 Asalaamu alaikum khabab, Ateena khazrat. We are into lecture number six of Brand Management, MPIT 624. The topic of learning today is going to be continuation of what I talked about yesterday, that is strategic management process. And I was talking about important elements of the process like graduation, admission, and I hope that we have a very clear understanding of those concepts. Just to give you a recap, vision deals with the future of the company, where the company is today, and where the management would like to take the company tomorrow, meaning years to come. So in other words, because we have to determine the destination where the company want to reach. And that is something which is dealt with by the vision statement. Mission deals with the present. And the present is all about the kind of customers the company is serving, the areas where the company is operating, and the resources which the company has engaged to achieve those objectives. Mission statement also talks about the commitments and the values of the people in the company, the meaning, management, the top management in particular, all the layers of management, and right down to the workers level. Because commitment and value create identity of the company, just like we create identity of a brand so that the brand can have the right image in the marketplace. We have to have the right commitment and values on part of the people working for the company in order to create the right most identity so that projection of the company is portrayed in the most right possible way. And also the objectives of the company are achieved. Mission statement does not really speak beyond that. And it is the job of the managers to see what is beyond that. Looking beyond that is to determine a long-term direction that the company must take for tomorrow. The reason is simple. Market is a dynamic place. Nothing is static. Things keep changing. And managers have got to stay very sensitive. They've got to keep their antennas very sensitive to feel what is going on in the market in so many different respects. Now, what are those changes which can have an impact on the thinking of managers and thereby giving them reason to consider those changes and then be prepared to come up with the right responses? One is the changing technologies. The other is changing lifestyles. Yet another is changing needs of customers, changing benchmarks of quality, and changing competition and overall conditions. Now, let us talk about these factors one by one. How and why they have an impact on the thinking of the managers just to stay abreast of all the developments. Changing technologies. When we talk of that, it doesn't always mean that we are talking of changing the equipment and machines and the apparatus within the factory. No. It may also mean that we are thinking of changes in order to improve services that the company sells or the company offers as part of sale of the product. It may mean that the company wants to bring about production efficiencies in the way it works. It may mean it wants to achieve very high productivity. The operating efficiencies in all the systems and procedures it has in place toward its working. Just to give you an example, you might as well consider induction of or improvement of the application of information technology with regard to your supply chain systems. You would like to know at every moment the status of stocks that you have spread all over the market. For example, all over the country. You have warehouses and you have stocks sitting there. From there, stocks are going out to the market and when they go out to the market, sales are taking place. You are recording transactions and serving customers. Some stocks are on the way. So you are also looking into logistics. You want to know all the time what is happening with logistics, what is happening with stocks, incoming stocks, what is the level, what is the level of the outgoing stocks, and so on and so forth. It is the application of the information technology which is going to bring about changes or rather improvements toward your informational needs so that you can make better decisions regarding the future and also in order to stay prepared for the future. So that is one example with regard to changing technologies. There could be many other examples and I would leave that to your imagination. The second factor which very necessitates thinking on part of managers is changing lifestyles. Just look around yourself, your own situations. The number of people driving cars today and the kind of cars they are driving today are the number of people riding bikes today and the kind of bikes they are riding today is very different from ten years ago. The kind of houses that we have today in this country are very different from the ones we had a few decades ago. A lot of developments have taken place. If you want to take a look at the total industry which comprises so many different sectors you will be able to draw correlations among all the products that are being produced by the industry as a whole and then arrive at a better decision for your brand because you can draw relationships. All these things move in tandem. This is one example of changing lifestyles. Another example could be look at the number of people going to restaurants in the evenings. Not so many people went to restaurants like ten to fifteen years ago or twenty years ago. Look at the concept of fast food, the way it has caught on. So all these changing lifestyles have got to be considered by brand managers and also the top managers while they are working on the strategic management process so that they are not out of step with the market. There could be so many examples but I would again leave that to your imagination and have your juices flowing here what those examples could be. Let us now get on to the other factor which makes its impact fell during the process and that is changing benchmarks of quality. Powerful brands create their own standards and it goes without saying that powerful brands are quality brands because of the innovations which they keep offering to the market and the extra attributes and benefits they offer to the market because of those innovations they keep changing their standards. In other words, they keep enhancing those standards. The enhanced standards become commonplace the one day and the process goes on. It becomes difficult for the marketplace I mean all the players who are part of the category to keep pace those who really can keep pace are successful and those who are not are not very successful or we can say they