Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Lecture 1
Monday, January 18, 2016

1:16 PM

• Our Perspective:
○ Branding is a key marketing function – also a key feature of human life
○ This course takes a socio-cultural perspective to explore the meaning of brands in the minds of consumers
○ We will explore how this meaning is generated and circulated – exploring the marketers role in this and the consumer’s How
marketers manage and create these meanings to position their brands in the marketplace
○ How organisations create strong brands in the minds of consumers
• Brand meaning= a bundle of benefits, which are decoded in the minds of consumers
○ Brand dislike does not mean you are not brand loyal (BT)
○ Value constellations- multiple meanings come together to form a consumer's view (family brand= J&J)
○ Depends on your view…
 Economic view: Brands as reputation signals Allow companies to establish information about offerings – quality, reliability
e
...
Toyota
 Social view: Brands as trust mechanisms Serves as a guarantee that service/product will fulfil role e
...
financial services
 Psychology: Brands as heuristic frames Simplify consumer decision making, lower search costs, low involvement e
...

toothpaste
 Cultural disciplines: Brands as symbols Vessels of meaning and sentiment, lifestyle e
...
Coke, Nike, Starbucks
□ brands are empty until filled up with meaning
□ Ex= Nike 'lifestyle' means empowered, physical, etc
...
I hope they don’t just buy because
there is a logo but because the object is relevant to them
...
” Elliott et al (2011)
○ Sometimes a brand is the company, as with Burberry
• Products- about solving problems
○ Everything used to be focused on just the product itself, now more about how it can help you
○ Revlon- can be transformative in our lives, gives us hope, lipstick theory
• Differentiated product- “A brand is therefore a product but one that adds other dimensions that differentiate it in some way from
other products designed to satisfy the same need” (Keller et al 2008 p3)
○ Differences may be:
 • Functional, rational and tangible – related to performance e
...
brand elements, see Gillette
 •Symbolic, emotional and intangible – related to the brand values e
...
Coca-Cola and Chanel No
...

 E
...
“Renault cars are unreliable”
 Marks and Spencer once the UK strongest brand attempts to loose its “unfashionable” and “older” image with new
models http://www
...
com/watch?v=7flM8Le8Gxg
○ Repositioning requires significant investment – the case of Skoda cars – used design, build quality, price, market position,
target market (families), and marketing communications (humour)
 Possible, but very resource consuming
Building uniqueness
○ Packaging is now more important than ever
○ Brands tend to be global rather than name-specific to a region
○ Name Logo Design e
...
packaging Music – what comes to mind? Character – any favourites? Slogan
○ 6 elements:
 1
...
Meaningfulness 3
...
Transferability 5
...
Protectability
○ How you chose to communicate helps to give a brand meaning- ex= facebook vs TV
○ Much of this can be trademarked and therefore legally protected from counterfeit and copy-cat products
Logos and symbols- Logos provide the visual identity of the brand – design, colour, typeface and placing are all important in
differentiation and identity
○ Ex= Starbucks removed the word 'coffee' from logo to enhance flexibility into other types of drinks/food
Brand Management- the management of perceptions
○ The power of a brand to influence perceptions can transform the experience of using the product
○ Perception > Reality…Virgin Is shown as fun and quirky, but is your gym experience really fun and quirky?
 Sports goods make you feel better-- so you may perform better
 "brands are the way we do business"
Marketing itself is increasingly becoming a brand management function, more about pushing the brand forward than managing
products
○ Brand as a product of impression management
Brand becomes the nexus and focus for all business activities e
...

Burberry, Harley Davidson
Growth of the brand management concept means that “everything
and everyone has a brand image” Levy and Luedicke (2012)
Do you agree?
This concept has entered into common language and
understanding

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Brand Culture Page 2

Lecture 2- Emotion in Brands
Friday, January 22, 2016

3:06 PM

• Emotionalising brands= key to success
○ Help to create a close relationship with a brand
○ Positive brand recognition leads to less thought, quicker choice
○ Centrality of the consumer, importance of digital and fit with lifestyle
○ Notion of brand personality - tone of voice, distinctive presence as a person would
• Information processing model
• Information search- external or internal
○ External = wandering around a retail
space
• Purchase leads to purchase review
○

