The Means and Limitations of Building Brand Equity

Introduction

Organizational strategic brand management plan is a process that identifies and defines the strategic and directive decision-making on the resource allocation. This helps the organization to pursue and achieve its objectives. Determining direction is an extremely vital aspect in the organization. This is because it helps to pursue the avenues and the course of action in dealing with key aspects in the organization. In this case, the organization’s strategic planning should capture the vision, mission, values, and strategy in order to formulate its end vision. This paper seeks to discuss and explain the strategic branding methods.

Organizational Motivation

There are three branding models that dominate the business world today, namely mind-share branding, emotional branding, and viral branding. It is vital to note that branding is a system or a process that helps managers who seek to identify brand values. The mind-share branding is a cognitive branding method.

Mind Sharing Branding Method

Mind-share branding model has its roots from the cultural branding methods. This is evident from advertisers who preferred and advocated for hard sell branding from the 1950’s. In the book, positioning is the battle for your mind. The author argues that is to ensure that a brand succeeds in business it has to exceed mass communication volumes and have a focused position in order to benefit a product category. This proactive image has been in the branding business since 1970 when branding systems were rare. However, marketer’s entire generation learns from the historical times to date to brand their products according to the branding principals. Branding methods should be straightforward, precise, focus the position of the company, and exceed customer expectations (McKeon 2012).

Branding myths are vital, because they help discovery, interaction, and personalization of the same product. Mind-share is a strategy that can be used in branding. The idea is to include genetic coding, branding identity, and branding essence. According to “A Short Genealogy of Corona Beer”, mind-share branding is a highly effective branding method that helps build a strong brand that can build brand essence. In this way, the business will be a step ahead of its competitors. It is vital to note that managing a mind-share branding’s consistency and proper management of society and cultural changes. In this way, it can easily apply to iconic brands (Olsen 2012).

Mind-share Branding Limitations

A business, which is a first mover in a new market, can find it hard to gain advantage and mileage over its competitors. This is because the business has not had a chance to connect with its customers. Additionally, the company may become exposed to problems related to diminishing markets and competition. Mind-share branding is not always clear within an organization. This is because different departments may have a different mind-share brand method, and, thus, the method may not match in the different departments. The mind-share brand method is limited to a certain line of thought. This means that it cannot be extended to other levels in the organization (Chiaravalle 2005).

Mind-share branding method is limited by the mind and cannot build a strong brand essence. In this way, it cannot fully apply to other iconic brands. Bedbury, a scholar, argues that this is a jolly old version of branding, which is ineffective. He attributes that experimental and mind-share brandings require a difficult cognitive approach. In this way, managers should try to emphasize a personality process in order to forge or encourage intimate and personal connection with customers. Emotional branding is a branch of mind-share branding. This is because it shares mind-share assumptions. However, these assumptions must consist of different obstructions that should be maintained in order to achieve success. Emotional branding puts more emphasis on how the essence of branding should be communicated. In this way, managers are able to use emotions to appeal to customers through sensory, personal, and emotional experience (Colley 2011).

Some experts suggested that emotional branding is a magical branding method that is highly effective. This is because it builds and emotional link between the customer and the brand. Coca-Cola is a hugely successful company that uses emotional branding. In this way, the company’s customers have been forming a bond with the company for many years.

Viral branding is a branding method that focuses on public influence. This branding method assumes that customers have more influence than companies. In this way, it infuses its ideas through the Internet. This branding method can also apply to professional marketing through the Internet, which is extremely effective. According to Snapple, an international company, viral branding cannot build iconic brands. This is because this branding method relies on trends, which should have desirability and ability to attract and connect to customers.

Cultural Branding

Cultural branding is a conventional method of branding that has emotional attachments and is related to myths and culture. It is related to identity appraisal, and products identify benefits. Cultural branding relies on historical cultures, myths, and trends. It also relies on the recent treads and cultures in the modern world. In this way, this branding method is ever changing with the in cultural and societal changes. This branding method can ensure that a company achieves its organizational goals if it is managed effectively. This simply means that the cultural branding method is an effective branding method that can ensure business success and help the company stay a step ahead of its competitors. Cultural branding is related to other types of branding methods such as conventional and innovation branding (Bradford 2000).

