Brand management: Brand strategy

 

In the post-credit-crisis world, consumers are wary of bank brands’ claims, and trust the recommendations of peers far more than corporate messages. Advocacy as a measure was widely ignored by financi ...

The economic crisis has transformed the way consumers view their finances. The ‘spend now, pay later’ culture has been replaced with one in which consumers are focused on saving money and paying off t ...

As a low-interest category, financial services marketing tended before the recession to focus on the shortcomings of category competitors - often in humorous treatments - rather than positive aspects ...

From films to books and songs, stories dominate the world we live in. Yet, despite our appetite for story and its proven effectiveness as a powerful vehicle for communicating ideas, storytelling is la ...

Technology has brought consumers an almost infinite degree of choice. Products are broken down into smaller and smaller constituent parts so we can customise every aspect of our consumer experience to ...

We are accustomed to thinking of challengers as small, often new, entrants taking on existing and occasionally complacent market and brand leaders. However, whilst the David and Goliath scenario is a

Top management has many things to consider over the course of this recession, but Chris Halliburton argues that CEOs are the ultimate brand managers and all actions should be taken with that responsib

This paper tells the success story of Radley handbags (2007). A brief history of the company is given; the company was acquired by a private equity firm, Phoenix Equity Partners, in 2006 for £42 milli

This article argues that in a recession branding, and brand management, become more important, not less; recession provided opportunity for those companies which understand this. In recession, not onl

This paper argues that the most important thing for a brand is its differentiation from others; yet it is less and less being achieved, because all the marketing pressures (best practices, benchmarkin

The banking crisis has destroyed the status and respect in which banks were held. Yet the same handful of undifferentiated bank brands continues to offer essentially the same financial products, with

Too many brands are trying to combat the recession with excessive price promotion, which will do long-term harm to many categories, leading to commoditisation and erosion of brand loyalty. Some brands ...

The article provides five guidelines to help brand managers adapt to new trends in the marketing environment. These are: find out how much involvement customers actually want; recognise the increasing

The article argues against two marketing myths, uniqueness and table stakes. People buy a brand not because it is unique but because it delivers what they want a little better. Most differentiations a

This article surveys the changes in marketing over four decades. It argues that in the 1960s/70s Procter & Gamble invented brand management, the best companies looked impregnable and smaller companies ...

Sustainability need not be in conflict with good value for consumers in economically straitened times. In this article, Marie Ridgley, Added Value UK, outlines four models for brands adopting sustaina ...

While some marketers begin to start the uphill struggle against restricted promotional budgets, some brands have always had to operate on limited resources. In this article, Adam Morgan argues that ra ...

This article - by WARC Online's Media Editor, Laura James - summarises an event help by the UK's Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) discussing 'Fast Strategy'. Such an approach is becomin ...

Over time, as brands and outlets have increased, companies have learned the importance of customer satisfaction, product and service quality, and timely and cost-efficient production. But this made ac ...

The most effective marketing and innovative ideas are those which keep things simple, both in the underlying organisation and in how they appear to consumers. This runs counter to some current thinkin ...

Aging brands generally suffer problems of relevance: as society evolves and tastes change, individual brands can fall out of favour with consumers. US automakers (Ford, GM), and European airlines (Bri ...

In this article, WARC Online's James Aitchison and Geoffrey Precout discuss the main findings of the first day of the ESOMAR Congress 2008, held in Montreal. The areas considered include the impact of ...

This article, by Peter Field, reviews what lessons can be learned from studying brand leaders. Its main arguments are that brand leaders can learn from their challengers in order to reinforce their pr ...

This article discusses and charts the relentless growth of retailer power, based on the popularity of private label. Premium private label is the threat of the future. The development of tiers of priv ...

This article describes the Millward Brown approach to brand equity measurement. The BRANDZTM ranking combines publicly available financial data with world-wide survey data showing the degree of relati ...

This article discusses how to build healthy brands in the complex Chinese market. Key points include: China is very diverse, and it is essential to understand regional and local variations in attitude ...

This article argues that while creating a model of the consumer market is essential for brand strategy, it is not uniform but varies between sectors. To a degree, it is true that all brands can be dev ...

This article argues that it is not enough for a brand to attain the largest market share, as many consumers see little benefit in sheer size. To obtain consumer loyalty, the leading brand must do more ...

This article discusses the importance of customer service in developing a brand. There is a rich history of brands where service has been an integral part of their success, from Josiah Wedgewood in th ...

This article argues that brand marketers have focused too much on the emotional side of brand marketing - the 'sizzle' and the 'stretch' - and have neglected the product. This imbalance is dangerous a ...