○ Brand managers can create needs, therefore reminding consumers that they have these needs (new apps)
• Low vs High involvement
○ Involvement: Level of personal relevance or importance that a product or brand has for an individual (Elliott et al 2011)
○ Low involvement tends to be Inexpensive and frequent purchases, less self expressive, private, less risk
 Brand loyalty allows to blur the line between high and low involvement
 Choice involves:


 Awareness is most important, trial is to see if it works or not, everyone here is fighting for brand loyalty
○ High involvement tends to be Expensive and infrequent, selfexpressive, public, greater risk
 The presumption here is that there will be a longer info search, however this is not always the case (iPhone)
• Involvement and emotion

○

 Emotional realm- personality

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Lecture 3- The Symbolic Meaning of Brands
Thursday, January 28, 2016

11:08 AM

• Genuine, inspiring, reliable -- language used to describe an emotional connection to a brand
• Brand relationships (fournier 1998)
○ Explores the brand-self relationship
○ Proposes that a brand can be an active relationship parter-- giving something back to you
 Reciprocity between you and that brand
 Feel as if you can trust the brand
○ Consumers create and perceive bonds with brands
○ Relationships require interdependency and reciprocity
 Can a brand give back? In what ways might it do this?
□ Source of self/identity, support, happiness, reliability
○ 6 facets of brand quality:
 Love and passion
 Self-connection
 Interdependence
 Commitment
 Intimacy
 Brand partner quality
○ Reebok example-- woman speaks about it like a partner
○ "consumers do not choose brands, they choose lives"
○ Implications
 Consumers' understandings and experiences with brands are often distinct from those assumed by
managers- subjectivity
□ Consumers are subjective
□ Embedded in everyday lives, fuels our self-concept (even low involvement- tomatoes)
□ Allow us to organise and make sense of our lives
□ Brands can be chosen on the basis of goal compatibility
 Not just on functional/symbolic, but more holistic
□ Brand management= brand relationship quality
• Functional and symbolic --does not exist in the real world, but is useful for managing campaigns
• Symbolic- going beyond the tangible/utilitarian, concerned with identity, personality, heritage, values, aesthetics
○ A strong brand will possess both F+S elements…symbolic typically stressed more in luxury brands
○ Some things are more symbolic than others
 Cars, cosmetics, alcohol (linked to nationalities), clothing, tech
 Public vs private consumption -- opportunity to communicate things to our peers about us
• Symbolism in consumer culture - material possessions have a profound symbolic significance for their owners, as well
as for other people and the symbolic meanings of our belongings are an integral feature of expressing our own identity
and perceiving the identity of others
...

 Commercially based or freedom-based decision making?
○ We employ consumption not only to create and sustain the self but also to locate us in society
 Idea that consumption is distinction…the use of brands affialiates us with certain groups
○ Products that we buy, activities that we do and philosophies or beliefs that we hold tell stories about who we are
and with whom we identify
Modernity and Self- Identity: The project of self
○ 'What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late
modernity - and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day
social behaviour
...
Clammer 1992:223
 In a sense, we need them
Interbrand- best global brands
○ Mecosystems- idea that you as an individual are creating brandscapes around yourselves that help you in various
ways
 a select set of brands that create customized experiences around a single individual, where every brand in
consideration slots in seamlessly, and where the most valuable micro moments are curated, connected,
and choreographed
...
” (Sirgy 1982 in
Hogg and Bannister 2001)
○ Notion of resistance based on principles
 The notion of consumer resistance come to the fore – explore this further in context of subcultures and
tribes and the dark side of branding
 The idea of sustainability, eating healthy, etc
...
g
...

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Skoda, Old Spice, EasyJet) – particularly important for brand extension or new segments
...
Self-concept is of value to the individual, and behavior will be directed toward the protection and
enhancement of selfconcept
...
The purchase, display, and use of goods communicates symbolic meaning to the individual and to
others
...
The consuming behavior of an individual will be directed toward enhancing self-concept through the
consumption of goods as symbols
...

○ Collectivist cultures (interdependence, conformity and similarity are valued): consumers use brands to express
their similarities
...
g
...

