 As-Salaam-Alaikum-Khubat-e-Nuh-Hazrat, welcome to the virtual University of Pakistan. We are into lecture number 10, brand management, MKT 624. In the last lecture, I talked about developing brand vision and as a matter of fact, we talked about that aspect of the strategic brand management process in two lectures. And having had the understanding of the brand vision, we're all set to developing the brand picture. Brand picture is a very important snapshot that we have to have in our minds before we move further. We have the vision in place and now we are out to develop our brand with the image that we want customers to have in the minds. Therefore, brand picture is something which is externally driven. It is not something which is internally driven. Why? Because it is the reflection of the image that we want our customers to have of our brand. It has to be a reflection of all the promises that the brand makes and we want our customers to believe that we really can deliver those promises. So this snapshot becomes very important because this is the one that leads us to craft the right strategies. And unless we have the right strategies, we may not be able to or rather we shall not be able to leverage the strengths of our brand. And over years, we may damage it. So keep it from any damages. We have to be in the right track with the right strategies having the right brand picture. Brand picture is based on what we have been talking about earlier and I always said this is one of the macro building blocks, the brand image. I did talk about the importance of brand image. I did talk about the fact that it is the right identity which leads to the right image and so on and so forth. But I did not talk about how we develop this right image. In this lecture and also in the lecture to come, we are going to talk about how we develop the right image with the help of certain questions that we have to answer to arrive at the right findings regarding our brand. And in the process, we also talk about competition. Marketplace is all about competition and until the time we also understand the competition, we cannot make the right moves for our brand. Coming back to brand image, it consists of two different components. One is brand associations. The other is brand persona. Basically brand persona basically deals with personality of the brand. Associations refer to all the attributes and benefits that a brand has to offer to its customers. The higher the level of those attributes and benefits, the higher the level of associations that consumers or customers develop in their mind. Brand persona deals with the personality traits of the brand and the reason we call it persona because these are the traits and characteristics that we can express or rather we should express and we should envision in our mind while developing the brand in human terms. Just like explaining a human being, we say he is dependable, he is reliable, he is a person of integrity, he is funny, he is sturdy, he is rugged, so on and so forth. There could be so many adjectives which I can talk about and you also can think of. By the same token, while we are developing a brand, meaning while we are giving meaning to a product, we have to think in terms of different human characteristics in order to create a personification for the brand in the right most terms which means which really can lead the brand to have the right image in the minds of the consumers and therefore they can have the right associations with it because the stronger the association a brand has, more powerful and more valuable it is. Let us see this graphic illustration. Like I said, image has two components. As you can see, there is a part which consists of thought characteristics. The other part is brand persona. I have explained what these two parts are all about having looked at this. Now let us talk about what they really do. Let us first talk about associations before getting onto persona. According to Scott Davis, associations are part of a process whereby we ladder up as steps. The perceived benefits in our minds and the higher the step is, the stronger the association is. How that happens, we shall talk about that and let me give you here a very small example. You are using a soap. It talks only about cleansing the body while taking shower. You add up another benefit and you say it also carries an element of cream. It is creamy. It does not really leave the skin dry after you have used it. So what you are doing is, in the mind of the consumer, you are laddering up the attribute the product carries and the benefit it delivers. Of course, we cannot talk about an attribute. Just cannot think of communicating it until the time we are sure that it really can be translated into a benefit, meaning the promise the brand carries, it has to be deliverable. Scott Davis also goes on to say that features and attributes of any brand or any product for that matter remain undifferentiated in the minds of the consumers unless they translate into perceived benefits. So attributes and features notwithstanding, meaning despite the fact that they are there, until the time consumers can perceive those benefits, they will not start differentiating your brand from other products within the category which are either highly differentiated or not very much differentiated. And of course, whenever we introduce a brand, we always introduce a brand with the intention of occupying the top slot in terms of developing the top of the mind association. How that happens, let us keep talking about that. Just like Mr. Davis says that attributes and features remain undifferentiated until the time the benefits are translated. Just like Scott David says that features and attributes remain undifferentiated unless they translate into benefits. He also goes on to say that benefits remain weak until the time they translate into values and beliefs. One of those values and beliefs, let us talk about those with the help of a graphic illustration and while showing you that, I will also talk about examples in order to make this concept very clear in your minds. As you can see from the illustration, it is a pyramid and it has three levels. At the bottom, we have a block which says features and attributes. For any brand to make a mark in the marketplace, it has to have a minimal level of features and attributes unless it has certain features and attributes, it will not make itself demonstrable. Nobody is going to take it seriously, which means nobody is going to buy that brand. This is kind of a given that for any brand to make its presence in the marketplace, it has to have a