fail. Changing benchmarks is something in a way which could be initiated by yourself or by somebody else. If those benchmarks are created by a competition then you have to follow suit. If you are the one to take lead then they have to follow suit and that is the last factor which I pointed out earlier changing competition and overall conditions because anything which or any development that happens that takes place on the competition side that is something we have to be aware of and that is something that we just cannot ignore. So after managers have considered all these factors they are all set to make some fundamental choices about where to want to take the company from today to the destination and how that evolution and transformation will take place. It's a long journey. Easier said than done. That kind of stuff. The journey is long and like somebody said there is no destination. The journey itself is the destination and that's why I said the evolution and transformation how will that take place is something which managers really have to look into. That is the how part and that is something which is going to be answered by strategies that we are going to have and I shall talk about that in a few minutes. So the choices, the fundamental choices which the managers make or have made for their vision of the company and that also supplements present company mission with factors like what is going to be the future business makeup what are going to be the product lines and what is going to be the customer base. Let me clarify here that I keep talking about certain terminologies quite frequently like the segments, the segmental changes changing preferences changing technologies and customer base and so on and so forth. The reason being that we are talking about a process which is all encompassing and it takes into its fold not only marketing department but the whole business and since the brands form the backbone of the business we have to talk about these factors and these terminologies over and over again because they have the implications not only within the department of marketing they have the implications across all the functional boundaries. For example when we talk about bringing about change in technology the importance of the concept does not end at the boundary of the marketing department it goes well beyond that it goes into the department of finance because the way they have to talk about where they are from it has to travel into the area of production because they have to think about what kind of technologies they should be having in order to revamp the system. So what I am saying is when you hear things like the geographic areas to be covered or technologies which need changing or the customer base and changing preferences do not just think that we are too much focused on marketing just look upon these factors as the factors of overall business not the area of marketing. Let me now say that I have been talking about the fundamental choices that managers have to make in order to stay abreast of all the developments taking place in the market in order to arrive at the best possible decision for the future course of action. But I started talking about that in relation to the mission statement and before that of course vision statement. Back to mission statement for a while it talks about the present but there are no hard and fast rules that the mission statement only has to talk about the present. There are mission statements of companies to which are a little future oriented meaning they merge into the vision of the company also and in that case that company may not have a vision statement just one mission statement which talks about the present and it also talks about the future but what is important to understand for us is that we deal with the present in order to be prepared for the future but mostly the companies keep their mission statements concerned with the present and vision statement with their future. Having said that I can again say that the conceptual distinction between the two i.e. the vision and the mission remains valid and let me also add to this that a clear vision of future business and strategic direction is a prerequisite to strategic leadership or vice versa. If we have a clear vision if we have very clear vision of the company it leads to better leadership and we can also make this statement otherwise if we have good leadership that believes in strategic management and its thinking is also very strategic then it will have a very clear vision for the company and therefore will get down to business in real hard manner when it comes to the mission statement and following that. Good leadership is the one which steers the company, the whole company toward the desired destination. I mean nothing could direct the company better toward that destination than having good strategic leadership. I started talking about the leadership because this is an important element of the whole management process and without that nothing can move so that was and added the dimension to the discussion that we had. Anyway in the hope that we are now very clear about the vision and the mission let us now start talking about setting objectives. How do we set objectives? What is it that objectives do and what is the basis of setting those objectives? After these two elements meaning vision and mission are in place we have to convert those into specific objectives. This is what I have meant. Before we translate those we have to have a very solid and very logical basis. How we arrive at that basis I will talk about that in a few minutes. But important to the concept right now is the performance of all managers is measured by the level of achievement of the objectives that we set. And these objectives are translation of the vision and the mission of the company. It is generally said that objectives should be set in an ambitious way. Objectives should be bold because when they are bold and they are ambitious people in the company who are supposed to achieve those they become more aggressive in their pursuits. Why they become more aggressive because they have very ambitious objectives to achieve and that brings the best out of them they become more focused, more intentional and more attentive in their aim to improve the comparative position of the company. Having said that the next step is that objectives have got to be broken down into different levels. They've got to be broken off divisions, then into subdivisions and units whatever functional areas the company has within itself. So it is the hierarchy of the company that is