 Not just about the recent incarnation, built up
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 Not just about the recent incarnation, built up
• Lived vs Mediated Experience
○ Symbolic resources available for construction of self can be distinguished as:
 Lived Experience: practical activities/face-to-face encounters in everyday lives; situated, immediate, &
largely non-reflexive
□ Your own interpretation plus all the marketing messages
 Mediated Experience: outcome of mass-communication culture and consumption of media products;
involves ability to experience events which are spatially and temporally distant from practical context of
daily life
□ What you get from the marketing of the brand/how you receive those messages…distant from you
 Lived experience with a brand tends to dominate over the mediated experience of advertising
• Identity beyond brands
○ “If I am what I have, and if what I have is lost, who then am I” Fromm (1976)
○ Belief that we are actually more than just the collection of our brandscape
• Conclusions

○

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Lecture 4- Consumer Communities and Brands
Thursday, February 04, 2016

11:13 AM

• Brand Diary- notes of what you're using, can have multiples/duplicates
○ Pick a brand that you have something to write about, analyse your own behaviour
○ She doesn't need to see the 7 days, just the 3 or 4 day completed
○ Then move on to justifying why a brand is symbolic or functional for you
 Think about self and social symbolism, and types of messages that are coming thru brand management
 Where you think the brand could go next-- 200 words
○ Don't need to repeat, but say why you repeat?
○ Reflective piece where you bring in your own opinion, but still use literature (see slide readings)
 Just to back up your own insight/observations
○ Structure: anything you want, Elliot &Percy diagrams, plot your own brands, lots of images
 Use models from class and apply it to own knowledge, analyse packaging …talk about Elemis & how it was sold
 More like a report, one document with both…no wrong way of doing it
• Symbolism
○ Brand acts as a signalling system (symbol) - personal meanings (lived/mediated (thru adverts) experience), social meanings
 Can become part of a wider consumer culture within which we live
○ Meaning can be encoded by brand managers and is decoded by consumers
 How do we create meaning? School-> idea that you have to have a brand to be part of an ideal group
○ Consumer culture offers a richly symbolic environment – consumer create their personal “brandscape” from resources available
http://pinterest
...
It is
what defines a human community, its individuals, its social organizations, as well as its economic and political system
...
” Solomon 1996
 Idea of socialisation, all encompassing of our structures around human life
 Standards of living, ways of treating each other…we are interested in material objects
• Social differentiation
○ Conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899) – goods are employed to establish and maintain position in society (status)
 Idea that we are consuming in order to display
○ Veblen: Separation between the classes was facilitated by the upper classes display of goods which had little functional value
○ ‘in an inclement climate…to go ill clad in order to appear well-dressed’ (Veblen 1899, p168)
○ Luxury brands work on this premise – creating distinctions, “status symbol”…idea of status being achieved and secured
○ Social class
 ‘Cultural capital’ – an individual’s resources based on taste and style, taste creates distinctions (Bourdieu 1984)
□ Brands give this feeling to consumers, idea that you have capital (resources) based on your knowledge, taste, style
□ Comes into play particularly with luxury brands
□ Creating a brandscape is actually creating a taste that differentiates you and/or associates you with a group
□ Used in the movement between classes (not always a desirable way to live your life)
 Movement between social classes and grouping can be facilitated through consumption – “social climbers”
□ H&M is doing the opposite of this, bringing luxury brands (Hermes, Balmain) to the masses
 Hunter's Wellies- have now moved from luxury to mainstream consumption
□ Celebrities can help this, bring it forward to be 'cool'…as long as the brand knows how to capitalise on it
• Fashion and Identity
○ “branded fashions are symbolic markers of a wide range of cultural categories and are used to communicate identity among an
ever-greater number of fragmented social groupings
...

 Looked at the relationships consumers had with brands, realised brands brought people together
○ A brand community is a “a specialised, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relationships
among admirers of a brand” (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001)
 Specialised= sharing a point of interest
○ Brand communities exhibit three traditional markers of community: shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of
moral responsibility
...

