 As-Salaam-Alaikum-Kawwateena-Hazrat, I am Vasim Ahsan, your course instructor for the course of grant management, MKT 624. I welcome you to the Virtual University of Pakistan. Today, I am going to start teaching this course to you with the understanding that you all have done the basic marketing course, namely, Principles of Marketing. Those of you who already have done or are doing another course by the name of marketing management are going to enjoy this course even more. I am going to talk about introduction to the course, why the subject has become so important in today's marketing practices, what is the kind of value which brand management creates for the company apart from creating value for consumers. And while talking about all these things, I am going to touch upon so many different facets of the subject, which I shall be talking in deeper detail later through my lectures. And the basic objective of touching upon those facets is that you develop a very clear understanding of what we are going to talk about in this lecture and also later. Brand management has been around for as long as we can look back into the area of professional marketing. But it always has been a part of the traditional marketing approach in which many of the functions of brand management were performed by the traditional marketing manager along with his team members, namely the sales manager, the advertising and communications manager, the marketing administration manager to name a few. So in other words, the functions of brand management, which today have become so well structured, were performed by different people within the marketing department. So this is not to say that brand management was not being done at all. It certainly was being carried out, but in different parts, in different components by different people sitting within the traditional setup. Brand management in present day shape has come into limelight at a very sharp focus over the last 20 years. And it really has undergone a tremendous transformation in terms of its functional execution. And that functional execution, like I indicated earlier, is the responsibility of the brand manager. So what has happened is that brand management has not lost its primary roots with the area of marketing. It only has acquired very well and explicitly defined dimensions within which the function operates. And it connects itself with different touchpoints within and outside of the marketing department. What are those touchpoints? Let me give you two examples. One could be that the brand manager has developed a brand, and he's going to place order through the inventory manager about packaging material. He's got to be very precise, he's got to be very accurate about his forecasting so that company does not end up spending too much on the inventories which might keep sitting in the stores for a time longer than they really have to. This is one example of a touchpoint. Another example could be the actual sales which are going to take place in the market. So he's got to coordinate all the time with the sales manager and let him have very clear understanding of the kind of volume which the company is going to achieve so that the sales manager in turn can talk very convincingly with the distributors, wholesalers, retailers, meaning all members of the trade. So things like that, let me tell you that brand management got impetus in the western markets which is very obvious and in the present day context very natural. The driving factors behind the emergence of this concept were competition and growth of markets and I think we all know that growth and competition are not mutually exclusive meaning you cannot exclude one from the other. Whenever growth takes place, competition pops up. Why? Because growth attracts more players or even the existing players in the market invest more and more in order to grow, in order to make profits, in order to sustain themselves on a consistent basis. So we can say with a lot of confidence that it was the explosive growth of different brands by different companies in different sectors of industries all over the world especially in the western markets that gave rise to the explosive growth of brands. When we had so many brands, another thing which was taking place simultaneously was a growth of categories. Now here you see that I would like to draw a distinction between a product category and a brand. I think you all know that a category consists of so many different branded products of similar nature and similar features. When I talk about similar features it is not to be confused with the concept of differentiation because brands are differentiated from each other. But coming back to the category, category you see is a collection of similar items with almost similar features. For example, smoking is one category, cold drinks is another category. But then within these categories you can have subdivisions in terms of different segments and that's where the concept of segmentation comes in which you already have studied and you know very well what that is. Okay, getting back to categories. When categories were expanding, whether in the same company or across the companies, within various industries, what was happening was that marketing managers had to grapple with the complexity of ever increasing activities in their marketing areas. I gave you the example of two categories like smoking and cold drinks. Just imagine for the time being that a company dealing in smoking area also gets into cold drinks or already is into these two product areas and then imagine the amount of complexity which the marketing manager and his team will have to deal with while looking after the marketing mix relating the two different product lines. Because the two product lines may not be just two product lines, I mean two product areas, the two product areas can have different brands