Brand Transformation

Transforming Firm Performance by Disruptive, Pragmatic and Achievable Brand Strategy

Keith Glanfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351662550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

To be of value to firms, branding must operate in the "real" world, not a theoretical one, unlocking latent commercial potential and delivering tangible business results. The imperative is to pragmatically change as you go, making simple branding changes that deliver a commercial difference. This radical new textbook combines best practice, research and theory to teach how to accelerate a firm's branding performance, without disrupting and derailing day-to-day business. It demonstrates how to make practical "best-fit" changes to a firm's branding by implementing commercially feasible branding activity to achieve commercial results.

Structured around a brand transformation template, Brand Transformation demonstrates how to make pragmatic changes to branding by implementing improvements to six critical components of branding performance. The text not only presents new and different insights; importantly it contains a set of diagnostic questions, frameworks, tools and templates to design implementable changes to a firm's branding. The text includes a set of six widely occurring firm "typologies" and suggests practical immediate activity on which to base a firm's implementation plan.

This text is essential reading for final year marketing undergraduates, postgraduate students of marketing, practising marketers and general managers

1
Brand transformation – an introduction

Is branding important?

Branding and brands operate at the centre of marketing. They are fundamental to:

• distinguishing one firm from another
• making a product or service stand out from its competition
• delivering the promise that a firm makes to its customers
• the development of marketing communications campaigns
• considering how to price one product or service against the remainder in the market.

Brands and branding influence not only these important marketing decisions but many more besides.

Brands surround us all, every day, as consumers, as employees and as members of society. Private and public sector organisations are branded. Towns, cities and countries are branded. Shopping centres are branded. Personalities are branded. Brands and branding play a significant role in our everyday working and personal lives.

So for marketers and the firms they represent, it is not unreasonable to propose understanding brands and branding is essential to understanding the performance of a firm’s marketing and its broader commercial success. There-fore, it is essential marketers and firms can answer the following:

• What contribution does branding make to commercial success?
• Where is the firm on its branding journey, and how important is branding in the firm’s industry and its chosen categories?
• Is the performance of the firm’s brands and branding acceptable?
• How can branding contribute to the firm meeting its commercial objectives?
• What branding challenges need to be resolved for the firm to remain commercially successful and sustainable?
• What is the feasible scope for making the changes required to improve brand performance, and how implementable are these changes?

The challenges for marketers

Marketers face a number of challenges when considering these questions.

The firm cannot stop for a period of time, make changes to achieve perfection, and then move on. The commercial imperative is to change as you go, not look for a perfect solution but a best-fit, pragmatic one – to understand where the firm is on its journey of improvement and to decide what the art of the possible looks like.

Most branding books, in the main, only present a set of theoretically perfect positions for a firm and its brands. This book goes further. It provides a means of:

• assessing the stage of development reached by a firm’s brand set
• identifying potential feasible areas for brand development that enhance the potential of a firm to meet its commercial objectives
• developing and assessing a series of strategic options for brand transformation
• building a brand transformation plan

Just as it is essential for accountants to understand balance sheets, profit and loss accounts and cash flow statements, so it is essential that marketers understand the fundamentals of branding. However, developing a rounded understanding of brands is often difficult. Branding and brands are often considered through the lens of a marketing professionals’ specific experience and background. By applying their mix of exposure to specialisms such as corporate brand management, product management, consumer insight, online and offline marketing communications, channel management and so on. Irrespective of an individual marketer’s professional background and disposition, this book is structured in a way that encourages a balanced understanding of a firm’s brands and branding.

Often, in practice, the role of brands and their performance is simplistically considered, often focussed at the product level and in the context of what works in fast-moving consumer goods markets. This book moves away from this perspective and considers the performance of all of a firm’s brands at the corporate, division and product/service level, integrating branding issues and brand performance at the levels of strategy, marketing strategy and marketing activity while taking account of both the needs of business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms and marketers.

Finally, the book is a practical guide to brand transformation and is structured around a brand transformation model. The model can be used, step by step, to:

• evaluate a firm’s branding performance in the context of the firm’s overall strategic position and its corporate objectives.
• identify immediate changes that can be made to improve branding performance
• develop a series of feasible options for short, medium and long-term brand transformation
• determine a best-fit transformation plan for a firm’s brands.