going to define how the broken down parts of the objectives are going to be assigned to different people working for those departments and hence the overall company. Why it is done? It is done so that the performance can be measured only if you have goals which are quantified that when you have objectives in quantitative terms it is easy at the end of the year or even before that to see to what extent people have achieved those objectives. And it also leads to creating a work oriented culture and that kind of a culture becomes more conducive to overall achievement of the company objectives which helps the company achieve its mission and assure fulfillment of the vision. We have talked about the quantification of the objectives so that performance of different managers and the company can be measured. We also have to understand the kinds of objectives that we set for the companies. There are two kinds financial objectives and strategic objectives. Financial objectives deal with things like return on investment earnings growth dividends growth overall profitability share value appreciation and cash flows. Strategic objectives deal with things like increase in market share the number of markets that are to be covered innovations that are to be brought about the quality parameters if a change is needed in that which it will be we have got to define those in terms of objectives. And that also is something which has got to be made measurable. If a manager is in a position to achieve what has been envisaged and he gives the results in terms of placing that quality system at the right place that can be measured very easily. Technological leadership in relation to competitors so these are the kind of objectives which we have falling under the strategic area. And I would like to add one thing that financial objectives like return on investment and dividends and earnings and all those things are also very strategic. It is not to say that we have drawn a distinction between financial and strategic in the sense that one set of objectives which are financial are not strategic and others are it is not that it is just for the sake of understanding what kinds of objectives there are that fall in one area and what are the ones which fall under another area. Both financial and strategic objectives are to be fulfilled and that goes without saying in short term and also in long term. The short term fulfillment is the fulfillment of the mission and the long term sets the course for fulfilling division. It allows managers what to do next in terms of the planning and in terms of their execution. Now having said that we are done with the process of setting objectives we are quite very clear how objectives are set why they are set, how they are divided how people are going to be made responsible to achieve those and why people are made responsible to achieve those and what happens when we set objectives we develop a work oriented culture and when we have that culture everybody is out to achieve results and everybody is very clear about what one is supposed to be doing and nobody can get into the blame game pointing fingers towards others that this is something which I was not supposed to do and this is something which you were supposed to do. So once we have these objectives in place the next step is that we have to craft a compatible strategy and that compatible strategy is the business strategy and like I indicated earlier this business strategy is a combination of so many different strategies again there is no hard and fast rules you have to have as part of your total management process it all depends on the circumstances the situation the markets you are dealing with the number of brands you have and the execution process which has got to be there to achieve results if you think that we have to have a strategy regarding improving things in the office for example you should have that strategy in place if you think that setting things right in the office all over the company works toward institutionalizing the concept of total quality management then you may have a strategy on TQM and if you think that the company is already following that course you may not talk about that as part of the business plan or as part of the management process so the number of strategies is not part of some rule it all depends the kind of execution or the course of action which you are going to have or which you should have to reach that destination which I talked about strategy like I said earlier has to be very compatible with objectives meaning it has got to be in line with the objectives that we have set it just cannot go astray from objectives flow the strategy and from strategy will flow the execution and strategies like I said could be so many once we have these strategies in place the next step is how to implement those strategies this is a very important stage an extremely important stage which basically deals with the area of execution I think I did talk about this in the last lecture that according to some of the management experts of today execution has taken on such a dimension that they say execution must take precedence over strategy although this sounds like a misstatement but what the mean is that execution is so important if you do not follow that properly the strategy that you have devised may not make any sense I can say that in other words you can hire an outside consultant to help you devise a good strategy a nice worded strategy which makes a lot of sense in terms of business in terms of its competitive posture and in so many different terms but then when it comes to execution it is the people within the company who have to do that in order to make strategy work so implementation stage is a very high significance and people have got to be in place in order to be able to execute all the strategies that have been laid down in order to reach the destination when I say people have got to be in place what I am saying is that having the right organization is one of the prerequisites of implementing your strategies so in other words you may have a strategy that deals with human resource going back to my previous example when I was talking about the application of information technology to the area of supply chain management what if you don't have people or even if you have you may feel the need to impart some special training in order to bring them at par or compatible with the technology which you are going to institutionalize in the company the human resource strategy from that point of view becomes very important and execution becomes even more so that