’? intangible assets turn out to rely heavily on intangible
factors such 4 research, intellectual property, and people skills.
Brand Valuation
Since there 1s no clear way to estimate brand equity in terms of monetary value, marketers resorted to
utilizing non-monetary measures of brand value An example of this the Brand Asset Valuator from Young &
Rubicam. (Brand Asset Valuator n.d.) These brand valuators can be a number of metrics that are deemed to be
important for gauging how much consumers appreciate a brand, such as the number of times a customer
patronizes the product, per annum, how customers rate the brand versus competitors on key attributes, and how
much customers say they “like” (he brand on a scale of 1 to 10,

Marketers will have to construct their own brand asset value by creating an index out of all these
disparate metrics. An index is a single number that summarizes the quantifications of essential brand elements
that have to be monitored. It could be something like:

Brand Value Index + (Number of Patrons) x .15 + (Number of Facebook Likes) x .05 + (Average
satisfaction rating for brand) x 30...

Once the index value is calculated, a marketer can compare this with previous period’s performance in
order to determine if the brand asset value is improving or not. Note that there is no single standard, or even
industry standards, for the construction of brand value indices, these indices are purely for internal use and are
not meant to compare industry competitors—unless an industry association emerges and dictates an index
formula for industry use.

Brand asset valuation can also be helped along by knowing the progressive levels of brand equity:

● Brand awareness “I am familiar with this brand.”

● Brand acceptability “I like this brand.”
● Brand acceptability “I like this brand.”
● Brand preference “I prefer this brand.”
● Brand loyalty “I will die if I do not get this brand!”

Therefore, knowing that brand loyalty trumps brand preference, which in turn trumps acceptability, then
metrics and questionnaires can be designed to determine how consumers feel about the brand.

Exercises

I. Discussion

1. Give an example of a brand that has a wide range of branding elements. Enumerate and describe these
elements as utilized by the brand.

Brand:

Elements

2. In your own words, explain the concept of brand equity. Is brand equity an asset?
Define brand equity:
 Is brand equity an asset? Why or why not?

3. Explain why it is difficult to measure brand equity.

II. Application Advancement

Knowing what you know by now…..

1. Is it possible to create a brand that has no name and instead relies primarily on its logo? What are the
possible advantages and disadvantages of this scheme?

2. Identify a popular non-international brand. As a mental exercise, estimate how much you are willing to
pay to buy ownership of this brand. How did you go about figuring out the value that you have in mind?

Brand:

Elements:

Valuation method:

Lesson

Developing the Brand

At the end of this topic, the student will:

4
1. Know the steps involved in developing a brand; and
 2. Be able to construct variable brand concepts.

Preliminary Discussion

Come up with what you think can be a good brand and slogan for a new energy drink.
This drink is colored blue, has a lightning motif, and promises to boost energy and sharpen
one’s eyesight.

BRAND:

SLOGAN:

2. How did you come up with your brand and slogan above? Retrace your steps and write down
exactly how your thinking process led to your selected brand and slogan above.

Developing a New Brand

What are the things that you need to do in order to come up with a powerful brand

A well-designed brand strategy can help to enhance a product's chances of being accepted by the market
and of surviving for the long term. But you cannot just plug in the first words that come to mind and scribble an
ad hoc logo to go with it. The following is a recommended process for building up a new brand.
 First of all, the brand is a trade name. It is not (necessarily) the business, name, When a new business is
being set up, the Department of Trade and Industry (for single proprietorships or the Securities and Exchange
Commission (for partnerships and corporations) will ask that the new entity be registered under, a new business
name The DTI has strict rules about what names are acceptable while both the DTI and the SEC require that the
business name be reflective of the type of business that will be pursued.

This, however, is just for the business name Again, it is not (necessarily) the name by which consumers
will know the products and services of the business, That would be the trade name. Consumers, for instance,
may be very familiar with Clear Shampoo (trade name), but most consumers will probably not even know that
the company which makes this is Unilever (business name). For most intents and purposes, they may not even
need to know this unless they need to contact the business for product issues.

Trade names are registered via the Intellectual Property Office IPO) of the Department of Trade and
Industry. The business needs to identify the industry categories for which the proposed trade name shall be filed
according to the International Classification of Goods and Services (NICE Classification) and check if the
proposed trade name has not yet been taken. If it is still available, then the trade name along with its proposed
logo can be registered. The trade name will then be Iegally owned by the company, at least under the
classifications in which it has been filed. Other companies, however, can still use the trade name for other
industry classes (e.g., you may legally own the Thundercat brand of cosmetics, even if there already exists a
Thundercat brand of cat food).

But even before you proceed to the trade name registration, quite a few things must first be done
(Joachimsthaler 2000).

