 Assalamu alaikum khawatni Nohazrat. Waseem Asin welcomes you to the virtual University of Pakistan. We are proceeding toward lecture number 16 of brand management, MKT 624. In the previous lecture number 15, I was talking about how to build a brand-based customer model. And regarding that, I talked about three fundamental questions. One being, how do consumers choose one brand over another? What is their buying criteria? Which leads them toward referring one brand over so many other competitive offerings. The second question related, how does our brand stand up against competition? Meaning, what are the benefits that we are offering? And what are the attributes and benefits being offered by competition? Only by drawing comparisons, consumers or customers are in a position to make the final decision as to which brand they're going to go for, meaning which brand they're going to buy. The third fundamental question, opportunities about brand growth and expansion is the one we could not discuss in detail. When I reached this question, the time ran out, and for your benefit, I think I've got to talk about that in a little detail. So let me explain what is meant by opportunities for brand growth and expansion. This question demands clarity of two factors, basically, which are all the unmet needs which are to be fulfilled by your brand or maybe by competition. And definition of the category that we are operating in by the customers, meaning it is not the company, it is not the managers who define the category in which the company operates in. It basically is the customers who define how the category looks like. To give you the example which probably I talked about earlier as well, a Kola company finding out to their utter astonishment mineral water as part of the category because the customers looked upon Kola drinks as basically thirst quenches and at the same time, water also happens to be a thirst quencher. By the same token, juices and drinks being sold by so many different companies that happen to be in juice business define the category in the same way because they're all dealing with thirst quenches. So the point is that the category has to be defined in terms of the consumers' perspective, the way consumers look at it. And it is the job of the brand managers or the marketing people, so to say, to find out how they look at the category. There are so many different ways. And we've been talking about different kinds of models. You can go for a structured research model. You can go for a model which is informal. You can find out so much information through your salespeople who are in touch with the market all the time. And they can always give the company feedback. As a matter of fact, that's what they do and that's one of their prime responsibilities to provide the company with the feedback relating customers. When I talk about customers, what I mean is all the trade members because they are our customers and then down the line the ultimate customers. Let's talk about the structured research model. It is very much the same as the one you developed while you were building up this brand-based model. The structure which you built up trying to find out the buying criteria or the market research structure which you built up trying to find out the way that people look at your brand in relation to competition. All those research models are going to provide you with leads that will take you into new areas of unmet needs because talking with the customers directly unites so many different factors and so many different possibilities and opportunities which we may not really think about while sitting in offices. One way of generating this kind of information is a Japanese model developed by one of the Japanese electronics companies. What they do is they send one of their top managers along with a consultant to the homes of people. Who are those people? They are the people forming a body of respondents which the company has earmarked and they go to their houses one by one with a questionnaire. This is a structured way of carrying out research also having overtones of informality because you are sitting in the house of a respondent talking with them about how they look at your product in terms of fulfillment of their needs and how they look at the category and how they look at the competition. There are so many interesting leads which they get by talking with respondents sitting at the homes that they really have been able to come up with innovations purely in the light of the feedback which they keep getting from the market. This is one of the formal ways of generating information also having a sense of informality built into this design. An informal way of generating this kind of information could be through your sales force like I was talking earlier. They are the people who are in contact with the market all the time and they are the people who really understand the buying criteria of the customers. There is no question about carrying out a structured research in terms of how they consider the buying a certain brand but then at the same time these people are so experienced they are so well exposed to the market that at one side they really can sense and determine the buying criteria which we might otherwise arrive at through a structured model. Now this is not to say that we should rely only on the feedback from the sales people who are in the market all the time. This amounts to saying that we should have a combination of a structured and a model which is less than structured which is kind of informal in order to find out the unmet needs in the market and those unmet needs are the ones which are part of your category. It is only that nobody has had a chance so far to fulfill those needs. Now let us talk about a few examples. I can give you the example of a telephone company operating in the private sector trying to beef up its offerings and getting into a connection in which they might claim is uninterrupted in the sense that you can use telephone and at the same time internet services. It will not cause any interruption to any of these services to which you are taking benefit of. This is one example. The other example could be an internet service provider an ISP so to say getting into the wireless systems because their customers may complain most of the times that telephone lines meaning land lines or fixed lines are not really up to the mark. There is a lot of disturbance in terms of reception and this ISP might get into the wireless service which you call Wi-Fi. What this ISP is doing is adding another benefit to the product and he is lettering up the product and at the same time fulfilling a need which is very genuine and which certainly has a rationale and a solid background to it provides you with a very solid reason to go for another offering meaning another product. Another example could be a razor blades company talking with their customers and finding out to their astonishment that people still are not highly satisfied with the smoothness a shave should give. People might think in the following terms well this is 21st century and this is the