is the important significance of execution what if you have a beautiful strategy dealing with brand management and the company doesn't have a brand manager and the marketing manager complaining and ending up with a complaint that I couldn't really do justice with my job because I did not really have the proper support had I had the requisite support things would have been different but then the damage is done that's history so having the right strategy and then going for execution by mobilizing resources is the name of the game thus far we have talked about objectives strategies in terms of crafting a strategy and in terms of implementing a strategy I would like to summarize all this for your benefit and put the whole thing in the following words objectives are the ends strategies are the means and strategies answers questions relating to whether to and how to meaning whether to concentrate on one market or expand to others whether to concentrate on one product line or get into related product lines whether to be in a few product lines relating each other or get into diversified business these are all examples whether to expand the number of customers that we are serving or to restrict ourselves to just one niche whether to achieve competitive advantage a very important element of management nowadays whether to achieve competitive advantage through cost cutting cost controls or adding very unique features to the product these are the kind of questions which strategies answers as means to achieving our ends strategies also answers how to do that how to respond to competitive pressures for example how to respond to changing needs like I talked earlier how to build an organization how to further improve that so the top priority job of managers is crafting strategies and implementing strategies and giving good leadership to the execution process if execution process is not really excellent like somebody said then management really drifts into mediocrity and that is not something which any good company likes companies have thought to work like excellent companies so that they can excellent brands and those excellent brands can have a lot of power in the market and give a lot of value to the company and generate value for their consumers so having talked about all these things now let us move on to the next step of the management process which deals with the evaluation once we have implemented our strategies and we are in the process of implementing strategies we are gradually achieving our objectives and once we have completed the process we are all set to see what we have achieved in relation to the progress that we had set to ourselves the level of achievement tells to what extent managers have been successful in achieving what was envisioned and if something has gone wrong toward that achievement one has to sit, put the hat down and think about what kind of changes are needed in the strategy or in the tactics meaning execution or maybe in the organization maybe in the technology maybe in the marketplace meaning distribution systems any improvement required there you have to think of that and all the factors which have been responsible for the shortfall or for not letting you achieve 100% that you wanted to achieve you have to fix those and in case the management has succeeded in fulfilling all the objectives that is set to itself well congratulations so that is the management process and we are now done with the macro understanding of the process and with this we shall move on to the brand development model or brand management development model for which what we have talked about so far is going to be a prerequisite let's move on to the next topic just like overall vision for the company is the starting point of the strategic management process brand vision or strategic brand vision is the starting point of the strategic brand management process there is no way that the company can move ahead with its overall vision or strategic planning without taking into account its brand or brands in other words there is no way that the planning process can be completed or even initiated without taking into account what is the vision for the brand of brand managers having said that it becomes obvious that strategic brand vision has got to flow out of overall vision for the company and this can also be said otherwise that once you have the brand vision that builds up the overall vision for the company because brands are all about companies and companies are all about brands so this is kind of a process which complements each other and supplements each other whether it should start top down or bottom up that is something else and we shall talk about that but for the sake of understanding so far that the overall vision is something which gives birth to the concept of brand vision therefore overall vision must specify the way the management looks at the brand future in the long run that is a prerequisite without that vision of the company is not complete it is truncated brand future refers to the following factors and these are again the ones which I have been talking about earlier but then since it is part of the concept that we are talking about could we have to talk about those once again brand future you would agree with me and maybe you already have conjured up all the factors in your mind faster than I can are markets and market segments that are to be served by the brand in future and quality improvements that are to be brought about investments that are to be made now these are the factors that we have talked about in so much detail so I do not really feel the need for going back to what we already have talked about and understood very well why there is a need for going into more markets why is the need for bringing into play newer technologies we have talked about all those quite very clear so brand vision just like companies overall vision is something this deals with brand future once we are clear about the brand future we have to get down to brand mission and just like company mission brand mission also deals with the present meaning the markets we are covering at the moment the customers that we are serving at the moment why we serve those customers why we cover those markets we are covering the quality factors that are into play why so these are the kind of things that we take into account what we talk about the brand mission what in addition to these factors we can also say what geographical areas and what benefits we are going to provide and what kind of results could we envisage in terms of sales and profits and earnings and so