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 Source of identity…does this mean brands are eroding traditional structures? Family, religion, etc
...
gaming- brings people together
 Provide cost effective ways of maintaining relationships with customers
□ Brand community provides you with another target market that has an enourmous amount of info
 Online and/or face-to-face
□ Brands can have annual general meetings, conferences
 Rumour control problems, sabotage
□ Netnography is a fantastic device for data analysis and looking at brand communities
○ In many product categories the single strongest impetus to buy is someone else’s advocacy (Edelman 2010)
 If someone else says a product is good, most of the time that is good enough for us
□ Rise of bloggers endorsing products
○ Marketers should spend on driving advocacy – use owned media and earned media (Edelman 2010)
http://www
...
com/usergroups/
 Not facilitated or made by Apple, Lego owns their platform
Low involvement goods can use/create brand communities
○ My Nutella
 Fans created world Nutella Day…fan driven community, Nutella wasn't initially involved
Brand Community Fournier and Lee (2009)
○ Brand community central to Harley Davidson’s success – top 50 global brand \
○ Brand community - organised around the lifestyle, activities and ethos of the brand
 Ethos= brand values, rebellion, adventure, visual elements are important, not just about the bike but aesthetic
 Very gendered- very male… personality is macho male, very American
...
” p105
○ Goal: customer loyalty, marketing efficiency and brand authenticity
○ Fournier and Lee propose that:
 Brand community is a business not marketing strategy
□ Not something that is to be fragmented off into a purely marketing role
 Brand community serves members not the company (as seen with Lego)
 A strong community fosters a strong brand and not the other way around
□ Strong brands will not always create a community (Coke-peddle a lot of messages, but don’t seem to get the deep
connection that others do)
 All community members are important not just opinion leaders -□ Understand whole membership to understand your target market
 Online social networks are a tool not a community strategy -- can be a platform to create a community, but is not one itself
 Brand communities should be of and by the people not managerially micro-managed
Consumer tribes - “A tribe is defined as a network of heterogeneous persons – in terms of age, sex, income, etc – who are interlinked by a
shared passion or emotion” (Cova & Cova, 2001)
○ Saying people do come together, it's just not lasting, products and services have a linking value, whether it is imagined or face-toface…football fans gathering on a particular day
...
idea of co-creation

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○ “Active and enthusiastic in their consumption, sometimes in the extreme, tribes produce a range of identities, practices, rituals,
meanings and even material culture itself
...
(Cova, Kozinets,
Shankar 2007: 4)
 Not just user involvement, but the symbiotic relationship, producers must engage
 Tribes tend to be small scale and fleeting…see them around music and sports
 Therefore producers need to listen!
○ Tribes are fleeting, small-scale and based on a shared experience or passion
...
http://www
...
com/uk/en
 RedBull- very involved in youth culture, have events that bring consumers together, a functional brand who is involved in
many different youth cultures
□ Not speaking to one single tribe, but multiple tribes
What is a subculture?
○ Tends to be a very visual group, system of distinction, visual distinction through taste that is slightly different from the main culture
○ Subculture is a system of distinction that is related to but distinct from the dominant culture characterised by self-selection (people
chose to become part of this, whereas tribes they may not chose) on the basis of a shared commitment to:
 • Goods and services
 Brands
 Consumption activities
 Hierarchical social structure -- can see that sometimes, whether someone is goth all the time or just on the weekends
 Beliefs and values --shared ways of music, dance, food (hipsters)
 Ritual
 Modes of symbolic expression
Hebdige (1976) - The Meaning of Mod
○ Importance of style as a form of resistance Defined in opposition (e
...
Mods and Rockers, Punks, visual distinction as well as
cultural)
...
g
...
” (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995: 43)
 Engaged in Harley Davidson ride outs for 2 or 3 years
 Saw a subculture based completely around a brand
○ “Other characteristics of a subculture of consumption include an identifiable hierarchical social structure; a unique ethos or set of
shared beliefs and values; and unique jargons, rituals and modes of symbolic expression
...
I think we are near saturation point
...
”
http://www
...
com/fashion/2014/apr/16/fashion-consciousmen-warned-we-may-have-reached-peak-beard
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http://www
...
com/fashion/2014/apr/16/fashion-consciousmen-warned-we-may-have-reached-peak-beard
 Hipster brands
□ Levis – Levis and the high-end hipster •
http://online
...
com/articles/SB10001424052702303695604575182252816707936 • The iconic jean - 501
http://www
...
co
...
theaustralian
...
au/executive-living/fashion/hipsterhair-care-is-a-growing-concern/story-e6frg8k61226951905538?nk=8cb595f5aaf2e17432df732d45d7bf2f
The notion of 'cool'
○ Brands are going into youth cultures and 'sucking' the cool out of it to create their own sense of cool
○ Why do you think COOL is important?
○ Who decides what is COOL?
○ Counterculture is cool, rebelling, independence, strength, humour, friction, creative, self-awareness, authenticity
 Cool is something that comes from subculture capital
 We pay more for cool brands…Urban Outfitters
...
often done in Japan
 Certain people can act as opinion leaders (celebs)
Conclusions
○ “Until recently, the general approach to marketing …was ‘we talk, you listen’
...
With the advent of social
networking this one-sided exchange has been entirely upended giving rise to a new – ‘you talk, we listen’ approach
...