within themselves. So the division you see gets into further division and is subdivided into so many different sectors and sections all having their own different brands. Okay, having said that, let me tell you that the concept of brand management, all the new but it already has crept into Pakistan with a thrust. Many of the multinational corporations in our country are following this concept. They have the functions of brand management very well laid out within their marketing departments and they have in place good, solid, professional brand managers looking after their designated areas. The scope for people like you who may like to become brand managers and then eventually marketing managers and then eventually, you know, you can go further high have a tremendous potential to be there. The subject and the discipline offers a lot of potential, that's what I'm saying because it has just crept in and it is budding, it is blooming. Having said all that, I can now easily state that this course will, inshallah, develop a very clear understanding about what a brand is and why and how brands are managed in a competitive and hostile environment. So in other words, by the time we complete the course, we shall have developed a very clear understanding of the following learning objectives. We're going to learn the background that has given rise to the well-structured concept of brand management. I already have talked about that. It was being done earlier in components here and there and now it is being done in a very well-structured way within certain dimensions. We're going to learn the variables that have made businesses deem much more than before the significance of strong brands. We're going to learn the contribution of strong brands to the financial results of corporations. Why they do it and how they do it. I should be talking about why and how, meaning why brands contribute, they are meant for that. They have to generate earnings. They have to generate profits and they have to sustain companies. The house side of it is all about brand management, which we shall be talking in detail. We're going to learn the challenges that brands in the making are those that are very well-established face during the management process do basically to market dynamics. What does this mean? This means that all brands run into different kinds of situations. Could be easy situation, could be a difficult situation. Brands in the making have got to be nurtured and fostered very carefully, just like you grow a small plant. They need very tender care and brands which are very well-established, they've got to stay where they are if they cannot go further up. All are challenging tasks. So we're going to learn what are those situations which brands run into. We're also going to learn what drives brand managers to consider acquisition of established brands in preference to going their own. This is going to be a very, very important and vital area and as a matter of fact, this is one of the factors which gave rise to the very concept of brand management. We shall talk about that later. We're going to learn what necessitates in the eyes of brand managers extending product categories. Remember categories I talked about earlier, a collection of items into different brands and what are the risks and rewards involved in doing so. It is easy to say, let us expand the category, let us introduce a new brand or let us go for a brand extension, but then creating the whole thing and then maintaining it is another. We're going to develop understandings of various tools that brand managers have at their disposal to face all kinds of situations business friendly as well as business hostile. I talked about that earlier, but I can further dilate that for your understanding. Like I said, a brand can run into two different situations, a friendly situation and a hostile situation. A friendly situation is not only a situation in which you see the brand is growing, a friendly situation could well be when the brand is not very strong, but the situation offers tremendous opportunity to make that brand strong. It is the job of the brand manager to look into what could be the variables and what are the tools at his disposal to make the brand strong and then stronger. Similarly, a hostile situation could be that you have a very strong brand, but it seems you're running into problems because of the very intense competition, because of the overall poor economic conditions and so on and so forth. So we're going to look into all those situations and what are the dynamics behind those situations and what are the steps that brand managers should be taking and can take in order to reverse the situation because you will agree with me that you must have learned from the basic management course that one of the most important jobs of a good manager, whether a brand manager or any other manager in any other department is to pull the company or the business out of troubled waters. Okay, having talked about the learning objectives, which I said we shall be achieving by the time that we complete the course, let us not talk about brands in terms of understanding them. Let us try to develop very clear understandings about what a brand is. Let me give you a small definition of what a brand is. I think we all know, not only from the basic course that we have done, but also from the fact that we all are consumers, that a brand is a name, a sign, it's a symbol, it's a logo or it may be a combination of all of these factors in order to identify it and differentiate it from the rest of the crowd. Everybody has a brand with distinct features. Some have better features, some have not better features. So in order to differentiate with your product, meaning a branded product from those of competitors, you have to have a brand which has a name, a logo, a symbol or a combination of all of them, like