 As-Salaamu Alaikum Khawwateen Huzoorat. I welcome you to the virtual University of Pakistan and lecture number 20 of Brand Management, MKT 624. I was talking about the guiding principles of positioning in the previous lecture. And I also made it clear that these are the principles which apply to creating your positioning, maintaining your positioning, or changing your positioning. When is the time that you should change your position? Also has been one of the topics of learning in the previous lecture. Getting back to the guiding principles, let me remind you that I talked about three principles in the previous lecture and I was in the process of the fourth one when the time ran out, so I'm going to pick up from where I left. Just to give you a recap, the first principle is that you should change your position only when you feel it is necessary. And that feeling is not whimsical. That feeling is based on a certain criteria which you consider before deciding whether you should go for a changed positioning or not. And that criteria may lead you to deciding that you're going to maintain the position. The second guiding principle is let positioning guide all the strategies, meaning all the operational strategies which are going to be translated into executions of different kinds across functional boundaries. The third principle that I talked about was let the top management lead the charge when it comes to positioning, maintaining positioning, or shifting positioning. It is the top management which must lead the charge. The fourth guiding principle is that it is the employees of the company who bring positioning to life. What is meant by that? I talked about that in detail in the previous lecture before getting to the acronym audience which really helps you to maximize positioning of your brand within the company. And what is that? I discussed the first letter A, the second one U, and the third one D when the time ran out. So let us now start talking about the same acronym from the next letter which is I. I stands for inspiration. You have done a lot of work to develop the brand picture, the brand contract. And during the process, you carried out a lot of research in a formal way and also in informal way, meaning that you compiled a lot of data, analyzed information, and on the basis of that, you arrived at a certain rationale which would lead you to determining the positioning of the brand. Now that is the kind of work which must be shared with your colleagues. They must know that you have carried out that amount of work and that quality of work. And you have a certain rationale that we are talking about to have the positioning which you think is the right positioning. So these people must appreciate that work and they really appreciate that work if they really are convinced about the quality and the hard work that has gone into it. And that must prove to be the source of inspiration for those people. So in other words, they are aware of the positioning. They have a very good understanding and they have a sense of direction and given all those things, they also should feel very much inspired to start working for the goals and objectives that you have set for the brand and for the company. Now having talked about that, let us now discuss the next letter of the acronym audience and that is E. E stands for engagement. How to engage people? They have a sense of direction. They are inspired and having those two ingredients of good work and of good behavior, there is every chance that people will feel engaged and work for the positioning of the brand and never forget the fact that positioning is the mother of all the strategies that you are going to have at work. So people have got to be engaged because they belong to different departments and all those departments are going to work alongside you in order to get the results. The next letter of acronym audience is N, which stands for naturalness. How do you get this naturalness and what is the essence of this naturalness? Let us try to understand that. Well, if the right people are in place, then they will find it very natural to work on the objectives that have been set for the company and that have been set for the brand. How do you make sure that you have the right people in place all over the company is not something which falls into the domain of brand management only. What really falls into your domain is the people who work for you or people who report to you. You have got to make sure that they are the right people, they understand objectives and their strategies, they understand what part of execution they are supposed to be working on and once they start working on that, they must work very diligently. Now, people all over the company, meaning across departmental boundaries or functional boundaries, it is the responsibility of different levels of management. Starting from yours, right up to the chief executive. Everyone in his or her place has got to make sure that the people they hire are the right people. There are so many criteria of going for the right people which is what you call human resource management and is outside the scope of this course. But my point is, if the company has the right people all over the place, they will find it very natural to work on what has been set for them as vital tasks. The next letter of the acronym Audience is C and the C stands for criteria. What this means here is that you have got to have a criteria for rewards, rewards for good performance. You identify people with good performance on the basis of certain mechanism and that mechanism is what you may call management by objectives. You have given your people objectives. And on the basis of those objectives you can measure the performance and see what is it that is achieved and what is it that is not achieved. And you will recall discussion on this topic earlier. What is not achieved really calls for your attention, meaning is it because people are not really competent or is it because the objectives are not really realistic or is it because there were certain strategic complications or is it because the competition gave the company so much hard time that people were not really in a position to achieve their objectives especially when it comes to the marketing objectives. Performance is something which has to be rewarded, meaning good performance. And we are not assuming here that there is going to be a negative performance. All I am talking about is if there is negative performance you have got to look into the relevant areas which may give rise to that kind of negative performance. But people who perform well they have got to be rewarded. And if that becomes culture of the company or there is no way that people are not going to work for the positioning that you have carved out for the brand. The next letter of the acronym audience is E. That is the last letter. E stands for education. You have got to educate people all over the company about the positioning concept. And I think it goes without saying they will feel educated if they really are exposed and if they really are conscious of all the other letters