○ Affiliation can take the form of brand communities, online (digital) communities, neo-tribes and subcultures
...

○ Post-modern marketing’s focus on the collective is seen in the work on brand communities, neo-tribes and subcultures
○ This represents a move away from a dyadic, one-way consumer/producer relationship – important for the consideration of brand
co-creation
Look at slides for resources

Brand Culture Page 11

Lecture 5- Brand Equity
Thursday, February 11, 2016

11:10 AM

For essay- read chapters 8 and 9…could be useful (different types of brand management)
• Brand equity
○ Paintings -- essentially paint dripped on to a canvas…not impressive, only impressive when a name is added
• Blind tasting of beers -- seem to taste different when the brand is mentioned
○ Brand creates differential/added value
○ Brand equity thru that differential value

•

• Tangible vs intangible value
○ "A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person
...
" ~ Jeff
Bezos, Founder of Amazon
○ Brand equity is largely INTANGIBLE and is linked to the added value branding brings
 But made up of both
 Coca Cola- packaging, drink, factory, etc
...
(McQueen in Elliott and Percy 2007:80)
○ A set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add or subtract from the value
provided by a product or service to a firm and/or that firms’ consumers
...
L
...
In other words the power of a brand resides in the
minds of the consumers
...
”
Oxford English Dictionary
 Driven by high advertising campaigns and user groups (university students)
○ •Relates to aspects of the customer awareness of the brand
○ •How easily and often is the brand evoked under various circumstances
○ •To what extend is the brand top-of-mind and easily recalled or recognised?
 Top-of-mind doesn’t always mean sales, but does mean equity
○ •How pervasive is brand awareness?
○ •Customers must understand the product or service category in which the brand competes
 Function is very important to salience
○ •Customers must understand which needs the brand is designed to satisfy
○ •What is the basic function of brand?
○ Is the consumer aware of you? Refers to the identity of the brand…identity-- who are you?
• Resonance- when a brand has deep meaning to a consumer
 Breadth and depth of awareness-- important for salience…situations where you think of brand
○ Not only do brands need to be top-of-mind and have sufficient “mind share”, they must have these at the right time
in the right places
 •DEPTH – how easily the brand can be recalled or recognised by consumers
 •BREADTH – range of purchase and consumption situations in which the brand comes to mind
□ Campbell's markets itself in recipes as a way to make sauce, a side dish, etc
...
Marlboro – Americana, Western Imagery…
...
Disney –
fun, magical, family…
...

□ Important at the moment, notion to create brand authenticity, we want to believe in the values these
brands present to us, do they actually hold these values true?
 Creating/depicting a heritage/evoking nostalgia can do this
○ “A preference (liking, positive attitude) towards objects (people, places or things) that were common (popular,
fashionable) when one was younger, in early childhood, in adolescence, in childhood or even before birth
...
It appears that way, thanks to a piece of brilliance by its founders
...
The company is only
five years old, but its bags look familiar, as if they have been around forever
...
” (Brown 1999: 364)
 Consumers are now cynical, we understand when we are being marketed to, so nostalgia can be considered a
bad thing
 If you're not looking forwards, you're looking backwards
○ “we spent much of the decade looking over our shoulders as nostalgia turned into a marketable concept
...
”
Mathur (1989:63) in Lury (1997: 202)
• Third step: Elicit appropriate responses to brand identity and brand meaning
○ Judgement vs feelings- head vs heart
 Judgment= credibility of brand…cyncial ness of consumers
Brand Culture Page 15

 Judgment= credibility of brand…cyncial ness of consumers

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○ A lot of our judgments about brands are based around performance
 Read about it in the textbook
• Fourth step: convert brand response to create intensive, active loyalty relationship

○

○ Not just about feeling but also about what the consumers actually do
 Behavioural loyalty- buy something regularly but not invested in emotion
 Attitudinal loyalty- you actually feel something for a brand…brand is irreplacable in your life
 Community- building into that community the idea that I do wish to engage with this brand, like the facebook
page, instagram, etc
...
g
...