minimal level of features and attributes because it is only then that it becomes noticeable. From there, it creates awareness and the process of awareness and the decision mechanism that are working in the minds of the consumers and the consumer going for a purchase process and then deciding yes, he or she is going to buy this brand takes place. Once the brand is bought, the next block that we see as part of the pyramid and it is the middle block, it says benefits. What it really means is that features and attributes which sit at the bottom of the pyramid have to translate themselves into certain benefits like I talked earlier because unless the brand delivers certain benefits, consumer will not develop the upper level of association which is in a way the middle level of association with the brand. You keep on adding more benefits and the consumer keeps on strengthening the association that he or she is strengthening in their mind. So in other words, while we go through this process, what is very important for us to understand is that this is an incremental process to start it off. You have to be at the bottom and for the bottom move up while you are delivering the benefits and your brand is developing an upper level of associations with the customers. You are still working on it and you are working on it in a way that it goes further high up. Why do you want to go further high up? Because you would like your brand to occupy the top most slot in the mind of the consumers. Let me also add here that this is the process which is very closely related with positioning the concept that we touched upon earlier and we will talk about in great detail in a later lecture. The objective of any brand or any company is to occupy the top most slot of the pyramid which says values and beliefs. The second level which is the benefit level, it fulfills certain functional needs of the consumers. The top most level which is the values and beliefs, it is beyond functions. It is taken for granted that the product or the brand with certain features and attributes is delivering certain benefits and therefore fulfilling your functional needs and it has now gone beyond that and is striking a chord and striking an emotional chord with your values and beliefs system. To give you an example, think of the most expensive or one of the most expensive clothing brands that you all as the young people like to wear. Brand ABC or XYZ, it fulfills certain functions because you need to wear clothes. Not only you need to wear clothes, it also fulfills certain functions like if it is total cotton in relation to the weather, it is fulfilling the one of the functions, it is providing you benefit, a very explicitly defined benefit. If it is full of style, it is not only fulfilling a certain function, it is having an appeal for the value system that you have and that value system is that you start feeling important, that you start feeling very confident, that you start feeling as if you are a little different and you want your peers and all others around you to notice that and you will recall this is one of the questions which we discussed as one of the functions of brands or one of the features that all brands must carry that a brand must make you feel that you are optimizing your decision by feeling that you have gone for the best brand in the category. So in other words what we have discussed so far is that this pyramid that you have seen consists of three different levels or three different blocks. The one at the bottom is about features and attributes and that is the lowest level of associations to which consumers develop with brands. The next level is which relates benefits, I mean deliverable benefits, once you are in a position to deliver those meaning you are fulfilling your promises, those promises are fulfilling certain functions and you are at the next level of associations in the minds of the consumers. From there a brand must strive to move on to the next level which is the highest level of the pyramid and it is at this level that consumers start developing certain emotional relationships with the brands. Why? Because the brands fulfill their emotional spiritual and cultural needs. These needs are beyond the functional benefits which the brand does provide them with. Again think of one of the most expensive car models which you think you can afford to buy. The moment you sit into that car and start driving it you start feeling kind of different and it does strike a card, an emotional card with your value system. If your values are that you have to look important by driving a very expensive car. If you do not have that value system then it doesn't matter but then in that case you are not part of the target audience. Anyway having said that it can be further summarized like the following words. The features and attributes that we see at the lowest level of the pyramid are the easiest to replicate or rather duplicate in terms of competition. If you have a brand which offers good features and which carries good attributes a competitor can easily follow that and duplicate that. And if that competitor starts talking about that in a more effective manner by having a better communication campaign, communication strategy the competitor can surpass your sales. What does that mean? It means that you have to move to the next level in order to make it more difficult for competition to follow what you have done. In the next level you have developed associations to be just stronger by giving some added benefits. So the more you go up as you can see from the illustration the more you go up the more it becomes difficult for competition to follow. At the highest level the features and attributes are most difficult to follow to copy or to duplicate. Why? Because this is the most difficult level for the competition to deal with it has developed very strong associations or the strongest possible level of association with the customers where associations are having an appeal toward their value system. And you have read that, you have studied that, you have learned that self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-esteem and so on and so forth. So it all depends what kinds of customers and what kinds of segments are content with what levels of associations while you are developing your brand although you must try to occupy the top most position of the pyramid but nevertheless you must also be conscious of the fact which are the products, I mean brands in terms of benefits and attributes carrying what kinds of benefits to be in accordance with the value system of customers within the target