on and so forth in addition to these factors which form the part of the mission for the brand we also talk about values and the values relate to the company culture company culture is not something which comes up overnight company culture is something which you institutionalize and which people inculcate over you know years and years so that is something which really comes into play along with the mission of the brand in order to achieve the overall goals for the brand and hence the overall goals for the company the values relate to the areas like integrity and honesty like quality consciousness the consciousness in terms of working full hours so on and so forth now when we talk about these things these are not really proverbial things these are things which again could be translated into strategies and guess what kind of strategy you would like to have when you are talking about values I think it should be a part of the human resource strategy in which human resource specialists should talk about the kind of people companies needing in light of the values company wants to set in place it is quite very difficult to judge people when they are entering the company in terms of the honesty factor in terms of the integrity factor and in terms of the conscientiousness but what is more important here is that top management has got to create a culture which really leads to creating good values what is company culture that is a very interesting question in very simple words company culture is the behavior of the management and the behavior of the management starts from the top whatever is taking place at the top is bound to be followed like experts have said and this is part of the textbooks and research material that people even start following the way their leaders sit in chairs the way they talk to their subordinates the way they talk to their guests the way they dress up so company culture is the totality of behavior of the top management in the first place and then down the layers therefore are a byproduct of that behavior and if leaders or the managers prove through their actions not their words that they are honest they are people of integrity they believe in the hard work they really are committed to quality and they are committed to quality in a way that even if the company does not really have quality manuals which the company should have in the first place working on the assembly lines or people working in the field where they are not being forced by the immediate superiors will work in a fashion that they deliver quality so that is about the values which when coming to play along with the mission which deals with the present of the brand do a lot toward achievement of goals and we have to have good values it has been observed that companies that have very clear vision and a good mission in place and really believe in values meaning have those values in place and those values are being followed do end up very successful in terms of gaining high market share good profitability and good level of leadership and when a company has high level of profitability and high level of market share what happens I think you know that you are experts by now at least on that subject they have powerful brands they have good brand managers they have good brand management and when they have powerful brands they have good financial value so this is all about mission and vision and setting objectives and how the brands should develop the vision for themselves and what should be their mission etc etc having said that the next question which comes to the mind is why have brand vision at all we are clear what a vision is we are also clear what mission is and we are also clear what values are and we are also quite very clear how these three fundamental elements help us achieve objectives which are the real ends of the company the question still remains why a brand vision there are certain solid reasons that companies like to have brand vision let me also state the name of Scott David the author of the book I am referring to not many companies like to have a very clear vision you will be astonished to know when he is talking about that he is not talking in reference to our market he is talking in reference to the global market the recent companies do not really like to have a very clear vision in a written form and then of course a mission and so on and so forth because they think they are very clear about the concept and they are very clear about their future thinking they have a lot of foresight they don't really have to have this thing in writing but the fact remains if they do not have that in writing they do not stay as clear as they think they are thinking becomes nebulous it is clouded and it brings in mediocrity what happens is mediocrity comes because of drifting they are drifting among so many different strategies they are not sticking to one strategy or a set of strategies which you devised if you had put all that into writing as part of the overall business plan or as part of the overall management process then this drifting takes place and that leads to mediocrity and mediocrity leads to confusion managers keep changing their strategies very frequently in desperation they are not very clear what really to do the reason they are not very clear because they are also frustrated they do not really have people to support them why don't they have people to support them when I say people I mean their peers their colleagues and all the stakeholders why are they not getting their support the reason they are not getting their support because they never took them into confidence why did they not take them into confidence they did not take them into confidence because they did not have that clear vision into writing or in a form whereby they could get their commitment toward that process and this is what you have been talking about in this lecture and also in the last couple of lectures so brand vision leads to two or three rather three different factors which when come into play really make things very formal for all the managers to work on and that is when the stage is set for trastating the overall vision into objectives and then breaking those objectives into division level and so on and so forth and crafting a strategy implementing a strategy executing that and then getting results and then at the end of the day feeling either very good or disappointed and I'm sure you as a good brand manager will not like to feel disappointed you would like to be one of the good brands rather excellent brands okay so having talked about that let's get on to