Branding: A Key Marketing Tool

Frontmatter

1. What Is Branding?

Abstract

Since the earliest times producers of goods have used their brands or marks to distinguish their products. Pride in their products has no doubt played a part in this. More particularly, by identifying their products they have provided purchasers with a means of recognising and specifying them should they wish to repurchase or recommend the products to others.

John M. Murphy

2. History of Branding

Abstract

The history of branding can be traced back for many centuries before the term came to acquire its modern usage. In Greek and Roman times — and even before that — there were various ways of promoting wares or goods, whether they were wines or pots, metals or ointments. Messages would be written informing the public that this man, at this address, could make shoes and that the man who lived over there, at that address, was a scribe. The Greeks also used town criers to announce the arrival of ships with particular cargoes.

Adrian Room

3. The Psychology of Names

Abstract

A name is a simple thing; it is a label — although there is also an element of mystery and magic about it. If we give a name to something which did not have one before it is like bringing that thing into existence for the first time. It seems to add an extra dimension to anything if we give it a name. A name is also capable, with familiarity and repetition, of being a kind of incantation.

Leslie Collins

4. The Legal Side of Branding

Abstract

A trademark is a sign or symbol which distinguishes the goods or services provided by an enterprise. It can consist of a word or words, letters, numbers, symbols, emblems, monograms, signatures, colours or combinations of colours. It can even, in some cases, be a phrase or slogan but whatever it is, it can only properly fulfil its function from both legal and marketing standpoints if it is distinctive. A trademark has three functions:

• to distinguish the goods or services of the enterprise from those of another;
• to indicate the source or origin of the goods or services;
• to represent the goodwill of the trademark owner and to serve as an indication of the quality of his goods or services.

These functions are best expressed by example. The mark Zest is a well-known brand name for soap in the United States. The Zest mark distinguishes one product from the myriad of other soap products on the market. The Zest mark functions as an indication of source. The public recognises that there is a single source for Zest soap — though it may not know what it is. Indeed, under United States trademark practice the actual source of the product does not have to be identified. Finally, the Zest name represents the quality of the product and the goodwill of the manufacturer. A purchaser who is pleased with the first bar of Zest soap he buys will, it is hoped, develop a brand loyalty. He will, when he repurchases soap, look specifically for the Zest brand.

Clarke Graham, Mark Peroff

5. Making Your Brands Work Harder

Abstract

Both franchising and collateral exploitation of trademarks are forms of the broad practice of trademark and service mark licensing. (For the sake of simplicity, trademarks and service marks will be discussed under the broad term trademarks.) Trademark licensing, in general, is the practice of permitting others to use one’s trademarks on approved goods under terms which enable the trademark owner to control the quality of the licensed goods.

Laurence Hefter

6. Commercial Counterfeiting

Abstract

The nefarious but lucrative business of pirating or counterfeiting genuine trademark goods has too long flourished unchecked to the incalculable injury of every consumer, of every honest merchant, manufacturer, and trader, and has extensively multiplied costly and tedious litigation.

Vincent Carratu

7. Developing New Brands

Abstract

We live in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. Increased leisure time, more ‘working mothers’, cheaper travel and the explosion of mass communications have all caused consumers to re-examine their life-styles and aspirations and thus have created new patterns of demand. So now, more than ever before, companies need successful new products:

• to replace the volume and profits from established products either under attack from competitors, or nearing the end of their life-cycles;
• to develop their business by seizing fresh opportunities to satisfy consumer demand.

Tom Blackett, Graham Denton

8. Developing New Brand Names

Abstract

The brand name performs a number of key roles:

• It identifies the product or service, and allows the consumer to specify, reject, or recommend brands.
• It communicates messages to the consumer. In this role the name can be either an overt communicator, for example, Draino or Sweet ‘n’ Low, or a subconscious communicator.
• It functions as a particular piece of legal property in which a manufacturer can sensibly invest and which through law is protected from competitive attack or trespass. Through time and use, a name can become a valuable asset.

John M. Murphy

9. Creative Execution

Abstract

Detailed knowledge of a brand’s development and pure creativity both play distinct yet interrelated roles in the designer’s formulation of the brand’s image. Knowledge is essential in understanding the multiplicity of factors that affect the brand’s success and allows for the proper analysis that leads to the appropriate creative constraints. Creativity is naturally required to imbue the brand with a unique image which is appropriate and appealing.

Mervyn Kurlansky

10. The Opportunity for World Brands

Abstract

Tables 10.1 and 10.2 demonstrate a truly remarkable fact. They show that brands — those complex mixtures of product and consumer appeal — are not only capable of surviving for extraordinarily long periods, but that they have also been capable of maintaining their market position throughout sixty years of competition and development. We shall be examining the forces and strategies that lie behind the successes of these brands and the way in which these strategies must evolve in the future to deal with the marketing developments of the next decade.