segment. Having said that let me explain this with another example. I gave you the example of the most expensive brand of clothing and also the one of the most expensive models of cars. Let us not talk about clothing again, you are wanting to have another brand of clothing that you desire just to fulfill your basic needs and you are not really concerned about the need to have self-fulfillment or the feeling of self-esteem and so on and so forth. All you care about is the benefits which the brand provides. You will go for that and you will not make a decision in favor of a brand which takes you to the highest level of associations where emotions are involved, where value systems are involved. Having talked about this example, let us not talk about another example which is example three and that is about a brand which is very, very basic. It is sitting on the retail shelf. It has features and attributes which are very primary in nature but you do think that it is worth the space it is having in the marketplace because it does offer something to its intended consumers. You may not buy it but it really is meant for those who do not even want to go to the next level of associations because they think that the very primary features and attributes that the brand carries fulfill their needs. Having given you these examples, we can draw this conclusion which I talked about earlier that associations have different levels. The level of association at the bottom of the pyramid offers brands, bottom of the mind recall and awareness and brands with the top level of associations offer the brands top of the mind recall and awareness. So that's the difference between the levels of associations and whatever happens in between I leave it to your imagination to think about that. This can be explained with the help of another illustration graphically for you to know what are these levels of associations all about. As you can see from this slide, the level one can be summarized as demonstrable features and attributes, number two is features and attributes plus benefits and number three features and attributes plus benefits plus fulfillment of values and translating all these three levels into the bar which you see at the bottom. You can very well see that the shade of the color is intensifying as the brand graduates from one level to the other. The shade at the level of features is the lightest and the shade at the level of values is the darkest. This can be further explained for your understanding and comprehension in the following way. Look at this bar, it is standing vertically. If you are at the top of the pyramid and your brand is touching that emotional card and has developed an emotional relationship with your value and belief system, your brand has the highest level of loyalty which leads to a very high level of power and which gives you the luxury of going for prize premiums because the marketing effort is not about fun, it is all about profitability, the higher shade of the market, better cash flows, better earnings and if your brand is at that level that also gives you the advantage of introducing more offerings or more products across categories. It is not that you are restricting yourselves only to soap for example, you can also get into creams, you can also get into something else. So in other words, when you are sitting at that point of the pyramid, you are in a position to define the whole category. When your brand is that powerful, you define the category and you ultimately transform that category in line with the benefits or in line with the levels of associations that your brand provides its consumers with. This point of association or this level of association is what you call in marketing the brand pinnacle, pinnacle is the top top point. So getting to the pinnacle should be the objective of any brand in any category. Having talked about that, let us now look at the importance of pinnacle the once again which I did touch upon very briefly. When you transform the category, you really occupy the territory and occupying the territory means that all your competitors have to follow your brand. And remember I told you, this is the level which is the hardest to imitate. You have developed such a strong association in the minds of the consumers, it is such a strong block that to go through that block to pierce that is very difficult. Dislodging the position that your brand occupies in the minds of the consumers becomes very very hard for competitors to dislodge. Nothing like being at the pinnacle because it is the hardest place to dislodge and for competitors to follow. Now let me also tell you that this does offer the competitors with such a predicament that they are at the horns of dilemma so to say. If they do not follow you, they are out of the market. They are not in step with the market, why? Because they are not following the benchmarks put in place by your brand in terms of quality in terms of pricing, in terms of this, in terms of that, meaning all the variables of marketing mix. So nothing like having benchmarks which cannot be imitated. The other side of the predicament is if they follow you, then their product or their brand is known as what they call in marketing, me too product. Now when a product has that kind of image, that is not the right image which any brand manager would like to have for their brands. You would like to have an image which is very different. So in other words what you are doing is you are making the process of differentiation for competitors very difficult and it is at that point that competitors get frustrated and in desperation they make wrong moves. They go for the brand proliferation, they start offering different entries with no meaningful points of differences. The distinction in that case may lie only in packages. Remember we talked about this factor earlier? Consumer revolt, consumers nowadays are fed up with the growth of the brands which look different, which may look distinct but in terms of the essence they do not really offer a meaningful point of difference and I will repeat that all the resources of any company must be directed and must get together or converge at a point where they create the meaningful point of difference. If you come to think of it, it is that point of difference for which really all the resources of the company are deployed. Don't you think that one of the most expensive models of cars, I will not name it. You can think of any car which you think really is different in the market place because of the highest level of differentiation. Don't you think that all the resources which the