of the concept audience. Meaning if they are aware of the concept of positioning and they really can clearly state that a good understanding of the concept of positioning. If they have a desire to work for objectives and they have the right sense of direction they feel very much inspired then they are educated. They have to be educated to the point that they really become good brand ambassadors. And if they are good brand ambassadors there is no way that they are not going to work for the objectives that have been set for the company and for the brand. So this concept of audience is the key toward maximizing positioning for the brand within the company. So this is the internal and interactive marketing which is going to bring the positioning of brand to life. And that is what is meant by this guiding principle number 4 that we have just discussed. From there we now make transition to guiding principle number 5 which is strong brand positioning is customer driven. We have learned so many different concepts within the area of brand management which are all customer driven. Well this principle by the same token has got to be customer driven because this is the principle that relates with creating and crafting your positioning for the brand and then maintaining that. And then this is the same principle which is going to lead you into the area of repositioning the brand somewhere like in a 2-3 years of 5 years down the line. What is it? Well this basically takes us back into the area of brand picture. You carried out a lot of research and through that you found out the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor's brands and you related those with your own. So in other words you have a very clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of your brand with a weak competition. This is the information which is going to lead you or which is going to help you to word determining the positioning for your brand. You have now reached the most critical phase or the most critical point where you are now required to carve out the real positioning for the brand. I am going to say something here which must not confuse you and that is for the time being, only for the time being just forget about the positioning statement which I made in the previous lecture or maybe in the lecture before that. The positioning statement about brand XYZ which I made at that time was made in order for you to understand the concept with relative ease. Now having forgotten that there ever was a positioning statement and having talked about the guiding principles which help us to word determining the real actual positioning of the brand. We now stand at a juncture and we should stand pretty comfortably at this juncture where we are going to define that statement. So the statement relating the brand XYZ which you saw and which I talked about so much was made in a way after taking into account the guiding principles which we are learning and we are just about at the end of learning those principles. So the juncture is that we are going to decide what should be the positioning statement or what should be the actual positioning. And actual positioning is again not going to be something whimsical based on sheer understanding of these principles. These principles must take you into another area which governs the criteria once again for deciding what should be the actual brand position. Getting back to the basic determinants of the consumers buying action in relation to brand XYZ of sandwiches. I talked about three factors because the company or the brand manager for that matter is very clear about selling those sandwiches at an affordable price. The brand manager is also very clear about the high quality of the product because he wants to compete with international chains selling sandwiches all over the world. So this goes without saying that the brand manager seems to be very conscious and very clear about the target market. He wants to attack. The brand manager also seems to be very clear about the factor of accessibility which is one of the important free determinants of the consumer buying action because he thinks that consumers is going to go and buy his brand of sandwiches because the three determinants that he is playing with or that he is planning are very meaningful. Meaningful in the sense that there are so many different benefits which flow out of these determinants. So now the next question which must flash into your mind or into the mind of the brand manager is how is he going to decide the actual positioning for the brand XYZ meaning what are the dimensions or what are the different angles which he can view his sandwiches in order to choose the most appropriate positioning. Let us discuss those. One angle could be related to the quality. The brand manager might think that he must start talking about quality and that is where he should position his brand. Now this has a lot of implications. If the brand manager is sure that he is going to maintain a very high quality not only high quality but also some differential in terms of the quality parameters for times to come while he should think in terms of positioning the brand in terms of quality. But at the same moment a question might come into his mind that quality is something which is being maintained by their competitors because they sell good quality and they are companies of international reputation and the chances are they will further improve the quality and their quality will not deteriorate. So is this positioning going to be very meaningful? So that is a question which must be answered because otherwise he could look at the positioning from the price point of view. Now if he may think that price is the factor or should be the basis of his positioning then it has to be something which has a magical touch to it and that magical touch could be if he is going to sell his sandwiches what they call an everyday low price. The question is is he going to maintain low price for all times to come or he is using the low price tactic or low price strategy just because he wants to have a step in the door meaning a step in the door of the target market. He may be thinking I get this step the next step is going to be an increase in price because if I am going to sell quality which is comparable with that of the competition then why should I suffer on the price account for all times to come? So there has to be a time when I bring my price either in parity with the competition or maybe on certain entries I may increase the price now that is going to be a pricing strategy which is going to be discussed when he reaches that particular point so in other words he is going to cross the bridge the pricing bridge in terms of taking the price so much high that he surpasses the competition so he will cross the bridge at that particular point in time but now the point is should he be talking about the price? Maybe the answer is he should not or if he is going to talk about the price premium what is it that is going to justify that price premium? Well I would say even from that point of view talking about the price may not be the right