Marketing Management

Crafting the Brand Positioning

Learning Objectives;
1. How can a firm develop and establish an effective positioning in the market?
2. How do marketers identify and analyze competition?
3. How are brands successfully differentiated?
4. How do firms communicate their positioning?
5. What are some alternative approaches to positioning?
6. What are the differences in positioning and branding for a small business?
Developing a Brand Positioning
• Designing a company’s product and brand identity in order to establish a unique position in
the minds of the intended audience or a target market.
• Value preposition - it refers to a brief affirmation highlighting the advantages that a company
offers to its customers who make purchases of its products or services.

Choosing a Competitive Frame of Reference

Competitive Frame of Reference
- Defines which other brands a brand competes with and which should thus be the focus of
competitive analysis.
- Identifying and analyzing competitors.
Points-of-Difference (PODs)
- Attributes/benefits that consumers strongly associate with brand, positively evaluate, and
believe they could not find to the same extent with a competitive brand.

 ‌POD criteria
 1. Desirability - If something is desirable to the consumers, they must see the brand
association as personally relevant to them.
2. Deliverability - means that the company must have the internal resources and
commitment to feasibly and profitably create and maintain the brand association in the
minds of consumers.
3. Differentiability - means that consumers must see the brand association as distinctive
and superior to relevant competitors.
‌Points-of-Parity (POPs)
- Attributes/benefits associations that are not necessarily unique to the brands but may in fact
be shared with other brands.

 P‌ OP forms
1. Category - attributes or benefits to consumers view as essential to a legitimate and
credible offering within a certain product or service category.
2. Correlation - are potentially negative associations that arise from the existence of
positive associations for that brand.
3. Competitive - are associations designed to overcome perceived weaknesses of the brand
in light of competitors points of difference.
Establishing a Brand Positioning

 Communicating Category Membership

1. Announcing category benefits
2. Comparing to exemplars
3. Relying on product descriptor
Brands- Positioning Bull’s-Eye

Communicating POPs and PODs

 Negatively correlated attributes/benefits

1. Low price vs. High quality
2. Taste vs. Low calories
3. Powerful vs. Safe
4. Ubiquitous vs. Exclusive
5. Varied vs. Simple
Monitoring Competition

 Variables in assessing potential competitors

1. Share of market
2. Share of mind
3. Share of heart
Alternative Approaches to Positioning

 Brand narratives and storytelling

1. Setting
2. Cast
3. Narrative arc
4. Language
 Cultural branding
Positioning/Branding for a Small Business
1. Find compelling product performance advantage.
2. Focus on building one or two strong brands based on one or two key associations.
3. Encourage product trial in any way possible.
4. Develop cohesive digital strategy to make the brand “bigger and better”.
5. Create buzz and a loyal brand community.
6. Employ a well-integrated set of brand elements.
7. Leverage as many as secondary associations as possible.
8. Creatively conduct low-cost marketing research.
Creating Brand Equity
Brand contact - is any information-bearing experience, whether positive or negative, a customer
or prospect has with the brand, the product category, or the market that relates to the
marketer’s product or service.
Brands - a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify
the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of
competitors.
Strategic brand management - combines the design and implementation of marketing activities
and programs to build, measure, and manage brands to maximize their value.
Four main steps of strategic brand-management process:
1. Identifying and establishing brand positioning
2. Planning and implementing brand marketing
3. Measuring and interpreting brand performance
4. Growing and sustaining brand value
The Role of Brands

Brand’s Role for Consumers - It is a means to set consumers’ expectations and reduce their risk. The key
is that it fulfills or exceeds customer expectations in satisfying their needs and wants.

Brand’s Role for Firm - They simplify product handling by helping organize inventory and accounting
records.

Branding - Who” the product is—by giving it a name and other brand elements to identify it—as well as
what the product does.

Brand equity - Added value endowed to products and services with consumers.

Customer-based brand equity - The differential effect brand knowledge has on consumer response to
the marketing of that brand.

Brand promise - The marketer’s vision of what the brand must be and do for consumers.
Individual Activity: To gain a deeper understanding of the role of brands for both consumers and firms.

1. How can brands create emotional connections with consumers?

2. What are the challenges of managing a brand in today’s dynamic marketplace?
3. How can brands measure the success of their branding efforts?

Three Brand Equity Models:

1. Brand BrandasseT® ValuaTor

2. Brandz
3. Brand resonance model

Brand BrandasseT® ValuaTor-Developed by advertising agency Young and Rubicam (Y&R)

Four key components—or pillars—of brand equity by BAV (BrandasseT®

1. Energized differentiation
2. Relevance
3. Esteem
4. Knowledge

Three factors that help define energy and the marketplace momentum it creates by BAV:

1. Vision
2. Invention
3. Dynamism

Brandz - developed by Marketing research consultants Millward Brown and WPP.

-also called BrandDynamicsTM model, a system of brand equity measurements, that reveals a
brand’s current equity and opportunities for growth.

Three dimensions, in reflected with the important outcome measures:

 1. Power
2. Premium
3. Potential

Brand resonance model - views brand building as an ascending series of these four steps:

1. Ensuring customers identify the brand and associate it with a specific product need
2. Firmly establishing the brand meaning in customers’ minds
3. Eliciting the proper customer responses
4. Converting customers’ brand responses to intense, active loyalty.

Three way to build brand equity :

1. Choosing Brand elements

2. designing holistic Marketing activities
3. Leveraging secondary association

Three main sets of brand equity drivers:

1. The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand (brand names, URLs,
logos, symbols, characters, spokespeople, slogans, jingles, packages, and signage).
2. The product and service and all accompanying marketing activities and supporting marketing
programs.
3. Other associations indirectly transferred to the brand by linking it to some other entity (a person,
place, or thing).

Brand Elements - devices, which can be trademarked, that identify and differentiate the brand. Most
strong brands employ multiple brand elements.

6 Brand element Choice criteria

1. memorable
2. meaningful
4. likable
5. transferable
6. adaptable
7. protectable

Brand contact - information-bearing experience, whether positive or negative, a customer or prospect

has with the brand, its product category, or its market.

Group Activity: Find a pair and analyze whether Brand A should mainly compete with other smartphone
brands or broaden its focus to include technology giants like Microsoft and Google. Consider the
advantages and disadvantages of each approach, and provide a straightforward recommendation based
on the potential impact on Brand A's success.

Brand A: A well-established brand in the smartphone industry, known for its high-quality products and
innovative features.
Competitive Frame of Reference 1: Direct competitors in the smartphone industry, such as Apple,
Samsung, and Huawei.

Competitive Frame of Reference 2: Broader technology brands, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.