Each of Chapters 2 to 7 covers one of the six diagnostic elements in the transformation model, presenting a:

• set of management challenges
• series of models and frameworks
• set of diagnostic questions, that when answered determine the firms current branding performance and branding issues
• performance matrix to easily map the firm and its competitors in a specific branding domain
• guide to the potential actions to take given the firm’s current performance
• set of potential immediate actions a firm can take to improve branding performance.

In mapping the firm’s branding performance on each of the chapter’s performance matrices, the firm’s branding performance is easily summarised, its implications assessed and strategic options developed. The final two chapters, Chapters 8 and 9, integrate these prior chapters to generate a series of brand transformation options, evaluating them to arrive at a “best-fit” and feasible brand transformation plan for a given firm.

This introduction, therefore, addresses the following:

• The conventional perspective of brands and branding.
• The need for a different perspective.
• Development of the brand transformation model.
• How to use the brand transformation model.

The conventional perspective of brands and branding

Conventionally, brands and branding are considered from the perspective of their influence on consumers when purchasing products and services and the associated commercial benefits strong brands provide to a firm. In this context brands and branding are conventionally considered in a business-to-consumer environment rather than a business-to-business environment, mainly focussing on products rather than services and transacting in a fast-moving retail consumer goods setting, rather than direct to the consumer or online and so forth.

The definition of branding developed by the American Marketing Association (2011) is popularly cited and used. It reflects this conventional perspective.

A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of the competition.

Conventionally, from a consumer perspective, the commercial benefit of brands is vested in their influence on the consumer when deciding to purchase one product over another. At a very simple level, the function of a brand is to act as a means distinguishing and identifying one product from another. Over and above this, a brand conveys the assignment of responsibility for the product back to a maker or provider.

Table 1.1 The role of brands

For consumers	For firms
• Product and service identifier. • Assignment of a product to a maker or a service to a deliverer. • A means of narrowing down alternatives in consumer search and reducing search costs. • Reducing purchase risk. • Makes a promise to the consumer. • Introduces symbolic and emotional elements to purchase decision. • Signifies the quality and standard of the product or service.	• A means of associating a product or service with the firm. • Endows products and services with unique associations. • Legally protects a product or service’s unique features. • Source of competitive advantage and superior financial returns.

When considering making a purchase, consumers use brands as a means of selecting what products they will consider for purchase and which they will not. The more familiar and trusted a brand, the more likely it is a consumer will select this brand over others. In other words, in selecting brands that are more familiar and trusted, consumers:

• reduce the time it takes to find a range of alternatives
• increase the likelihood they will receive the benefits they are looking for
• reduce purchase risk.

Brands, therefore, in the minds of consumers represent a promise to deliver a set of consumer benefits. The brand represents a bond or a pact with the consumer. The brand is making a statement that is summed as a sign of quality and can be used by the consumer to compare one brand against another. Consumers arrive at a preference, leading to the purchase of the selected brand. Brands are therefore more than just a set of benefits; they are symbols that communicate symbolism, communicating the less tangible and more emotional aspects of products or services. There are obvious benefits for a firm in holding a set of brands that are preferred by consumers to those of their competitors.

Because brands significantly influence consumer preference, they represent a source of competitive advantage, and, as a result, a source of financial returns. Therefore, in considering the branding of their products, firms are able to decide the level of quality they are to provide and communicate this in relation to their competitor’s products. In addition, by communicating to consumers how different their brands are, firms can make their brands stand out, building a set of unique associations that form the basis of a firm’s competitive advantage and its financial returns.

The foundations of branding

To grasp the need for a different, modern and relevant perspective on brands and branding, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of branding, its foundations, the traditional manner in which branding is constructed, the perfect picture of how based on history and, in a perfect world, branding is expected to be done. It emphasises a context in which brands are anchored primarily to one single purpose, as a means of influencing consumer preference and purchase.

Table 1.2 Definitions of brand

Emphasis	Example	Definition	Source
Product and service identification and differentiation.	Heinz Beans	A name, term, sign, symbol, o...