positioning if he is going to charge a premium price which does not seem to be the case rather should talk about very high quality because he has to talk about something very distinct and something very precise once that factor of positioning makes home into the minds of the poor folks who have an oversimplified mind then the other factors of quality the other factors relating to quality and pricing and packaging and appearance and looks will all fall in place you need to have just one positioning point which is going to push the button for the final action meaning buying on part of the consumer so that factor we have talked about from two different angles one could be quality price the decision is going to be yours I hope things are clear while talking about the quality factor or the price factor the important thing is whatever you talk about has got to be sustainable over a long period of time if price is something which is not going to be sustainable meaning you may start talking about price in different terms that once you have gone for the price increase and a meaningful price increase then positioning in relation to pricing should go out the window if you are talking about quality and you are very confident that quality is going to be maintained then you better start talking about quality or those features of quality which are going to have an appeal for the customers in differentiated terms because just saying we are offering a quality which is the best in the world but it may not work there has to be a catchy expression of the quality feature which really makes home into the mind of the customers that is the point which I want to make another angle from which you can view the positioning of the brand is accessibility now the question which should come into the mind of the brand manager is am I going to talk about accessibility all the time meaning for the next two to three years if the answer is yes then maybe this is going to be a meaningful positioning but then you also have to look at it from the point of acceptance on part of the customer are they going to accept that if you think that talking about accessibility is going to amount to talking about revolutionizing the service then maybe it is the right positioning after two years or maybe before that when you think of shifting your position because now you have started putting up restaurants all over the place you have to think to yourself is positioning relating to accessibility going to work at that time also and if you think yes it could help then you might as well go for this positioning and if you think there is going to be a shift in the position at that time then you will recall the fact what I talked about positioning allow you to stage a shift and still maintain a consistency of the brand character and the brand identity if the answer is yes it is going to make the transition not very difficult and we can maintain consistencies then I think you are talking about positioning which is okay you can also approach from taste profile standpoint you might think to yourself that the product you are going to sell is going to have such a taste it is going to be so mouth watering it is not a bad idea talking about the taste profile because this taste is very very different from what people are accustomed to and during the trials and during the test runs we did have a panel of the target customers who really were full of praise for the taste profile and if that is the case you may like to position your brand from that standpoint which may not be a bad positioning again some questions that you have to ask yourself is it going to be sustainable is it going to be competitive is it going to relate to so many different aspects of the brand management if the answer is yes this could be one of the angles or one of the positioning strategies so to say positioning is very strategic so anything that you are considering or studying in relation to deciding what should be the actual positioning it is very very strategic another angle a strategic angle which you can use to view brand positioning is the appearance is it that the product looks so beautiful and looks so tempting and mouth watering that you should talk about appearance if that makes sense okay you can position the brand that way and like I said earlier you can also look at the brand positioning from the standpoint of the service the service is so effective and efficient that it is going to revolutionize the concept you know that there are people who deliver lunch at the lunch time so what is it that is going to be new about our service what is it what is it that is going to revolutionize it now you are dealing with something which is selling a product in a very tangible form it is a food item it is a sandwich which somebody is going to eat so it is a tangible product at the same time you are delivering that product with the help of a service so at the same time that you are talking about the service marketing also service marketing so when you say you are going to revolutionize you might look at the product dimension others also are doing it but the product that we are going to sell is so mouth watering is so much good in terms of its appearance aspect that along with the people who are going to deliver it the service is going to be revolutionized and the people are the delivery people when you are looking at the aspect of service you have got to look at so many different related factors like whenever they go they have to have a smile on the face and for that you have got to train them they have got to have a nice outfit which really characterizes the brand personality the uniforms the wear they must be very neat and crisp and they have to have colors which are in consonance and which are in total conformity with the brand personality and the brand's character so if you think that you can maintain all these factors which you should, why not and you can make all those things meaning all the aspects of the product marketing and all the aspects of service marketing into a cohesive whole and you can control that and you can manage that all the time then maybe this is a good positioning for the brand or yet another angle that you can consider from the positioning point of view is the variety you are not going to start with just the one sandwich you are going to start with maybe two or three I don't know, maybe you decide for six or seven if you think that you are going to have a large variety appealing to different taste buds so to say same target market maybe you try to position your brand from the variety standpoint if it makes sense if it makes sense, okay go for it so these are a few of the factors which I have tried to relate with the hypothetical situation meaning hypothetical brand about which I keep talking so frequently only in order to ease up your understanding and comprehension so once you have answered all these questions or once you have had this criteria in place you are all set to go for the positioning statement but hold on there is still not the time to make the statement before you do that a few more factors to consider and evaluate