Managing Brand Equity Consumer responses to marketing activity depend on what they know and remember about a brand, short-term marke...
Managing Brand Equity
Consumer responses to marketing activity depend on what they know and remember about a brand, short-term marketing actions, by changing brand knowledge, necessarily increase or decrease the long-term success of future marketing actions.
Brand Reinforcement
As a company’s major enduring asset, a brand needs to be carefully managed so its value does not depreciate.52 Many brand leaders of 70 years ago remain leaders today—Wrigley’s, Coca-Cola, Heinz, and Campbell Soup—but only by constantly striving to improve their products, services, and marketing. Marketers can reinforce brand equity by consistently conveying the brand’s meaning in terms of
(1) what products it represents, what core benefits it supplies, and what needs it satisfies; and
(2) how the brand makes products superior, and which strong, favorable, and unique brand associations should exist in consumers’ minds.
NIVEA, one of Europe’s strongest brands, has expanded from a skin cream brand to a skin care and personal care brand through carefully designed and implemented brand extensions that reinforce the brand promise of “mild,” “gentle,” and “caring.”
Reinforcing brand equity requires that the brand always be moving forward in the right direction and with new and compelling offerings and ways to market them. In virtually every product category, once-prominent and admired brands such as Fila, Oldsmobile, Polaroid, Circuit City have fallen on hard times or gone out of business.
An important part of reinforcing brands is providing consistent marketing support. Consistency doesn’t mean uniformity with no changes:While there is little need to deviate from a successful position, many tactical changes may be necessary to maintain the strategic thrust and direction of the brand.When change is necessary, marketers should vigorously preserve and defend sources of brand equity.
Marketers must recognize the trade-offs between activities that fortify the brand and reinforce its meaning, such as a well-received product improvement or a creatively designed ad campaign, and those that
leverage or borrow from existing brand equity to reap some financial benefit, such as a short-term promotional discount. At some point, failure to reinforce the brand will diminish brand awareness and
weaken brand image.
Brand Revitalization
Any new development in the marketing environment can affect a brand’s fortunes. Nevertheless, a number of brands have managed to make impressive comebacks in recent years. After some hard times, Burberry, Fiat, and Volkswagen have all turned their brand fortunes around to varying degrees.
Often, the first thing to do in revitalizing a brand is to understand what the sources of brand equity were to begin with. Are positive associations losing their strength or uniqueness? Have negative associations become linked to the brand? Then decide whether to retain the same positioning or create a new one, and if so, which new one.
Sometimes the actual marketing program is the source of the problem, because it fails to deliver on the brand promise. Then a “back to basics” strategy may make sense. As noted previously,Harley-Davidson regained its market leadership by doing a better job of living up to customer expectations as to product performance.
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