time when we are into internet and we are into this and we are into that and therefore we expect something highly modern and highly advanced forcing this company into thinking of something which is more advanced than that smaller strip or smaller band on top of the blade which you use for your shave every morning. These are some of the examples which explain how and when a company should start considering adding another product to its line with the help of offering more benefits and therefore fulfilling needs which are unmet in the market and when you do that what you are doing is you are growing your brand and you are also expanding the category you are into expansion so therefore you must seize any opportunity which may come up in the market and it is not just a question of waiting for the opportunity which may come up. No, it is a question of you are being proactive and you are being very alert and sensitive in trying to find out all those needs which are lying kind of dormant or latent in the minds of the customers. They may have a vague idea of something which they think they can fulfill their need and they might not talk in very very coherent terms the way people like you and I talk in terms of the marketing concepts but they are customers with an oversimplified mind and whatever they talk about has got to be deciphered by experts or by marketing professionals as to what is it that they are wanting and what is it that we can do to fulfill that need. Having said that, I think it is now quite very clear that whenever you unearth an unmet need you seize the opportunity, introduce a new product position it well and build up from a position of strength build up the image over a period of time and you will do that only if you have been successful in identifying the need correctly and then giving the new product the right persona so that it leads to the right kind of image which you want developed at the receiving end. If you have done that, the chances are you will be successful and you will be occupying a good position at the brand value pyramid starting of course from the bottom and then making a way all the way up. Having talked about this third fundamental question that is growing the brand and going for expansion the three fundamental questions are well addressed and I hope that your understanding of developing a brand based model for the customer meaning from the customer's standpoint is now clear. Let me now give you a conclusion. In order to build the model you've got to stay very close to your customers and staying close to the customers means that you keep on carrying out research and the models have not to be very complicated the designs have not to be very very large the objective is to find out what is happening in the marketplace so that you can put your finger on the pulse of the market. You can also stay close to the customer as a matter of fact you have got to stay close to the customer through your sales people who are an extension of the marketing department. They are a very very fundamental and a sensitive arm of the marketing effort or the marketing department. They are in the market all the time and the feedback which they bring to you is worth a lot. You've got to take that information very seriously and keep that as part of the information bank so that you can make the right decisions about the right strategies which are going to be at work to enable you to achieve all the business objectives. Once you are close to the customer you are in a position to identify the right segment. If you have identified the right segment I think it goes without saying that the need that you have identified or the need that you are going to identify is going to belong to that segment in which you are going to fulfill that need and right identification of the right segment leads to identifying the right category meaning that the playing field that you have chosen is just about the right one and then you have to decide about the strategies which you are going to have for that game plan. Once you have identified the right segment or the right category you have to develop the model and the model I've talked about in detail. With that model our second phase which basically is developing the brand picture is complete and I can explain that to you with the help of graphics. As you can see from the screen the arrow coming down to phase number two which is determining your brand picture. We are clear about brand's image things like associations and brand persona and so on and so forth. The second step you are to the brand's contract you have learnt that it is all about delivering the contract and the contract consists of so many different promises which the product or the brand carries the promises that have got to be delivered and those promises which cannot be delivered may as well not be the part of the product. That may change the whole underlying philosophy of that brand but then that's the way it is. Those promises which cannot be fulfilled they are not to be talked about. Only the promises which are deliverable are to be communicated and are to be capitalized on. The third step is developing a brand-based customer model and that is what I just talked about and you are very well clear about how to develop that. These three steps as you can see from the screen form phase number two of the strategic brand management process and like I pointed out this brings us to the third phase which is developing a brand-based strategy or a brand management strategy. The first step of which is positioning your brand. What is a brand position or how do you position a brand in the minds of the consumers? Let us now talk about that. You can see very clearly that we started from the brand vision and that brought us to phase number two and phase number two has made our transition to phase number three. The first step of which is positioning your brand. With the discussion that we've had on developing a brand-based customer model and what a category is and what is the significance of your brand within the category and what is the significance of the competitors' offerings within that category, the concept of positioning becomes easy to understand. The one thing we have to keep in mind we may talk about any concept relating to the brand management and overall marketing management so to say do not lose sight of the competitive factor. The brand management and marketing are all about competition. If it was not for competition we would not be forced into these kinds of sophisticated concepts and models that we keep developing in order to make sure that our brand has a good position in the market and therefore it should bring a good level of sales to the company meaning good financial value to the company, to the shareholders and so on and so forth. So given the competitive environment it is very important to look at the significance of the role played by our competitors vis-à-vis our own brand. Until that time or until the time that we have developed understanding of that comparison we really cannot understand and appreciate how a consumer really perceives your product