those other factors which a clear brand vision leads to one is that brand vision commits management how that commitment takes place that is the topic of discussion now brand vision fulfills three purposes and through fulfillment of that it commits the management and also all the stakeholders toward brand management number one is it creates consensus among top management and number two is it guides the market research number three is it mandates telling all the stakeholders where we are today and where we want to reach and what is it that we are going to take in order to reach there only then those stakeholders are going to support you in all respects so let us talk about these three factors one by one which fulfill the purpose of a brand vision the consensus among management is one of the foremost things that must emerge before other things move how that happens going back to the objectives of the overall business the traditional approaches has been that top management have been talking about growth of the business in terms of certain percentage like we are here and for the next year we have to grow another 10% and year after another 10% and year after another 10% this is just a hypothetical situation now this traditional approach is still in practice this is not to say that it has gone out the window no it has not it has taken a new dimension in light of the concept of brand management and this is what I talked about in the very first lecture just suppose that you are working in a company that has more than one brand and when you have more than one brand profitability and contribution in terms of financials have to come through brands when that happens the brands cannot be ignored and brand management and brand managers cannot be ignored so automatically what happens is that the process starts from bottom up you are the people who have to tell the top management the contribution that you are going to generate through your brands suppose once again that you are working in a company which is dealing in three different product lines one line is dairy products the other is like maybe fruit juices and the third one is something else could be biscuits for example or chocolates you have brand managers in one line looking after different products falling in that dairy product line and another you know couple in the other product line which deals with juices and another few in the third product line dealing with chocolates or biscuits all of you have to make your own respective P&Ls meaning popular loss accounts and arrive at the final figure as to what is going to be the contribution of your brands given the fact that you know your market and given the fact that you know your customers and given the fact whatever developments are taking place in the marketplace and given the fact that you are very well conversant with the segments that you are approaching and you are dealing with and also given the fact that you are having a very clear understanding of the future the way you should be handling those very segments and the way you should be adding more segments additional segments to your existing business in terms of existing brands or maybe in terms of adding a few more brands so these are the workings that you as brand managers are supposed to be doing and then you are going to be the ones who will be informing the top management about the financial contributions that your respective brands are going to make to avoid the overall financial contribution of the company so the process has started for downstairs and it goes up in order to go up and it happens is that you have got to talk with the top management, you have to present your case that this is what you have come up with and this is the vision of the brand that you have in place and this is the mission and given all this we have come up with these figures at the end of the day there is going to be either consensus or not consensus but the objective is to generate a consensus once you have created that consensus you are all set to go ahead with the brand building model the major benefit of that consensus is like I said earlier there will be no blame game and there will be no passing the buck as they say you know what you are supposed to be doing and other departments who come into play because of the context that your brand is going to have with them they will be doing their part and when that happens everybody knows what one is supposed to be doing and that is what you call developing the right corporate culture and the right corporate setup in order to execute that vision into a series of actions designed to achieve whatever you want to achieve another purpose that brand vision fulfills is research why market research whatever decisions you are going to make or whatever variables you are going to work with when it relates your vision or your mission has to have certain basis and has to have certain logic without solid logic and rationale you just cannot be whimsical in terms of giving your opinions to the top management or even if you are not supposed to give those opinions to the top management you will never convince and satisfy yourself in the absence of some solid findings and those findings always come to you by way of research so you carry out market research in order to confirm and reconfirm the preferences of your consumers in order to know what are the use what are the kind of attitudes they have toward your product and attitudes they have toward competitive products but once you are clear about these factors you come up with a research design in order to get the right findings which are going to lead you to make the right decisions how you do that we will discuss that in the next lecture and whatever we have discussed today let me give you a recap very briefly and quickly we started discussing the management strategic process and all elements of that process starting with creating an overall vision right down to the evaluation stage where we evaluate our performance in terms of our achievements we followed different managers at different levels responsible for whatever they have done for the company and then getting the process for the on, on and on having been clear about that we started talking about the brand vision which flows out of the overall business vision and still talking about that we are right in the midst of what purposes brand vision fulfill and we are done with just one in the process of talking about the second one which will continue from where we are now leaving and I will look forward to talking with you again thank you very much and good afternoon