I said earlier. The objective is to give it different features for the sake of identification. And therefore, having said that, I can say with a lot of confidence that the most distinct nature of a marketing manager or a brand manager job is to create the maintain and sustain brands in hostile environment. And that is what brand management is all about. Brand development is the direct responsibility of brand manager, but then the process doesn't end there and the process doesn't also start there. What does that mean? What that means is that a brand manager has got it supported by the marketing manager who in turn has got to have the support of his seniors, meaning the top management of the company and the top management of the company that they must have complete support of the board of directors of the company. And this shows how important and significant developing and maintaining brands is. Remember I talked about this factor earlier that brands give companies earnings, profitability and brands are the ones that sustain the companies and they assure future for the company. And therefore, the brands have to be supported by all and sundry in the company. Managing brands, however, is the responsibility of the brand manager. To avoid a very distinct understanding of brand management, we go back to the growth factor. We talked about seeking the growth in industries, growth of various categories, and we talked about competition and the need to stay alert in order to maintain and sustain your brand so that we shall touch upon that subject once again. And this is what I talked about earlier that there are certain common denominators which are going to form the building blocks of brand management as a subject in totality. And therefore, when I talk about these facets or these building blocks, it is not repetition for the sake of repetition, it rather is to talk about those factors which will keep on making your understanding clearer and clearer. Product categories and brands proliferate because of the falling three reasons. Strong brands create value for the company, we talked about that earlier, and lead businesses into diversified areas and hence diverse product categories coming to being. In order to further lucidate this factor, let me rephrase it. When you have a strong brand, you like to take benefit of the value of that brand not only in that area in which the brand exists, but also in areas in which that brand name can do wonders for the business. If brand X is really creating a lot of value for the company and also for the consumers in the area of detergents, you might start thinking that we should also get into cold drinks for example. And the brand is already established, people know it, there is a very strong brand preference for it and hence a very strong brand franchise. If you create another brand in another category, there is nothing stopping us. So what you are doing is, you are getting into another diversified area. This is what I talked about earlier, different categories, different product management and hence different brand management underneath. The second factor is growth again, which creates opportunities to create more brands within one particular category to serve different segments. Why? You have brand A and the category for example is foods, fast food for example. And you see it in your brand reaching a certain plateau and you know that it cannot further grow, meaning it may remain very strong, it may keep on giving you the kind of profits that you have been generating for the last couple of years, but it does not have any further potential to give you further profitability and hence even better cash flows and better earnings and better value for your stocks. So you think of introducing another brand, whether that brand becomes a success or a failure that remains to be seen by the management of the company, but that is something which really necessitates introducing another brand and another brand and another within the same product category. The third factor why you introduce brands and dilate in the categories is to achieve growth. A company might run into a situation where it is not going at all. So the company, the management have to sit together, heads down, what do we do? So the situation necessitates to introduce more brands because the existing brands are not really helping you to achieve growth. The company might be kind of nose diving. So as a very urgent move, you get into new brands in the hope that new brands are going to be a success because you never start these kind of initiations and introductions with the kind of failing that the brand is not going to be a success. You always are optimistic and that's the way you have to be in business. Having said that, let me state, when we are dealing with categories of branded products, we are dealing with product management. And I think I have made it very clear thus far that product management is kind of see a bigger thing and within the product management we have brands. So brand management is kind of a smaller thing relatively in comparison with product management. To say it again, product management for product A, category A, I am sorry to say that for category A and within that category so many different brands and category B is another product category and in that category we have so many different brands. So brand management goes underneath. When we deal with brands, like I have said, we deal with brand management. How? I have explained that in words. Now let us take a look at a graphical presentation which is going to make the concept very clear to you. Let's take a look at the traditional functional structure. As you can see from the graphical presentation we have a marketing manager who has reporting to him, three managers, I mean it can be four managers, five managers but just for the sake of discussion we say three managers