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• Measuring brand equity
○ Back to market(ing) research
 •Brand equity audit – review everything –Build a picture of “assets” – tangible and intangible –Primary and
secondary data –Market trends, competition, communications campaigns, use syndicated/commissioned
awareness research
 •Qualitative and quantitative approaches –Measure awareness, preference, motivation, attitudes, loyalty
 See also Keller (2001) Appendix – Candidate Measures of Brand-Building Blocks
• Summary
○ “What is clear is that many marketing researchers perceive customer brand equity to be essentially a state of mind
(including behavioural disposition), being the outcome of brand experience (marketing communications, word of
mouth, expectations and trial, etc
...
The
'state of mind', of course, may translate into action (purchase or use) and so manifest itself as sales or market
share
...
)
○ Constellation of meanings
• "In the consumer research literature, the brandscape generally refers to consumers' active constructions of personal meanings and lifestyle
orientations from the symbolic resources provided by an array of brands" (Sherry 1998, p
...

• Personal brandscape
• Film brandscape
○ “Brandscapes can be viewed as loosely bounded sites within which meaning is derived from making sense of the various, interre lated
brands within the brandscape
...
” O’Reilly and Kerrigan (2011)
 Films should be marketed as their parts as a whole , better for positioning
○ Star Wars brand- generational, nostalgia, idea of echoing the first films in the recent films
○ Frozen- merchandising is massive, soundtrack, movement towards feminism
○ Levels of meaning
 Film as brand - cultural artefact
 Brands within films - Sex and the City…helped to legitamize characters
 Film as platform for brand extension - Bond, star wars as a TV show
 In-film celebrity endorsement - Carrie in S&City using an Apple laptop
 Stakeholders as brands themselves - directors, actors, etc
...
genre towhich this story belongs
○ Film brand
 The film brand is both artistic and commercial
 Even release dates can show some sort of value to consumer
□ Artistic - http://www
...
com/john-williams-themes-part- 6-of-6-hedwigs-theme-from-harry-potter/
 Branding is also important here-- casting
 Music of the film & branding, music is transporting, and is important to the whole image
□ Commercial – prequels, sequels, sources, extensions, cross-promotion
 Things like the ability to extend…prequels with superheroes , sequels create that franchise , the nostalgia element if
there's a gap

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 Elements and processes that go into the creation of the film
 Story is important in terms of all of these elements
Brand Culture Page 18

 Story is important in terms of all of these elements
 Collectables around a film are important…perfumes- bond for men and women
 All of this together should form the basis of the marketing, all these elements together
...
youtube
...
vanityfair
...
French= meh
 Where it's set--Paris= romance
○ Studio – Dreamworks, Disney

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• Bond
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○
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Bond movies do not bomb
Lol @ the fact the Broccoli family owns the rights to bond
Air of sophistication…cool is about detachment, about not being bothered, exotic location, long lead up to him which makes it mysterious
Man with a plan, action
Genre: action, spy
 Lots of action films owe success to Bond films
○ Key elements, what you always expect to see, hype about car, the girl(s), bad guy, global intrigue
○ Brands in bond create a link between the fantasy world and the real world
 But do it too much and it can make him too everyday

Brand Culture Page 20

Chapter 8- Symbolic Brands
Monday, March 07, 2016

10:57 PM

• Managing brand strategies in mindspace
○ Brand Asset Valuator - Young & Rubicam Group, 2010
 Explores mindspace of the market and how it develops over time as the brand builds a relationship to customers
○ and Brand Dynamics model - Millward Brown, 2010
 Examines the need for knowledge and differentiation
○ Starting point for all brands is developing brand awareness
 Reduces perceptions of purchase risk
 In low involvement markets, awareness is enough to make a purchase
 Perceptions are conditioned by the products category and the standards set by the competition
□ Together these reduce perceived risk
□ Many brands will never get past stage 1, which is just risk reduction
○ Relevance suggests the brand has something personally relevant to the consumer
 Successful brands have more differentiation than relevance, suggesting that the first objective is to be noticed
○ Emotional bonding involves creating a consumer-brand relationship based largely on personal experience with that
brand
 Usually also involves high levels of trust\
• Symbolic brand strategies
○ Advertising is typically the main channel, but now WOM and social media are important for more than just niche
brands
• Personal meaning strategies
○ Brand-as-a-person- core idea is to create a personality for the brand so that it takes on human characteristics in the
perceptions of the consumer
 Generated by consumer contact with brand
□ Now social media…more organic process of development than adverts
□ Most important traits= sincerity, excitement, sophistication
 Perceptions built into a brand through its communications strategy (compare the market Meerkat)
□ Consumers can also infer personality from market place actions (VW)
○ Brand-as-a-friend - core idea is to build an emotional attachment to a brand thru implicating the brand in important
areas of consumers' lives and to offer a degree of security/comfort that people find in relationships
 Ex= Dove campaign for Real Beauty
 Involves brand ecology - how brand behaviour relates to wider social and cultural xp, in particular a consumers'
media consumption
□ Need to know how and why consumers are consuming the media
 b/c it is from our trusted media that we construct our view of the world, so understanding the
media will allow further intimacy with brands
• Brands and Romance
○ Nostalgia -