Conventional Branding

Most conventional branding methods have vital functions. These functions include the organizational planning, employee motivation, and control. Motivation is a vital function in an organization. This is because it helps to place human resources into action, improve employees’ efficiency, leads to achievement of the organization’s desired goals, builds friendly relationships, and ensures stability of the workforce. Conventional branding helps to place human resources into action. This motivates employees and encouraging them to utilize their ability and willingness in the best way possible. Additionally, motivational techniques improve the levels of efficiency by encouraging employees to show their best at work and be responsible (Alison 2005). In this way, the enthusiasm and skill gaps are filled. This leads to a reduction in the cost of operations, increase in productivity, and improvement in the overall efficiency. The conventional branding method is a branding method that assumes consistency in order to face organizational competitive pressure.

Conventional organizational branding ensures the company achieves its organizational goals by utilizing the company’s resources, the work environment is cooperative, and employees act in a goal-oriented manner. It also ensures that cooperation and coordination is achieved. Organizational branding also builds friendly relationships by ensuring employee satisfaction. This is only possible if the organization promotes opportunities for the employees and initiates monetary and non-monetary incentives. It is necessary to note that in order to build a friendly and cordial atmosphere in the organization, effective cooperation should be stabilized, and the organization should be concerned about the employees’ interests. Organizational branding also helps to stabilize the staff turnover by ensuring that the employees and investors remain loyal to the organization. The organization will be able to create an attractive image and maintain an attractive and confident position in the market (Ireland 2006).

Innovation branding focuses on challenging and changing existing branding methods in an organization in order to create customer value and meet new customer needs. In this way, the organization is able to create new markets and add value to the organization. This simply means that an innovation branding strategies help monitor and scan sources of innovation opportunities, create a future scan system for personal use by the organization, introduce and integrate business ideas, and broaden the organization’s vision.

People / Emotional Branding Strategy

A people branding strategy helps to ensure that the decision-making process is consistent within the organization. It also helps to design and build on goals that have already been achieved in order to become open to change, be professional, flexible, and innovative. This simply means that a people strategy helps bring future into the organization’s reality (Al Rice 2000).

Cultural Branding Limitations

This method requires consumers to pay higher prices for the brands. This is because the brands are expensive. It is also vital to note that consumers may prefer other competitive firms if other firms offer lower prices. Customer expectations may exceed reality. This is because the customers want goods and services of good quality. In this way, it might be difficult to satisfy customers’ expectations and needs. The customers may respond negatively to the brand, and when this happens, it requires a large investment to initiate and maintain a new brand’s image.

Cultural branding method is related to myths and culture and cannot build a strong brand identity in all cultures. In this way, it cannot completely apply to other icon brands. Scholars argue that this is a very old version of branding, which is no longer effective. He attributes that experimental and mind-share brandings require a difficult cognitive approach. In this way, managers should try to emphasize a personality process in order to forge or encourage intimate and personal connection with customers (Wipperfurth 2006).

Components of a Strategic Branding Management Process

The strategic management process components focus on implementation and formulation methods that vary from environmental, organizational, and product profiles. This way, the organization should use unique planning programs to ensure the formulation of a strategic management model (Cleqq 2008). The organization should implement the strategies by phase. The phases include defining the vision, objectives and purpose of the organization, formulating the strategies, implementing the strategies, and evaluating the strategies. This will ensure that the organization operates in a clear, effective, and competitive environment.

The strategic branding management process follows the following steps:

1. Environmental scanning involves scrutinizing, collecting, and providing information for purposes related to strategic planning.
2. Strategic formulation focuses on strategic formulation that involves course of actions. This helps achieve the organization’s objectives.
3. Strategic implementation that involves implementing the strategic action and strategic evaluation. The latter encompasses evaluation of the numerous activities in the organization (De Witt 2010).

Conclusion

Mind-share branding includes many techniques including relaxation qualities, friendship, speed of change, and other. However, it is not easy to build and iconic brand on a mind-share principal. This is because the mind-share principal demands a purified brand identity. It also depends on a quantification logic that demands intensive obstructions. The historical identities from myths and cultures clearly affect branding, which are very crucial in marketing. Therefore, the success of a business relies on the brand identify and brand management in face of deep understanding of one’s culture.