Step 1, Develop the Brand Strategy

Before you even contemplate on what the brand name should be, you must first have a good
understanding of the business and of the business model that the brand will he representing, So the first step is
really all about setting up the groundwork and the foundations for the development of the brand proper.

● Product information. What are the products or services that the brand shall be representing? A detailed
discussion of the proposed product lins up, even future products, is in order. This is a good time to create
a product road map that would lay out the proposed products and variants over the next five to ten years.
Knowing this information will help in the selection of viable brand names and imagery, ensuring that the
selections will still be a good fit even for future products.
● Market information. Who are the target markets that the brand will be catering to? What are their age
ranges, life stages, socio-economic classes, behaviors, likes and dislikes occupations and recreational
activities, personalities, and aspirations? Knowing this will help in the formulation of brand
communications along with the building of the brand personality.
● Trademark criteria. Should the name be short or should it be expository? Should it have a distinctively
Filipino flair or should it be more global m nature? These are questions that address the nature of the
potential trademark itself before the trade name has even been settled. Knowing these details will help in
narrowing down the search process for viable trademarks. This is also where you list down target
geographical areas for the brand—will it just be a local market, ASEAN, or global?
● Brand name objectives. What should the brand name accomplish m the minds of consumers? Should it
excite the market? Focus on memorability? Elicit a sense of quirkiness or fun? Should it connote luxury,
formality, and pampering? Knowing what must be accomplished in the minds of the markets will help in
the development of the brand’s creative aspects.

Step 2. Develop the Creative Theme

 While the first step was all about laying the groundwork, this step is all about building up the look and
feel of the brand. Take note: the actual brand itself has yet to be decided upon but this step is necessary in order
to build up the “house” of standards in which the eventual brand will reside in.

The elements in this step will take off from the groundwork of the first step, so issues such as brand
name objectives and market information will be applied to the points of this step.

● Brand personality. If the brand was a person, what would be its personality? Again, this takes off from
the information that has been gathered about the target market.
● Inferences and connotations. What imagery, words, and meanings should the brand connote or refer
to? These can be best addressed by asking the right questions: “If this product is a car, what brand will it
be” “If this product is a celebrity, who will it be?” “What kind of scenery should the brand connote”
Executed properly, these inferences would be part and parcel of the brand identity.
● Color palette and style sheets. For this part of the process, you will need the services of a trained
graphic designer. A graphic artist can help in selecting the proper color palettes that can best represent
the brand’s personality, inferences, objectives, market, and product lineup. You may try doing brand
designs yourself, but 1t 1s not advisable as today’s markets have become increasingly sophisticated and
expect @ certain level of polish from brand presentations.
● Font. Fonts are the letters to be used for your brand name. You cap use existing publicly available fonts,
such as those available on word processors or design programs (such as Arial or Comic Sans), or you
could buy commercial fonts. Those with even bigger budgets can actually commission the creation of
custom fonts. This will ensure that your brand would look really distinctive. Today, as more and more
people rely on mobile devices for commercial transactions, it pays to choose a font that shows well and
clearly even on small screens.
● Visual cues. Symbols, icons, shapes, and other images that you want to associate with the brand, such as
the swirling red and white bands that are associated with Coca-Cola for instance. This helps in
generating brand recall across different media and materials.
● Acceptable uses and materials. Each medium and material has its own particular characteristic and can
have an effect on the overall response to branding efforts. This is why you will not, for instance, see
McDonald's and Jollibee signs on wooden signboards. When producing stationery. for instance, this
includes the types of paper to use.
● Retail placement. If you are producing a consumer good, where do you plan to have it sold? Specify
locations and ideal shelf placement at retail areas (via a “plan-o-gram” or diagram of shelf location vis-
a-vis other products). This will help in properly communicating key points about or the branding of the
product.

Step 3. Create the Name

Finally, after all the groundwork has been laid. it is now time to create the actual brand name. Note how
the name comes much later in the process. The fact is that for as long as the selected name fits all the
parameters as laid out in the first two steps, it should be acceptable.

● Keep it short. Notice how the most memorable brand names are only up to three syllables long—even
Coca-Cola became just Coke. This is ne accident. It turns out that the human mind can most easily
remember up to three syllables. Beyond that, it gets harder to recall a brand name.
● Make it easy to pronounce and remember. It will not pay to have a brand name that is hard to spell,
remember, or pronounce as this wil only dilute its potential for transmission particularly when promoted
through media such as the radio. The only exception to this rule 1 you are trying to preselect your target
market on purpose—for instance, by having a difficult-to-pronounce French phrase as a fine dimmé
establishment's name which will effectively intimidate people whe not know how to pronounce it.
 ● It should translate well in target markets, Especially if you plan on selling your product to the
international market, your brand name should not connote anything negative in those territories, You
will have to get some research done then The worst thing that can happen is that your brand turns out to
have offensive meanings in countries that you plan to sell in.