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Lecture 7- Managing Brands
Thursday, March 10, 2016

11:07 AM

• Note-- see lecture 1 slides on this
• “The brand is out there
...
” (Boyle 2007:130)
○ Brand management tells us about the brand, but then we also give it our own meanings
○ Can't really control certain elements of how the consumer decodes the brand

•

•

•
•

•

○ Creates meaning and positions brand thru management process
○ Brand is a combo of their key elements
○ Managing brands is about finding and communicating the why…the why sometimes comes about later
 Brands that do the best already have a 'why' at their heart before they go to marketplace
○ Lots of brand management focuses on internal (not to public) management
 Companies like Unilever have many brands internally competing for funding, etc…how to position the brand within
the company
○ Territory- ex= could be for the UK, or for Europe
○ Or working within a space--often what they mean by this is the market…ex the shampoo market
 Just a term used in the industry to refer to a market
Brand positioning- the position of a brand within a market relative to the other brands in that market…in the mind of the
consumer
○ All elements and communications of the brand
○ Values of the brand can be aspirational -- attempting to secure a position in the market
 Brand can position itself within a market where it aspires to be luxury
○ Brand managers map the position of the market brands to find gaps
 A lot of brand management is focused on placing a brand within a market
 Look at the Ugov article on Facebook
Resonance area (top block) of the brand-equty pyramid
○ Functional and symbolic elements come together to make resonance
Symbolic and functional strategy -- Volkswagen and the Force
○ Symbolic elements- The kid as Darth Vader
 Family , trying to make the kid happy…car is meant for the whole family to enjoy
□ Middle class, stay at home mom, quite young, traditional gender roles, peanut butter sandwich, comforting
and warm elements
○ Functionally- learn some of the car design with the keys, inside of the car, German--reliance, good engineering
Functional brand management
○ Functional brands tend to be FMCGs (fast moving consumer goods) or technology
○ Key objectives with Low Involvement brands:
 Brand salience and awareness is key
□ Begin with this, general awareness, what they understand your brand to represent and the product to do
 Top-of-mind – visual recognition, recall
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

Top-of-mind – visual recognition, recall
□ Fast-moving goods advertising-- see the product, not neccesarily aspirational, but all about visual of the
product
 Packaging is really important, make most of our choices in the retail setting, so good packaging may
sway us
◊ Also looking for price, where brand switching occurs
 Problem and opportunity for fast-moving brand management
 Buy one get one can work because consumers are curious
 Segmentation – target markets, market penetration
 Loyalty – purchase frequency, usage situations/quantity
□ Hard to come by in fast-moving consumer goods, absolute goal
□ Distribution (being available in lots of place) breeds this…niche brands tend to get squeezed out of the
marketplace
• Communicating benefits
○ What are the brand’s functional attributes and how to they benefit the consumer?
 Taste – Burgerking Vs MacDonald’s
□ Burger king promotes on taste, mc tends to try to emotionalise, lots of charity and community
 Cosmetics – clear skin, “erase” fine lines, pep up tired skin
 Cars – safety (Volvo), performance (BMW), family (VW)
Positioning – points of difference (PODs) and points of parity (POPs)
○
 Needs to say how and in what manner they are different from others, but also how they are still the same
□ Ex- deodorant, keeps you fresh, point of difference- dove cares for your skin, enhances self esteem
○ PODs – strong, favourable and unique associations
○ POPs – associations shared with other brands
• Better living with Persil
○ What is this functional brand offering the consumer as “added value”?
 Adding value is central to the notion of brand management, on top of the functionality of product
□ Creates more for the consumer
□ Often added value is security, or services, so what we see are brands becoming service provider
 Nike Plus- comes with a training programme for your phone
 Apps are increasingly a good source of added value
○ Persil UK website – Dirt is Good theme
 "solve your stain"--choose your stain and type of fabric, persil gives you advice on what to do
 Helps you integrate product into your life…laundry as a stain pre-treater, extends the salience
 Contextualising their brand in with parenting and children
□ Idea that children are not playing outside enough--it is trying to tell them to go out and get dirty
□ Mirrors values that parents want for their kids
○ Brand as a service provider