company applies are deployed in order to create that point of difference or points of difference if the brand is very strong, it is laddered up, getting back to the concept that we are discussing right now, it is laddered up in so many layers that it really becomes extremely difficult for the competitors to go through the process of differentiation and hence they make a lot of mistakes. They bring into play wrong strategies, today this strategy, tomorrow that strategy with no consistency and nothing can harm the brand as much as inconsistency does. We are speaking one language today, another tomorrow, so on and so forth. Having talked about that, now the next question is, which I did touch upon earlier also. Why pinnacle? The answer is because you want to leverage your brand for the sake of getting into the profitability zone, not only getting there but in order to be at the highest level of the profitability zone from where you can fulfill all the needs of the company and the needs of the company are not only operational needs requiring day-to-day finances but you have to have reserves, you have to have money to give dividends to the shareholders or the equity holders, people who started the business with a certain vision that we shall be operating in this particular market and people like you will come forward to tell them that these are the right segments where we can sell these kind of products and we are the people who really can give meaning to the products meant for those segments and we are the people who really can make the whole thing viable and profitable. What else being at the pinnacle offers? The right image and that is what we are talking about at the moment. That is how we develop the right image. We have been talking about the right identity and then the communication medium in between getting the right image but we did not or we had not talked about how we can develop this right image until the point we started discussing in relation to the levels of associations with the help of the brand value pyramid. So this is what you may call brand value. The higher the level of association, the higher is the level of value the brand carries. In other words, any brand at the pinnacle of the pyramid testifies that its image is the right image in the marketplace and it testifies that the identity which was given to the brand in order to develop that image was just about the right identity and nothing gives you more confidence and nothing helps the business more than having these things within the right places and in the right perspectives. I would also like to talk about another aspect of being at the pinnacle which is a little divergence from the point I'm talking about but nevertheless becomes important for the sake of understanding. What happens when a brand is at the pinnacle in relation to one part of category and not at the pinnacle in relation to another few or just a couple of categories it is representing. In other words, you have brand XYZ and it is doing very well in your market which is about detergents for example and because the brand was very powerful and very valuable the company decided to go across category or other across categories it went into food it went into this it went into that it is at the pinnacle in relation to the original category but it is not at the pinnacle in relation to brand associations when it comes to other products meaning other product categories what do you do the answer lies in repositioning the reason I talked about positioning and repositioning in relation to having or not having position at the top of the brand value pyramid is that lest you start having questions I would like to answer those that in a multi-brand situation a company may run into circumstances where you have one brand which is extremely strong at the highest level of the brand value pyramid in another maybe at the middle level just the benefits yet another at the lowest level so what do you do you try to reposition the brand and when I talk about repositioning I think what's really should flash into your mind is that for those brands which are not as strong as the one we were talking about earlier you have to go through the process all over again maybe you have to give another identity to those brands or maybe you have to do something with your information systems maybe you have to do something with your distribution systems maybe you have to do something with your product quality so on and so forth and all over again you go through the same process which has been involving so many different questions at so many different phases and stages of brand development meaning right from the vision to the point wherever you are in the marketplace let us now talk about another scenario a possible scenario very interesting example which I really want to give you is of a situation in which your brand along with others have a great fall from the pinnacle right down to the bottom why does that happen that happens if all the competitors or at least the major players are so strong in offering benefits to their customers their respective customers that they all in a way move up to the highest level of the pyramid if the major players are occupying that position at the brand value pyramid what will happen think of it automatically all those brands will lose the uniqueness they once had the brand which was the first one to get to that slot it will lose that uniqueness the other one the other one and the other one and they all fall like a solid rock the fall at the bottom and that leads to maybe brand proliferation maybe massive promotions where you start offering buy one get one free or price wars of which promotions could be one of the ways a little decent nevertheless and this thing continues I mean all those brands they sit at the bottom at the bottom of the pyramid until the time another technological breakthrough takes place meaning some innovation comes into play and again lifts the brand to the next level and then to the next but this could be a very interesting scenario in which companies within a certain industry might find themselves it can happen where the for example mineral water it can happen where the televisions because televisions seem to be reaching a stage where not all the consumers are very brand loyal I would say the more drug of the price conscious there are television brands in the marketplace not only in this market but also internationally which offer all the benefits that any good product can offer or may offer and yet they have a very low price level how they achieve that is a topic of another discussion but just think