Steve Winram

11. Branding — the Retailer’s Viewpoint

Abstract

I recently shared a lift with a senior sales executive of a major British food manufacturer. He had just emerged from my company’s buying office with the news that one of his major brands, a household name, was being dropped. During the awkward silence that these short journeys seem to produce, his expression was an odd mixture of suppressed rage and a plea for understanding.

Terry Leahy

12. The Branding of Services

Abstract

As the more advanced or mature economies of the world evolve progressively towards higher standards of living, involving higher costs of living, higher levels of education, and the increased availability of advanced education for their populations, there is an increase in the availability of ‘brain power’, and a subsequent decrease in the supply of ‘muscle power’. In short, our endless quest for progress and improvement leads, on both the individual and national level, to the steady conversion of brawn to brain. This steady conversion process causes a series of changes over time.

Russell Taylor

13. Branding in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

The entire pharmaceutical industry has gone through a major transformation in the past ten years. Some healthcare professionals who have lived through this period consider it a great experience: many, however, consider it to be a grave misfortune. Certainly the ‘drug industry’, as it is so irreverently referred to by the layman, has entered a new era. It will never again return to its state of some ten years ago.

Barbara Sudovar

14. Branding at Austin Rover

Abstract

In 1985, about 35 million cars were purchased around the world and car brands — from Mercedes to Chevrolet, from Nissan to Volvo — are some of the most pervasive brands in existence. Austin Rover, Britain’s leading indigenous car manufacturer, manufactured only a small proportion of those cars built in 1985 — something over 1 per cent — yet Austin Rover’s experience and problems in the tricky area of car branding is unparalleled. After all, the company is the successor to a process of merger and amalgamation going back decades and, over this period, has inherited brands, loyalties and prejudices which have provided branding opportunities and problems on an unprecedented scale.

Terry Nolan

15. The Wide World of Branding

Abstract

Much of this book is about the development and protection of global brands. However, it is important to recognise that at the present time most brands are not world brands at all — they are national brands that occupy a particular local niche and function only in their home markets. Such local brands fall into two categories:

(1)

Brands which are similar to other brands in other countries in terms of formulation, function and appearance but which for a number of reasons — for example, tariff barriers, established competition in overseas markets, trademark problems or lack of interest on the part of their owners — are not sold outside their home markets.

 

(2)

Brands which are so idiosyncratically adapted to their home markets that they are unlikely to have immediate appeal in foreign markets.

 

Terry Oliver

16. The Corporate Identity as the Brand

Abstract

A corporate identity programme is really nothing more than the branding and packaging of an entire company. Like all packaging, it is a way of giving shape to the contents — a way of communicating the corporate ingredients to target groups and markets. A corporate identity programme differentiates the company in a positive and memorable way; it projects the unique personality of the corporation; it positions the company in the market-place.

John Diefenbach

17. Organising for New Product Development

Abstract

The discipline of management teaches us that we need to follow a definite sequence of steps for the successful completion of any human endeavour. These steps are:

(1)

defining the objectives and scope of the project;

 

(2)

promulgating the policies necessary to achieve those objectives;

 

(3)

organising in a logical and workable manner so as to fix responsibility and facilitate achievement of the objectives;

 

(4)

developing a plan;

 

(5)

applying of techniques and skills to satisfactorily complete the assignments; and

 

(6)

controlling and measuring the results.

 

Robert Grayson

18. The Future of Branding

Abstract

As noted in earlier chapters, several trends external to the branded goods industry are likely to have an important impact upon its development: the increased globalisation of industries and products, the advent and growth of the services industry and, particularly in advanced Western societies, a move away from manufacturing industry.

Klaus Morwind

19. Assessing the Value of Brands

Abstract

In 1984 News Group, the Australian flagship company of Rupert Murdoch’s world-wide publishing empire included a valuation for ‘publishing titles’ in its balance sheet. Murdoch did this because the ‘goodwill’ element of publishing acquisitions — the difference between the value of the net assets and the price paid — can be enormous and, being an acquisitive company, the goodwill write-offs which his company was being forced to take were ravaging his balance sheet. He well knew that much of the ‘goodwill’ he was buying comprised the publishing titles; he therefore placed a value on these and included this valuation in the balance sheet. This simple procedure restored his balance sheet, solved many of the problems of goodwill write-offs and dramatically reduced gearing. Indeed, without this balance sheet valuation of publishing titles, it is unlikely that Murdoch would have been able to expand his business by acquisition, particularly in the USA.

John M. Murphy

Backmatter