meaning your brand and then makes the decision to go for the final pushing of the button, meaning sale. With that understanding we are now making a real transition to positioning meaning understanding of the category your role, your competitors role. Positioning is very, very central to having the right strategies at work in order to be able to achieve our business management goals and our brand management goals. It is relatively a new concept when I say that what I mean is it's not very old. It was only in the 70s meaning 1970s that the concept came into being it basically is an approach to communication and that automatically means it solves communication problems. You try to position your brand into the minds of customers because you are communicating with them and you have to communicate in a way that your brand ends up occupying a position in the mind a position which is very solid a position in the mind which cannot be dislodged it has to be that strong and before we make sure what is it that can lead us toward having that kind of a strong position which cannot be dislodged we have to look at the history first of the concept of positioning. Back in the 1950s it is said in the history of business it was the product era new technologies were coming into being and very frequently new products with new differentiated features were popping up the scene and every now and then there were new products with differentiated features all over the place and that is why that era is called as the product era advertisers and advertising agents had a very good opportunity of talking about all those differentiated features in a very convincing way in order to win over consumers or customers and they really succeeded in winning over customers if they talked sense in their communications and the sense they talked was what they call in marketing terminology AUSP unique selling proposition anything you see to the which had the character meaning any product which had the character of uniqueness and it was credible and it was reliable was said to be something unique and that differentiated feature which the product had in terms of its uniqueness was known as and still is known as AUSP meaning unique selling proposition so in other words any product or any products that had very convincing USPs were talked about a lot by the advertising agents or by the companies in their communications and they made their mark I would repeat it again all those products with convincing USPs made their mark and those were being sold all over the place and people were buying those in big numbers companies were happy customers were happy but then the time came when the technology level hit a certain stage meaning the advancement had taken such a shape two different companies across different categories and across different boundaries they all had a good level of technology with the net result that products or brands which were very differentiated at one time and they had very convincing USPs they became commonplace why? because the level of innovations dropped because of technology becoming so common the result was that the USPs were lost and the communication remained at its peak the reason communication remained at its peak because the producers or the manufacturers did not know what to do because they did not have any new technologies to offer them new innovations and therefore they thought it would take was in stepping up the communication process so the communication which was taking place at this level in the past it became even higher it went on to a higher level a few notches up the result was that everyone was talking about very similar things because there were very minor differences among different products because of the disappearance of differentiating features which really set one product or one brand apart from the other but they were no longer there and therefore there was a proliferation of what they call Me Too products Me Too product is the one which follows the leader you have introduced a product which is very highly differentiated but since others also have access to that kind of technology they also put up a plant and introduced that into the market it may have the same features but since the brand is not very well known the people really do not have the inclination to go for that brand that brand is known as Me Too product so there was a proliferation of Me Too products and communication which was stepped up it was about all those Me Too products so this killed the product era and it was a moment of consideration for the advertising intelligence here as to what to do next they put their head down and thought about so many different strategies that they could bring into play in relation to the brand management they somehow found out that they should be following strategies of communication which talk about the brand image and this is probably where they went wrong as time has proved later we can always talk in hindsight whatever happened in the past we can dissect that and analyze that and learn from that but at that time it seemed to be the right most strategy that since we do not really have differentiated features as strong as they were in the past years and since everybody is talking about products which are very similar and we also have in a stepped up communication but the results are not really coming and we keep putting in money which is going almost waste so what to do next and that is why they started thinking on these lines which I am talking about meaning they thought if they talk about the brand's image it will spur the sales up because whatever we do in the market it is meant to push sales and the reason they went wrong because we have not learned what an image is image is the sum total of the observations which you have been developing over years and years the total of the exposure which you have had over years and years through different kinds of communications verbal, non-verbal all coming into play in order to let you develop that image at the back of your mind and not retaining all of it rejecting part of it and retaining part of it this is what we learned as part of the brand's image concept since they did not really emphasized at the receiving end in terms of what they were thinking and in terms of the way they had developed that image the advertising people thought that by being very creative they can go for an image which the customers will accept in other words what they have in the mind will change overnight and a new image will be formed and enter product will sell like hotcakes it did not happen and I think the reason is pretty well known to you because of the concept which I have been explaining in great detail so like me too products killed the product era companies that were involving into this kind of communication talking about image building killed the image era so in other words we started with the product era in the 1950s and then we got on to another era which is known as the image era and both the eras came to an end because of the reasons that I have talked about with these eras and with products and brands and markets