a brand getting into the marketplace and then making its way up the brand value pyramid laddering up and yet offering a very consumer friendly pricing what's going to happen it is going to make a great dent into the loyalty of other major players and if this brand can do that it can be joined by others also that will play havoc with the category so this has been an example of the brands falling from the pinnacle to the bottom of the pyramid for the sake of understanding I think it's not a bad example companies also run into situations which are very positive from the brand value pyramid standpoint brands offer so much value and they offer such a high level of association to its customers that manufacturers start wondering what to do next they have been increasing the level of their quality they have been enhancing the benchmarks over the decades and the brand occupies such a comfortable position at the brand value pyramid meaning it is at the pinnacle that the companies start considering and debating how to increase that pinnacle how to further elevate that if the thing they should do that they keep doing that but they run into situations where they start considering introducing a new brand altogether why because they might like to charge a premium which customers in that particular category or in that particular segment may not like to offer you will recall I did talk about the margins within which the pricing strategy has to work you may talk about the most expensive to the model of cars or you may talk about the most expensive of clothing or you may talk about the most expensive perfume in the world in every category in every segment consumers do have a perception about the pricing range if you go below that they may not buy if you go beyond that meaning outside of that again they may not buy now the hypothetical situation we're talking about is that there is a company that has developed the highest possible level of association and hence the highest possible level of emotional attachment and it has given it has struck the emotional chord to the point beyond which it cannot further go if it goes it will snap it will break the relationship because it would like to have premium pricing it is then and it is there that companies start thinking in terms of introducing a new brand and let me give you the example for the first time of a brand name this is what Toyota did when Toyota all over the world hit the brand value pyramid it was at the pinnacle it still is at the pinnacle no question about that when it hit that pinnacle it thought it can very well compete with all those models on the market with charge very high pricing and the benefits they're offering are also kind of added benefits but if we add those benefits to our existing brands and give something a little more beefed up or more laddered up in the right technical terminology we can also sell our brand and we can still comfortably sell comfortably sell the brand but then the pricing they had in the mind probably as a case study the level of pricing they had in the mind did not really match the brand they were selling maybe they wanted to go for a very very high level of pricing which they proved later on they introduced another brand by the name of Lexus you see Lexus cars and their sports sports utility vehicles as the call SUVs on the road to Pakistan despite the fact that those cars do not bear the tag Toyota still the people have developed very strong associations with that brand as well so this is a classic example of a situation in which brands reach the top most level of the brand value pyramid they want to go beyond that it is like breaking the sound barrier they want to go beyond that and they know there's going to be a lot of disturbance while breaking that point so what do we do they scratch the heads sit together and the decision is like emergence of Lexus and so many different brands followed suit Honda did that Nissan did that they introduced models with different names not with the names which they had in the marketplace they still have those names which made them known globally but the now also have the brand names which define very different categories I mean different segments not the category that category remains the same the car category so they define those segments and by the virtue of defining those segments they also have the power to define category and I think what can be said in support of that that their original brands also remain as powerful or maybe they are more powerful than they were at the time when they were to go beyond the pinnacle of the brand value pyramid that existed at that time having talked about that let me now give you a wrap up of the concept that I've talked about today by no means the concept is complete I have just talked about part of the image concept and which is about associations and I would say once again that we are going through it at the moment and we shall be completing it in the next lecture until then let me tell you I started talking about the image factor and image consisting of brand associations and brand persona we have not touched brand persona today we are talking about brand associations and we have talked about different levels of associations which brands create for themselves how they create those levels of associations we talked about that meaning by offering sheer minimal level of features and attributes offering good benefits adding on to benefits set of benefits today and a set of benefits tomorrow which is added to the same brand and hence enhancing your quality level and increasing the benchmark and then getting on to the next level of association which is the strongest level of association and which deals with your feelings like self-fulfillment and self-esteem and complete value system good values are not so good values is besides the discussion at the moment but that is the highest level of associations with which brands create and that's what you call the brand pinnacle and all the brands in the market should try to hit the pinnacle because when they hit the pinnacle that gives them a lot of power and power is value value is money and that's what companies strive for nothing wrong with that because you are in the game of business the way of profitability is the name of the game where dividends is the name of the game so as brand managers you are today one step further into understanding of the process it takes to develop a brand in the hope that our understanding until this point is very clear about the brand development process I will look forward to talking with you in the next lecture for the office