different statements which you have come up with and I hasten to add that whichever positioning you may like to choose it has to be checked once again against another set of criteria and why is that because that gives you a cross check let us talk about those factors we are quite clear about all the factors that we have discussed and you are in a position to come up with maybe 2, 3, 4 or half a dozen statements strategic statements as to what should be the positioning and now you are taxing your mind as to which one is the best one and you want to pick that up it is not just going to be a question of take your pick no it is a question of that you have to cross check that against another set of criteria but what is that now you have chosen one of the statements because it really appeals to you what you really have to look into at this moment is it again has to be very customer driven or it is something which it has to be something which is immediately owned by the customers so this set of criteria which is going to provide you with a cross check basically is something which is going to enable you to look at the statement or the set of statements that you have come up with from the customers point of view what is that criteria that is are the products looks and appearance compatible with the positioning that you must ask yourself if you are talking about quality meaning if you are talking about positioning the brand from quality point of view are the looks and appearance compatible with that the answer generally should be yes the next question from customers point of view should be how strong is the customer motivation behind this positioning again to give you an example the thing is from the quality point of view and you are talking about price and which is a low price maybe it is not going to motivate your target market very quality conscious people not really quality conscious they are the target market which is not very conscious about the price level and if you are talking about pricing all the time hammering that in to his and maybe they are going to be kind of disgruntled and they are going to feel kind of put off they are wanting quality and you are talking pricing so there has got to be a compatibility between there has got to be a strong motivating force on part of the customer to accept that positioning another question which you consider is what size of the market is going to be involved in such positioning again if you look at it the quality versus price that is the right way of putting it quality versus price what is going to be the size of the market which is going to be influenced by the price positioning and what is going to be the size of the market that is going to be influenced by the quality positioning and then make your decision another question that you should ask yourself is does this positioning really capitalize on competitors weaknesses meaning are you talking about something which competitors lack if it is very strong meaning if the aspect is very strong then you should go for that positioning the cross check is positive and if you think that this positioning which is for example quality good quality no question about that if you think competition is also offering a very good quality and the differential is not all that strong it is there but it is not all that strong then maybe this cross check is not going to be very highly positive but if you think that your quality in terms of taste profile and in terms of ingredients is so good is so top class that along with appearance which also is great terrific and you should talk about quality then the check I would say is positive and you may as well go for positioning because the ones that you have succeeded in generating trial because the positioning is good then that will do the trick the ones customers have tried the product they will know all the positive aspects relating the product and that is the trick which you must leave to the positioning and how you do that I will sum that up in once and after another cross check or part of the criteria that I am talking about is is this positioning sustainable and that is something I have been talking about so frequently in relation to so many different things but here we are trying to learn how we are going to make sure that the positioning statement or the positioning strategy that we are going to choose or have chosen sustainable, whatever is the positioning price, quality accessibility appearance, service whatever it is if you really are convinced that it is going to be sustainable for a long time to come then I think it is a good cross check and it is not a bad positioning but you should go for that another part of this criteria is the financial resource not to the check are you going to have the required financial resources to support this positioning you may talk of the positioning which requires a lot of money if you are wanting to position the brand with a bio quality are you going to have enough resources to go for a campaign with which you think there should be a compatible campaign not only features but also in terms of the intensity it requires to remind customers again and again that we exist in the market so that is one example of the financial resource let us talk about another question which is very important to be answered before you can complete your evaluation or the process of these cross checks and that is does this positioning allow us with an alternative platform if this positioning failed let me explain this with the help of this same old XYZ example XYZ brand you chose positioning for the brand on the basis of your service because you really were convinced that it is such a beautiful service it is such a creative concept and the product which we are going to deliver is so good that the combination of these two is something that is our promise that is our strength and we should try to capitalize on that that should be the basis of your positioning it hasn't worked what do you do because practical problems are there the people are not reaching their destination on time customers are complaining you are earning a bad name in the market the reputation of the brand may be tarnished and if that happens you know the end result the sales will plummet so you think in order to reverse what has happened so far we have got to change the positioning of the brand whatever image that they have built up in the mind so far we still have time to change that we still have time to fix the situation it will take a little bit of effort but the opportunity is there so you decide to shift to quality in terms of positioning the brand or features in terms of positioning the brand because you know that you offer very good quality and you know that your product really has good features now this is the case with so many different brands the only thing to remember is that your brand has to offer a package of benefits and that's what good brands do if you are introducing a brand and you are positioning it with the brand having just one or two benefits and you want to change the position from this one to another one maybe you have difficulties