graduating from one position to another or from one situation to another or from one phase to another the level of communication increased it did not decrease with the net result that the the prepounders of the concept of positioning in the 1970s defined that era as the era of over communication this is what the two authors of the concept said at that time we are living in an over communicated society and because of the over communication the consumer is confused the consumer does not have the capacity to retain all that is being targeted at him or her so you can well imagine the level of over communication that we are subject to these authors talked about the over communication relating to the 1970s and that was a time before the advent of internet and before the explosion of television networks all over the world we used to have I think just one television network in the country the largest country and the most advanced country in the world meaning the United States did not have as many channels as they have today the reason I am giving you a comparison is that over communication which was there in the society has grown in geometric progression it has grown in leaps and bounds so the objective for the marketing people nowadays is how to get rid of that over communication the question that arises in our minds is which is a very very valid question how to communicate and still get heard in the overly communicated society this is the basic challenge which the concept of positioning meets how does it meet let's talk about that these authors are the preponderers of the concept of positioning believe that in order to be successful one has to touch base with reality and the only reality that counts is what is already in the mind of the consumer now this is something in which you can relate with the image building because of the exposure which consumers keep getting in the marketplace not only in the marketplace but also sitting at the homes they are subject to communication the television commercials the newspapers, the magazines and informal conversations which people have with each other among the family members whatever has come to build up in the minds is something which has taken years and years and it is the net result of a process and that is the reality that reality these authors believe it cannot be dismantled to create something that does not exist in the prospect's mind or in the customer's mind is very difficult if not outright impossible the authors believe and they give a lot of examples convincing examples to prove the point and the time also has proved that whatever consumers have in the mind is of very high significance to the companies because that is something which the companies can manipulate this may not be a very good word to use but that's what the authors of the concept talk about they say creating something absolutely new is very difficult so you should be playing and you should try to capitalize on whatever they have in the mind so in other words if you have introduced a product a brand in other words you have to talk about those things which match or which complement or which supplement information or the images which already exist in the minds of the customers if the customers think that a need remains to be still met and nobody has yet taken the initiative to fulfill that need and if you are the one to fulfill that need you should be talking about that and you should know that that is something which is sitting in the mind of the customer and if you fulfill that need and start communicating about that it means that you are trying to position your product into the mind of the customer in just about the right most way in just about the way which others have propounded therefore talking about all this we can easily summarize that as a defense mechanism since the mind of the prospect does not really accept new things or things which creative people might call creativity are not really acceptable to the human mind because human mind is very oversimplified and it is not ready to accept anything which is which cannot find a match to what he or she already has sitting in there so as a defense mechanism against over communication in the human mind rejects a lot of information and accepts only that information which matches with the prior knowledge and the information which complements the prior knowledge which is sitting in the mind of the prospect the only defense mechanism that a person has is an oversimplified mind this is a statement which is to be underlined you are dealing with that oversimplified mind and therefore you have to simplify the process the process through which the customer goes to make the decision to buy your brand it is to your benefit of course so marketing people in other words must ignore the sending side and they must concentrate on the receiving side which is the customer's mind which means that they must concentrate on customers' perceptions and not on the product having said that we can state that positioning is not something that you do to a product positioning is something that you do to the human mind you position the product into the mind of the people and why you do that well I hope the concept is by now clear because the consumer has certain perceptions sitting in his mind and he would like to receive and retain something in his mind which matches that knowledge of that perception is stronger than reality and therefore we have to approach those perceptions in a way if we do end up talking about or communicating about a product but not talking about the product to start with by creating kind of a creativity in which we think is going to build such an image about the product that the consumer is going to forget whatever he has in his mind and he is going to get something which is absolutely novel that is not going to happen because whatever is going to happen in the mind of the consumer is going to be in relation to whatever he has or she has in their minds so that is something that we have to keep in our minds a very important concept now let us talk about how positioning works experience has it that positioning works best when we talk about the factors which could be the negative side of the product or the factors which are not you may not be understanding what I am talking about I will explain this concept with the help of an example the things that are not or the things which could be interpreted as negative are the ones like if you were a manufacturer of chewing gum and you were to develop a brand for health conscious people who do not want sugar who do not like sugar you say sugar free so the thing which is not is sugar you are telling your consumers it does not contain sugar this is where positioning works the best another example of the concept could be you being a manufacturer of tires trying to position your brand of tires which is too bless so what is not there is tubes we are telling your consumers you should buy this product of this brand because it contains an extra benefit and that is the benefit of not having a tube so when the tire goes flat it is not going to provide you with