in this presentation. Marketing communications manager who is responsible for advertising campaigns and promotions and dealing with advertising agencies and so on and so forth. Then we have the sales manager who is responsible for sales. He sells, sells and sells and manages sales all over the territory. Then we have the marketing administration manager who is responsible for let us say coordinating all the marketing and sales activities among various units of the company in the company's territory. If it is one country, within the country if it is one region, within the region. Before we move on to the next presentation which is the functional structure with product and brand management, let me tell you one thing that the traditional structure is not the outdated structure. It still is involved. It is not replaced by the structure which I am going to show you now. Why? I am going to leave it to your imagination until the time I talk about that later in a few minutes. Now looking at this structure which is the functional structure with product and brand management, we again see the marketing manager sitting right there. Yes, he has to be there or she has to be there and we also have the same old marketing communications manager and marketing administration manager underneath the marketing manager supporting him, reporting to him. But then we also see two additions. We see two managers sitting right and left of the two old managers, the meaning marketing communications manager and marketing administration manager. The two additions are product manager for product line A, which for the sake of discussion is detergents. And then we have on the right side of the presentation product manager for product line B, which is personal care products like you see the shave cream or toothpaste or you know the soap or so on and so forth. These managers are responsible for their respective product lines because they are dealing with two different products. And just look at this, you know, from the standpoint of these two lines being two different companies. It could have been very well the case that product line A is a different company and product line B is a different company. But if you have these two lines forming the same company, it explains to the why should we have two different product managers and two different brand management. All right, getting back to product line A, you can see that we have two brand managers because the one is brand manager for brand A and we have brand manager for brand B. And the reason we have the product line A manager because he's dealing with a category and a category you see is a collection of different items, branded items. So that's why we have brand A manager and then we have brand B manager. And if we have another brand, maybe we have a brand C manager. And it also very well could be that we have three managers managing like four or five different brands. If a few of them happen to be kind of small brands. So there's no hard and faster rule that for every brand that has to be a separate brand manager, it all depends on the company and how they decide about the number of brand managers in the light of the workload, the number of activities and the complexities involved in the management process when it comes to managing different brands they have. Now what you see on the right hand side of the presentation is a total replication of what I have talked about for product line A. This is a hypothetical case and I think this is quite enough for our understanding of what product management and brand management is all about. So after having taken a very good look at the two charts, we can easily summarize our findings. I will no longer leave that to your imagination and I would like to put that in a summarize for myself. Number one finding is and very important, it is practical and prudent to have different managers for different products and different brands. Especially designated managers for specially designated products and brands always do a better job because there's no confusion. There is no communication across the categories. There is no division of attention and attraction across the categories. They bring marketing mix of brands and products that they are dealing with in a sharper focus and therefore they make better decisions about the marketing mix of these, of those brands. Another finding is that working across the categories breeds complications, I touched upon that earlier and hence managers make less than highly qualitative decisions because of the lack of focus due to work overload. And at the end of the day they hurt their brands with less profitability and maybe outright losses. The last finding is product and brand management does not replace the traditional structure. It only adds new layers to the structure of the marketing department. This is a finding which needs further elaboration. What I'm saying is that the traditional marketing structure is not outdated, it still is in vogue. And if you are a one brand company, you still have that structure. Because in that case, you don't really have to have a product manager. And you don't really have to have brand manager or brand managers under the product manager because you're dealing with just one brand. And that job could be very easily and convincingly done by the marketing manager. Who is everything rolled into one, whether he's the product manager, he's the brand manager, and he looks after the total responsibilities of the marketing department because he's dealing with just one brand. And therefore, the traditional marketing structure, I'm calling it traditional, is not outdated. The modern functional structure, which we have seen with added layers, comes into play when we have more than one brand and maybe more than one category. I would like to point out one thing at this functional structure with product or brand