so the attributes and the benefits the brand offers have to be so many or at least a handful meaningful differentiated benefits on which you can rest in case your original positioning failed so in this case getting back to the brand XYZ you still think to yourself that the quality features are so inviting talking about you know positioning the brand on quality basis but then you see that my boss or the marketing manager somehow did not listen to me this could be the kind of debate or this could be the kind of arguments that might be overheard within the department but the positive side of all this is that you still have few more features on which you can reposition your brand so this becomes a very very question does this positioning allow us with an alternative in case a shift has to be made so it basically is not the positioning it basically is the product features it basically is the inner substance of the brand which you are dealing with and the fact of the matter is that positioning also deals with that so do not be confused when I say shifting positioning on the basis of a few more features added features that you did not talk about earlier and you have decided to talk about those now because you will recall I pointed out this thing your brand has a lot of benefits to offer but you do not talk about all those in the same breath when you do that you are not making the mark you are not being very convincing because the human mind or that oversimplified mind that we are talking about has a certain level of comprehension and beyond that it does not store anything and everything it rejects and it is because of that that you have to keep your message simplified and keeping it simplified and very distinct and very precise so that is why we are talking about all this in relation to different features and different benefits that your brand offers this positioning this feature you are talking about that positioning you are talking about another feature but then you have got to be mindful of the kind of repositioning I talked about in the previous lecture when the customers are buying your car and they keep on buying you do not really have to reposition it only because you think that position that you have been talking about has become kind of very old and you now should start talking about something else not at the cost of the inner substance or not at the cost of that benefit which is responsible for tremendous sales people must not start thinking all of a sudden that there has to be something which they have done with the safety factor and that is why they have not started talking about performance and we are not going to buy this car again or word of mouth becomes negative and new prospects they might think to themselves well I always thought of buying this car because of the safety reasons because of the safety factors which give this model a lot of credibility and now I will think twice before to buy that the last question which you should ask yourself toward this evaluation process is does this positioning justify a price premium now this question may not relate with the brand XYZ or the sandwiches about which we started with the premise it is going to have a consumer friendly pricing this does relate any other product which you think is very highly differentiated and which carries a lot of benefits which competition is not offering and which really has the potential to hit the pinnacle of the brand value pyramid in that case you do like to charge premium and in that case of course the product has to have those compatible features so if the product has those features which are translated into relevant benefits and then emotional values on part of the customers then that positioning is the one which justifies premium on the brand if there is no justification in other words if there is no compatibility between what you are selling and the pricing strategy then this got to be something wrong with positioning the point to make is that there should be no contradictions between the way you are wanting to position your brand and the pricing strategy and as a matter of fact all other strategies whether we are talking in particular reference with the price premium that is why the price is coming up again and again but the basic point is there should be no contradictions and I think after talking so much about what positioning is and what are the guiding principles and what are the questions which you ask yourselves in order to come up with the right positioning and then what should be the process of evaluation so that you can cross check that the positioning which you are trying to choose from so many different alternatives just about the right position things are clear in your mind what positioning is all about now after carrying out together this evaluation you have chosen the brand positioning with the positioning in place you can now go for the right most positioning statement and that is why I told you at that particular moment that you forget about the positioning statement which we discussed and which I made just for the sake of your understanding if I had not started with that statement maybe the process of instruction to make the concept easy it wouldn't have been that easy it could have been little more difficult that's why I said forget that statement for the time being you can improve the statement and you can change it the way you like make it very precise and yet comprehensive enough to be able to lay the framework for all the strategies that you require to implement your brand objectives that is very important so having said that let me state that once you have the positioning statement the next step is to coin advertising message and that's what you call the tagline or the brand line advertising line you may call it anything there is no hard and fast rule but whatever brand line or the ad line so to say that you have is the outward expression of the positioning and of the brand inner substance you have to take charge of positioning meaning the once you have chosen the positioning statement and positioning for the brand you must take charge of that and what that means is if you do not take charge then competitors will you should be quick on your feet in working on that in start working on that otherwise competitors may acquire position there is nothing which is hidden there is nothing which does not also come into the minds of others and that is what is meant by taking charge of positioning otherwise competitors will positioning is the single most important activity toward strategic brand management and therefore such a lot of emphasis has gone into positioning we have a very clear understanding of the concept of positioning we cannot really go ahead with other concepts that are around the corner for us to start discussing and with that I would say positioning stands completed and concluded in the next lecture when I start talking with you it is going to be about the brand extension what is brand extension and why the concept came into being wait until I start talking about that Allah Hafiz until that time and I look forward to seeing you