•

• Elliot et al - symbolic brand strategies
○ Strategies based on personal meaning
○ Strategies based on social differentiation
○ Strategies based on social integration
• Converse in china
○ “Love the Noise” campaign – two bands on tour in China
Tapping into the underground music scene – Wieden and Kennedy agency, Shanghai

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○ Tapping into the underground music scene – Wieden and Kennedy agency, Shanghai
 Creating a grassroots appeal in China, surrounding a type of music scene
○ Blog, documentary, images, website, indie music community websites
 Enhances and creates cultural capital for the brand
 Recognise power of subcultures, position brand as being part of that market…do this by appealing to the leaders of
that subculture
○ Positions it as authentic-- which is one of the most difficult things to create for a brand
• Lego brand community
○ Use a brand community approach mainly for their older users-teen to adult
○ “From Lego fan to Lego fan”: http://rebrick
...
com/
 Clever--they created the site but they don't micro-manage it, mainly about sharing the space, not giving
promotional messages
□ Harnessing enthusiasm and creativity of fans without being overbearing
 The pro-sumer- hybrid term, consumer is also the producer, aka working consumer
□ Lego can crowdsource innovation and new designs from fans
□ Lego does this well, but sometimes can turn out bad as with Moleskin--people thought they were selling out
○ “My area is aimed towards teen and adult fans
...
” Peter Esperson, Lego’s Head of Online Communities
○ Lego harness fan creativity – prosumer or working consumer
○ Focus is on co-creation, innovation
• Harnessing creativity
○ Co-created, crowd-sourced innovations may have less risk attached to launch https://ideas
...
com/
 They have actually hired some lego users to create new sets
 Can make the fangirl appeal, but maybe not mass market all the time
○ Using user innovation saves development costs
○ However innovations can be too narrowly focused on fan community
 Fan-driven lego= architecture, mainly sold in museums for adults, etc
...
READING
...
worth having a look at for a branding dissertation
○ What is an icon?
 Can brands be iconic? Apple for our age
 Symbolises a particular strand of cultural--Royal Family
 The kardashians - increasingly that family are very culturally prominent and important
□ Shaping our culture- their contouring, lips, butts
○ Iconic: Designating a person or thing regarded as representative of a culture or movement; important or influential in a
particular (cultural) context
...
Couture
○ Rare-- central idea
 However nowadays, is luxury rare? No-- so it is at a personal/social level that an item is rare
○ The world beyond the functional 'pure symbolism'-- can be argued at an individual level
○ Differs across cultures
 Mexico-- a maid is more likely to own a real bag whereas the employer would be less likely
 Some cultures it's very normal to have a maid, here it is a luxury
• The luxury consumer
○ Allows escape from the everyday/mundane
○ Fuels fantasy-- the idea of a different life, given to us through marketing campaigns and who we see using these luxury brands
○ Possible selves/ideal selves-- we shape our desires for luxury around these
○ Builds social distinction-- stratifies society and preserves social distance
 Different levels of consumption in the marketplace…we may aspire to be like the people who wear it
○ Observation of norms
 Can be normal to receive a luxury item for your 18th birthday
○ Quintessential and classic are important
 Buy less, but buy better…anti fast-fashion movement
 Classic item-- quilted Chanel bag
○ You deserve it-- the self-gift
 Treat yourself--brands are marketing towards this, that hard work somehow requires a reward
• Luxury management
○ Chanel sells more of its cosmetics in times of economic hardship
 Makes you feel good, sense of security, can't afford the handbag so go for the lipstick
○ Kapferer and Bastien (2009) insist luxury has its own rules…
 Based on a symbolic branding rationale and ideas of social symbolism
 Therefore the luxury brand must encode social distinction (more than price alone)
...
” Kapferer
and Bastien (2009)
 Argue that the smaller items may be where the real profit is made
 The brand association with fragrance creates the feeling, but it is not really luxury
○ Luxury brand management is a balance between ubiquity (profit) and exclusivity
○ Democratised luxury…
...
michaelkors
...

 Tapping into a younger audience

Brand Culture Page 28



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