management, which you might have noticed already, that we are showing the sales managers. I mean, the two sales managers sitting between kind of sandwiched between the brand managers in two different categories. Now, a question might flash into your minds. Why has the sales managers that have been demoted from the traditional structure a level below into the modern structure? There's nothing like that. It all depends on the company. There's no hard and fast rule. The reason I'm showing these two sales managers sitting between brand managers is for the sake of having a better coordination among these people who form a team for the marketing manager. So this is not to be confused with an apparently looking demotion. Okay, thanks. Again, to summarize, I can say that the layers you know which you see added at the modern functional structure have been added in order to improve functionality of the area of brand management. What are the functions of brand management? Let's take a look at the graphical presentation now. Brand management we can sense thus far is at the heart of marketing management. It is the centerpiece. And there are so many functions which revolve around this centerpiece. What are those? Let's talk about those. We have to have a very clear understanding of those. A brand manager develops long range competitive strategy for the brand. What does that mean? It is a very simple and precise kind of a statement. But this speaks volumes. While strategizing, you've got to take into account different strategies. It's not just one strategy. For your brand, you have to have a strategy about your pricing. For your brand, you have to have a strategy about your advertising and promotions. You have to have a sales strategy which is directly linked with distribution strategy in order to increase sales. Then you have to have a financial strategy. By a financial strategy, I mean another very important touch point. By a financial strategy, I mean whether the company is going to generate revenues through the existing brands or the company needs money from outside sources in order to advertise and promote brand A or brand B or brand C. So what I'm saying is it is a set of strategies. Or you can put it like this. It is a set of sub-strategies which I've talked about, which form the overall business strategy for the company devised by the brand manager and honed by the marketing manager. The second important function of a brand manager is to prepare with the help of salespeople, sales forecasts, and dovetail the same into the marketing plans and budgets. Don't be overwhelmed and overawed by the terminology of marketing plans and budgets. Marketing plan basically consists of different strategies which I already have talked about. And whenever you talk about strategies, those who have not done yet the course on marketing management, I would repeat. Strategies, whenever you talk about entail certain tactics. So getting back to marketing plan, when you talk of strategies, you also have to talk about the tactics which you are going to employ in order to fulfill your strategy. Strategy is a certain direction or a destination you see to the where you're going. In order to reach that destination, you have to have a set of tactics. How to reach there? Very straight or right turn and then left turn and then straight. So those are tactics. You come up with a marketing plan. And into the marketing plan, you dovetail your numbers. When you do that with the help of sales forecasts, you are preparing your budgets. And budgets are all about revenues and expenditures. To say in very precise words, you're talking about a brand. You're making a marketing plan. You've got to know what is going to be the top line, meaning the amount of revenue that the brand is going to generate. And then you have done below expenditures and you keep on subtracting those until the time you hit the bottom line, which is either net profits or net losses. So these are the kind of numbers that you have to incorporate into your budgets, which are kind of dovetail with the marketing plan. And marketing plans are all narratives. And marketing plans and budgets put together that becomes your overall business plan. The third function, again, which is a very important function of brand management is that a brand manager has to work with advertising agencies in order to develop campaigns. And before developing campaigns, he has to develop a copy. And you know what a copy is. You must have studied that in your basic marketing course. A copy is to see a small set of communication which you use while preparing your advertising plans. And whatever you communicate to the consumer about brand features, benefits, which it brings to consumers, or whatever you want to talk about the brand, which builds its character and eventually gives the brand its identity, that's part of the communication. And that communication becomes a copy. And it is the responsibility of the brand manager to see to it that the copy is right. It is accurate. And with accuracy, he deals with the advertising agencies for them to come up with campaigns which are very, very relevant for the brand. The fourth function of brand management, of that matter, a brand manager, is to stimulate support for the brand among the salespeople and members of the trade, meaning distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. This is a tough job. And he can seek very comprehensive support only if he is very convincing about the strategies that he has devised, and strategies have got to be the true reflection of the need that the brand or brands are going to fulfill in the marketplace. So conviction comes with accuracy and with evidence and with the right kind of thinking, the right philosophy, the right rationale behind the brand, and the right reason for being for the brand. Having said that, we now move on to function