Building Brand Value – Five Steps to Building Powerful Brands

Volume 18, Number 4 Article by Harjit Singh December, 2006

Building Brand Value – Five Steps to Building Powerful Brands : By M G Parameswaran, 2006, Tata McGraw-Hill, pp 385, Price: Rs 375. :

Businesses exist in a state of perpetual change. They have to adapt and transform themselves at a pace equal to, or quicker than the world. Having a brand can differentiate your business from your competitors and drive customer loyalty. It not only builds a unique personality for a business, but also attracts a defined type of customer resulting in increased turnover and customer loyalty. A successful brand can offer opportunities for a business to grow. From the company letterhead to the way the phone is answered, your customers should always feel that you are providing them with exactly what your brand promises. The branded water cooler that leaks or the sport shoe that often falls apart when wet will never develop brand equity. The truism that ‘trust is built on a thousand deeds and lost by one’ is as relevant for your brand as it is for any human relationship.

The book under review is yet another addition to the vast ocean of literature on brand building. The author makes it clear in the preface that the primary audience of the book will be young marketers who are still soaking in knowledge and finding their feet in the ongoing structural changes. The author presents a new model to build brand value – the Brand Building Pentagon that would enable the firm to acquire assured control over the market. The model can be used to develop a new brand, or to make an existing brand stronger. This idea can be successfully implemented in other developing countries as well. The book can be most enjoyed as a personal narrative and interpretation of happenings in the author’s career. The book begins with a broad conceptual note on the importance of building brands and brand value. It is organised into eight chapters which gradually develop the notion and finally lead to the development and application of a comprehensive concept.

Step one of the Brand Building Pentagon is about exploration of opportunities for a potential new brand. Brand appraisal can be divided into five components, all of which are important to build a complete picture of the brand potential. The author presents several brand building models before unveiling the Brand Building Pentagon. Chapters 3-7 take the reader through the five steps of the Brand Building Pentagon. The author holds that brands are provocative forces that can evoke empathy or hatred, and reveals how the world’s most successful companies perform. He provides the reader a mental roadmap to building brand value in terms of definitions, models, archetypes, guidelines and challenges to brand builders. The author rightly points out that the major assets of a consumer business are its brands and they represent a bundle of attributes – some physical, some intangible, some rational and some emotional. In order to be successful, a brand must offer these functional benefits, exceeding the competitor’s offerings on as many counts as possible. When a brand offers the right trade-off, it becomes a consumer favourite. For example, Tata Salt converted Indian consumers from loose salt to white iodised salt.

One of the key advantages of a strong brand is its ability to extend into new product and service categories. It is a growth engine for the organisation. An important exercise, once the product is conceived and developed and before the advertising campaign is developed, is brand definition, wherein the organisation examines why a consumer should buy the brand (reasons, positioning) and why he/she should keep buying the brand (positioning, personality). A combination of rational and emotional reasons is what is necessary to build a strong brand. Two proprietary tools for measuring brand images and brand personalities Visual Image Profiling (VIP) and Image Configuration (ICON) are also addressed.

The chapter on brand measurement will help the organisation to constantly assess the success of a brand. A step by step process to measure and manage brands globally is also outlined to predict competitive moves ahead of time before the brand is rolled out. Once the brand gains acceptance, it becomes important to plan the next steps the brand will have to take and this is tackled in brand expansion. It is all about developing a vision for the future of the brand, to see if it can get extended into other products or services. One example of such practice is Archies, which started as a greeting card company that sold greetings through book shops, moved into gift shops of its own and through the franchisee route. Finally, when needed, the organisation should be able to sell or buy brands. This is the fifth and final stage of brand building. A strong brand will get extended or will attract a great price from the market. Either way, it will serve the cause of the organisation and its stakeholders.

The last chapter deals with the core of the model – brand execution. Drawing largely on Kotler’s 4Ps of marketing, the author explains that in the face of intense global competition, mature markets and overnight change, building brand value is about creating wealth for shareholders by making brands more valuable to consumers. As more and more consumers subscribe to the brand’s value offer, the brand becomes more and more valuable to the brand owners. To achieve this, strategic planning has to be consistently and relentlessly followed, for brands are not built overnight. The Brand Building Pentagon presents a detailed plan to enhance profits, improve current professional practices and contribute to the development of a brand.

This book will provide marketing and brand managers with a thorough understanding of the new rules of building brand value and how to put them into practice. Packed with fresh examples and advertisements from all over the world, it has nevertheless a strong Indian flavour. The book features many new exciting ideas and perspectives in brand building, labelled ‘Brand Building Viewpoints’, ‘Brand Building Quips’, ‘Brand Building Terrain’ and ‘Brand Building at Work’, something that has been absent from our literature. Along with the author’s two previous, much appreciated books, this will be an important addition to any serious marketer’s arsenal.

Reprint No