Brand names can be:

● Eponyms or names of people such as the founders or even historical people. McDonald's, for instance,
refers to the name of the original brothers who put up the first McDonald's diners.
● Descriptive, connoting something about the product itself or its benefits, such as Head & Shoulders for
an anti-dandruff shampoo or Chowking for Chinese quick service food.
● Abbreviations or portmanteaus, the latter referring to the combination of words to make a new word,
such as the Papemelroti brand which is a portmanteau of the names of the founding family members, or
Adidas which stands for founder Adolf “Adi” Dassler. Abbreviations, such as CNN (Cable News
Network) or IBM (International Business Machines), are no longer advisable as these are difficult to
recall and have no inherent personality on their own.
● Symbolic or image-driven, such as Hidden Springs brand of mineral water which connotes images of
nature, or Apple with its highly recognizable stylized bitten apple logo.
● Synthetic, which means that the brand name is not a dictionary word but is instead an invented one,
such as Lexus (there is no such wordat least for now) or Neutrogena which again is an invented word.
Note that even when you invent your own brand, it helps to be aware of the connotations that you would
want it to reference to. Lexus, for instance, was selected primarily because even if it is a made-up word,
it still somehow manages to connote luxury.

Today, the way to go is to create synthetic brands. First, since you simply invented the name, then there
is a good chance that you can still get the web URL for it (because all the dictionary words have already been
taken as websites). Second, you have a better chance that it will be available as a trade name (again, since all the
good dictionary names have already been taken). Lastly, there is a good chance that your synthetic brand will
also be available in foreign countries and hopefully, have no negative connotations there as well.

Step 4. Test the Name

Our very first step involves the listing of brand objectives. So this step 18 all about testing your selected
brand name and its impact and signifiers to your target market.

Apply your proposed brand name to your creative theme (from Step 2) incorporating the selected font,
color scheme, and imagery to it. Next, create a mockup of your product, applying your proposed branding to its
label or Signage (if your product happens to be a service location, then you can use computer. generated
mockups of how the store would look like).

Find a few people who are representatives of your target market and test your brand imagery with them.
If you are selling a tangible product, have them look and touch your properly packaged product. Do they like it?
Do they have any opinions on what the brand and the branding connote or imply? What are the things that come
to their minds? These are the key pieces of information that you will need in order to test whether your
proposed brand does in fact hit your original objectives.

Step 5. Screen for Trademark Availability

Finally, if your proposed brand passes the test marketing, you will need to make sure that it is actually
available at the Intellectual Property Office. If it is, then congratulations! If not, then you will have to try a
different name (and test it as well).
 If you are going global, you will also have to find a way to ensure that your trademark is also still
available in the countries that you are targeting.

What if you want to keep your selected brand name but it is already taken in a foreign market? There are
two possible recourses. One is that, if your business has sufficient resources, you can try to buy out the foreign
brand owner. This could be expensive, however, so it is a recourse that is only available for the largest potential
multinational firms.

The second option is that you can simply register a different brand name in those markets. Do not worry;
this should not have a significant effect on your global strategy. Choose a different brand name in that foreign
market while still applying the same creative theme to it. This is where having truly distinctive creative themes
comes in handy, as the themes will help assure the market that this brand name, even if it is different from the
name in other markets, is the same brand after all.

Group Assignment
Build a Brand Experience

Writing pens are a dime a dozen and so many brands are fighting for attention in bookstores and
office supply shelves. But what if you can create a totally captivating brand experience for a new
brand of writing pens?

Use the steps outlined in this section to create a new brand for writing instruments—defining the
range of products that you want the brand to eventually venture into, the target market or markets
and the brand objectives. Identify its personality, the inferences, and connotations that you want it
to project. Design as well its branding and logo. Of course you should come up with a proposed
brand name,

Present this to the class and see if the class reaction achieves the intended brand objectives.

Presentation time: an estimate of 10 minutes per group.

Exercises

I. Discussion
1. Give an example of a successful synthetic brand. List down the messages that the brand
manages to communicate to you.

Brand:

Messages communicated:

2. Give an example of a brand that you are totally not familiar with (i.e., you have heard of it
but do not know what it is all about). What interferences or messages are you getting from
the brand alone? What does this say about brand communications?
 Brand:

Interferences from the brand alone:

Your insight on brand communication:

3. Give an example of a brand that you do not like. What is it about the brand that affects you?
Discuss how this could be resolved so that you can gain positive feelings for the brand

Brand:

How it affects you:

Possible solutions:

II. Application and Advancement

1. You have a brand name that is registered under a particular NICE Class. Another company registers the
same brand name, but under a different NICE Class. Will this affect you brand’s equity? What factors
do you think would be important to consider in this situations?

2. Is service experience a part of the brand identity? If so, where will this fall under the brand development
steps? If not, how do you link or ensure that service quality is tied closely to the brand objectives?