number five, which is to gather intelligence from the brand's performance, customer and trade attitudes, new problems, and opportunities. What does that mean? What this means is that a brand manager has got to have his fingers on the pulse of the market. He's got to understand his own brand. He's got to understand competitors' brands, and then identify any problems that he might be facing toward his brands, and then look for the solutions that are needed to rectify the problem. This is a very important function. And this brings into play his coordination and his continuous liaison with the outside agencies like market research companies. Because they might have to employ one in order to find out what's going on with the brand. Or even if the brand is doing very well, it still has to know what are the features which are affecting so many consumers and bringing the company higher level of sales. So this basically is a function which calls for a very close liaison and coordination, not only with outside agencies, but also with members of the paid and his own peers in the sales department. Function number six, changing needs of the market by initiating new products or bringing about improvements in the existing ones. What does this mean? If the brand manager knows very well about the market, and he knows how the brand is moving in the market, in comparison with the brands of the competition, then he definitely is in a better position to make better decisions about the brand. The brand manager can easily make this decision. Which brand should be brought into the market? Or should the existing brand be improved? These are the functions I've talked about. And they might sound like total marketing effort. And that might flash one question into your minds. If this is what a brand manager is going to do, what is the marketing manager for? The answer is that product manager has got to have total support of the marketing manager. And he cannot move, and he should not move, without the patronage of the marketing manager. Marketing manager, ahead of the marketing year, will not be able to support the brand manager. The job will not be able to handle it very well. I think we have talked quite a bit about the functions of brand management. And in the hope that we all are clear about what brand management does, let's now move on to the next topic. Why so much talk about brand management? Why is it that everybody in the business community talking about brand management much more than before? We have seen and we have sensed thus far that brand management is a big area. And there are certain fundamental factors which will keep popping up again and again. And the factors which will keep popping again and again are growth and competition. We have already talked about the growth and competition that we both go through together. Because of these two factors, brand management came to this point in our lives. And now the question is, how to grow? We have talked about competition. We have talked about growth. Again, the question is how to grow? Because unless we grow, we cannot manage brands. And we cannot compete. We cannot be good for the company. We cannot be good for the business. So on and so forth. We have to keep in mind that there are only two ways to grow. One is through organic growth and the other is through acquisitions. We should talk about these two different models of business one by one. What does organic growth mean? Organic growth means that it is like a plant that is planted. It is planted. And it is planted. It is organic growth. But you know what it means is that you create a brand, then you maintain it, then you sustain it for all times to come for consistent financial results like good profitability, good earnings, good cash flows, the same factors and denominators which I have talked about earlier. This is a route which is not that easy. It is a difficult route. And it takes a long, long time, long, long time. But if you see the situation of a company allows that, which it does in so many cases, the company should follow this route. The other route which I have talked about is acquisitions. This means that if you look at your perspective in the market and see that it is not about running, you should know which companies or brands are in the market that you can imagine. Why are they trying to sell? They could bring in different reasons. One could be that you offer an awful lot of money to them and the offer is so tempting they cannot refuse. The other possibility could be that their brand is not doing all that well and they may like to get rid of that. And you knowing that the brand has the potential and you can turn the brand around, you again make an offer. So this is the way that you buy brands through acquisitions. A lot of acquisitions have been taking place over the last 15 to 20 years. And especially in the 1980s, when the concept of brand management came into the limelight and sharp focus, that was a time when so many companies were running after very strong brands in order to make sure that they could guarantee future earnings. So a lot of activity in terms of buying and selling was taking place in those days. This is not to say that this kind of activity is not taking place nowadays. It does take place. The question is whether to grow through organic growth or through acquisitions. As I said, organic growth is if you do not get a brand in the market or if you do not get a company, then naturally you have one option that you should do organic growth. And for that you will have to go through every stage. If that second possibility comes along, if it presents itself and you find that this is kind of a gift, although you have to pay a lot of money for that, then you go for that. And that is kind of a short cut and that is a route which is much less difficult than going through the organic phase. To give you an