WHAT IS A GREAT BRAND???

Great brands sell & sell repeatedly generating an ever increasing & sustainable revenue and profit stream and they do this continually dealing value for customers and customers through being relevant and differentiated.

Great brands are great business that has pricing power and staying power they don’t rent volume for short term gains .Great brands make people feel good about the decisions they make .They stand for something that is important to consumers and every action reinforces what the brand stands for. Great brands become icons or symbols against which every other brand is interpreted. Great brands energies people and galvanize action

Brands have to earn trust of their consumer’s everyday in some cases several times a day. Great brands are made by the people who understand the intrinsic value of the brand as a business. Organizing for stability is not a good plan in this environment organizing for change is and brands that think and act like insurgents in this environment giving people reasons to vote for them will win.

Brand Equity and brand value is not about intention or attitude it is about preference and usage.

Great brands understand that!!!!!

(Excerpts from Vinita Bali’s Interview)

Posted by:- NAMRATA.S.BAHIRSHETH

PGDBM

On the Brandwagon

“Can you imagine a world without brands?” enquires the recent ad for Zeiss. The commercial shows a puzzled man jogging by a billboard with a nameless shampoo bottle. Next, a waiter displays a blank labelled wine bottle with exaggerated flourish to a miserable couple at a dinner table. These faintly eerie scenes can’t help but make you wonder…what would the world be without brands? Confusion, chaos.

Branding has been described as carving the company name or slogan into the minds of potential customers. Today branding is such a powerful force that hardly anything goes unbranded. Commodities that were earlier considered too basic to be differentiated in the minds of consumers are now successfully branded. Some people mocked when a cement company featured Perizaad Zorabian in its advertisements. The campaign, however, proved to be very successful. Today no one bats an eyelid at heavy advertising for cement, ceramic tiles, wheatflour or salt.

TCS today is launching its $10million global branding campaign to differentiate its services from the usual, cheap cost efficient image that Indian IT companies suffer from. Their tagline would be ‘Experience Certainty’ and through this campaign they hope to compete with IBM and Accenture in bagging challenging assignments.

What do brands mean for the consumer? You may hear complaints during casual shopping conversation about the number of brands flooding the market and the confusion it creates. But I think consumers are secretly pleased. They love being offered so many choices and feel powerful with the choices they make. Companies are bending over backwards in an effort to satisfy them and instill trust.

Many consumers form an identity based on the choices of brands they make, and this shapes their lifestyle. As lives become more rushed, brands simplify decisions and reduce risks. Satisfied customers choose the products again. This loyalty results in predictability of demand for the firms. This loyalty also translates into a willingness to pay a higher price. A brand is thus an invaluable asset for a firm.

Companies that can reap the benefits however, are the ones that have well planned and executed brand strategy and brand management programs. But at the end of the day, the truly successful ones are those that deliver on their brand promise. After all, as David Ogilvy put it “The consumer’s no idiot...she’s your wife!”

Posted By : Neha Deshmukh