a certain problem you can still log a certain mileage before you reach the next station where you can have it fixed the first car was recognized as the horseless carriage it is a very interesting example so in other words the manufacturer of that car positioned the product against the transportation of that time which was horses so this is what is meant by the negative factors and negative sides of the possible negative sides of a product which you have eradicated or which you have not a part of the product and then you talk about that since this thing is not there in the product and by not keeping it there we are providing you with a certain benefit like a sugar free gum or a tube less tire or a horseless carriage that is the best way of positioning your product now this is not to say that you can position your product always talking about those factors like the present in the product or in the brand you can position your product or your brand in so many different ways you can also position your product in terms of the pricing how come that when you start communicating consumer friendly pricing may that be sandwiches or may that be a ballpoint pen or may that be anything else what you are telling your consumers is what you are talking with your consumers is a brand which does not carry a high price it is affordable it is friendly so that is how you are positioning your product and if you are selling ballpoints for example you cannot sell a ballpoint for the price of a fountain pen if you do that the images are the prior knowledge which the customer has in his mind is not going to match the pricing that you have come up with that information or that pricing for that matter to be very straight is going to be rejected by the consumer's mind and he is not going to take your product very seriously you can also position your product with a bar distribution for example that you get into direct marketing there are so many products which are being sold directly by the manufacturers through the catalogs for example we have sales taking place on the internet as the latest concept you know about the concept of B2B business to business and you also have the concept of business to consumers B2C maybe the concept is not very much established in our market but it is entering and I hope and I think that it is going to catch on it only is a matter of time so that you can position your product by way of distributing it you are positioned as a direct merchant when you are selling something direct it may not be internet it may not be through emails it could be direct delivery of sandwiches like I talked about brand XYC which I keep talking about in order to enhance your understanding of different concepts that I keep talking about and I am going to talk about that again in relation to positioning because with the help of that example the concept is going to really make inroads into your mind as to what really is the concept all about anyway positioning can be done by way of the attributes which are not present as part of the product you have taken those out because you want your new brand or the extension of the brand again a concept which we are going to talk about in coming lectures you are extending the brand for another segment you want the new offering to have a different appeal and if it is going to have a different appeal you have got to communicate to your customers or to your prospects that this is something which it does not contain since the old brand or the old offering contained this ingredient you did not like it and in order for you to like it we have created this new offering and we hope you like it and you buy it and they do buy it so having had the understanding how positioning works we should not talk about how to create a strong position so that it really works when we talk about positioning when we talk about positioning working we have to take it for granted that we are talking about a strong position so what is it that gives brands a strong position a strong brand positioning means a brand has a real valued place in the minds of the customer a brand is going to have a real valued place in the customer if it is perceived as credible if it is perceived as reliable and if the brand is sustainable it is going to have a valued place in the minds of the customers so this is one of the ways you can develop a strong positioning in the minds of the customers the other one is that strong positioning revolves around a benefit we talked about attributes that you provide with your customers and we also talked about different levels you are providing a benefit which is at this level then you provide a benefit which goes at a higher level and you develop a higher level of association with your customer which is very emotional and so on and so forth if you are successful in doing all that you have created a very strong position in the minds of the customers you may have a question here what is all about getting at the top of the brand to the value pyramid then why talk about the concept of positioning well the answer is that we have so many different sophisticated concepts when it comes to handling a brand when it comes to managing a brand that before you introduce it or while you are managing it you have got to be clear about all those concepts because all the concepts like this they come and converge on a single platform and that is a platform which creates that point of difference and all the resources of the company are deployed toward that point of difference just in order for you to be able to sell that brand so that is why we are talking about so many different concepts so that there is nothing which is not discussed which is not learned the beauty of all these concepts is that they fit with each other so much and all these you will know that these are not different compartments but these are the compartments that converge at a bigger one where we create the point of difference back to strong positioning we have talked about the unique value placed in the minds of the consumer we have talked about a great benefit around which positioning evolves I want to add one more thing here that the benefit which you talk about because positioning is all about communication it solves communication problem when you talk about your benefit you have got to be very choosy about that there are so many benefits which your brand has the potential to offer and it does offer but if you start talking about those benefits as kind of a list then the consumer is going to be confused even if he is not confused he is not going to receive that as something very cogent or as something very coherent because it is so many things and again a lot of things are going to be rejected and just a few things are going to be retained so why not talk about something which is very solid and which is just one big solid point about one big benefit and that is what positioning is all about how do we choose and how do we make the final decision which benefit to choose meaning which to talk about is going to be the topic of discussion in the next lecture let us wait until that time Allah Hafiz