example, a recent example, one of the largest companies manufacturing computers on the world stage has been taken over by a relatively smaller company from this part of the world with this concept. It is an acquisition that has taken place. The medium of instruction limits me to name the companies but I think this is good enough telling you that a smaller company has bought a much bigger and stronger company only in order to own their strong brand because once they have the strong brand, they can guarantee future earnings. Now this is not to suggest that market growth always takes place through acquisitions. All I'm saying is whatever route you follow, you've got to maintain the brand and you've got to sustain the brand and you've got to make sure that regardless of the ownership of the brand at any given particular point in time, you as brand manager manage the brand right. Now the question is what is it that makes organic growth more difficult than the other route? There are different factors. One is the maturity of the category you are a part of. Maybe the category does not have the potential to further grow. Even a few and also your competitors keep on bringing in more brands but a category is not inflating because the pie has already dilated to the maximum possible point. Although pie juhay si jada badi nahi hori we're talking about the impediments in the way of growing organically. And I would summarize it like this. Markets grow and mature. Categories grow and mature. And these are the cases in particular in the western markets. This may not be the case in Pakistan. I will talk about that also. But it is basically because of the maturity factor that growth through organic pick that becomes at times very difficult when companies start running after brands which are already established. And they start offering amount of money to the intended targets which are astronomical. Yani juhon ke stock ke value hoti hai juhon ke earnings ke ratio hoti hai usse baahat siyada companies offer katni hai. And the intended targets become so kind of tempted by the offer. The intended buyer is making that they end up being bought up. And the companies now that have bought those companies and bought those brands feel comfortable because they know they can now grow that immediately brings more revenue to the company the more volumes to the company in the shape of new brands and better earnings, better ratios and better profitability. So this is the reason why we have talked about the difficulty involved in the way of growing organically. And the difficulty involved in the way of growing organically automatically becomes the comforting factor when you go for growth through acquisitions. Alright. In today's lecture we have talked about introduction to the concept of brand management. We have tried to understand brands what they are, who they are and how they're managed. About brand management we have talked about it briefly. I say briefly because we shall keep talking about that throughout the course because the course is all about that. We also touched upon the functions of brand management which are at the centre place of the overall functions of marketing and we also have touched upon why is there so much talk nowadays about the concept of brand management what has brought this concept into the limelight and into a sharp focus and what have been the developments that have taken place after that and keep on taking place even today. We shall talk about some very interesting concepts like brand value brand equity brand power in order to be able to understand the real definition of brand management in the next lecture and before I say hudahafis to you let me get back to a very important point which is about the course resource. I have not touched upon that so far let's take a look at the list of suggested readings that you should be laying your hands on during the course and it goes without saying that the suggested readings are in addition to the lectures which I shall be delivering and the handouts which you are going to get very regularly relating all the lectures that I am going to deliver so getting back to the books that you must read let's take a look at the list the brand asset management by Scott M. Davis this is a book which I suggest you treat as your textbook it's not a very big book it explains the whole concept beautifully in simple words and anybody who is wanting to have a very good understanding of the subject should read this book from cover to cover then we have building strong brands by David Ochre who is supposed to be one of the marketing gurus in the present day world it's a big thick book I do not really expect you to go through this book cover to cover what I do expect is that you use this book as a reference because the level of comprehension you are going to derive out of this book is going to be I would say very very special then we have another book by the title branding author is Jeffrey Randall it's a small book it is not kind of a book which you read and can develop a very clear understanding of the concept in totality this is kind of a critique and this book is going to help you while you are reading other books alongside this one so just skin through it and then lastly you can read this book by the name of strategic brand management by a French author probably Jean Noël Capferre this is a little high level book I again do not really expect you to read this book from cover to cover you will not have time and even if you have you may not be able to fully appreciate this book until the time you have some level of practical exposure to the marketing world but I do expect you to skin through it and use it as a reference book wherever you are stuck or wherever you think you should be getting a little more details with this I would say for the harvest to you and see you in the next lecture thank you very much