Introduction

Brand Management in Marketing refers to the process of creating, developing, maintaining, and improving a brand in a way that strengthens its reputation, increases its value, and builds customer loyalty. Brand management is important because it can help companies achieve a larger customer base at a lower cost. Since it can be expensive to create, launch, and sell new products and services, effective brand management is one way to build awareness, loyalty, and equity in the marketplace. 

Definition

Brand Management is the strategic process of maintaining and enhancing the perceived value of a brand over time. It involves planning and executing initiatives that shape how consumers think and feel about a brand, ensuring consistency across all touchpoints.

Objectives of Brand Management

• Build brand awareness

• Establish a positive brand image

• Ensure brand consistency across platforms

• Strengthen customer loyalty and trust

• Increase brand equity (the brand’s value)

• Differentiate from competitors

Core Elements of Brand Management

1. Brand Identity

• Name, logo, colors, tagline, typography

• Visual and verbal style that communicates the brand’s essence
  
  

2. Brand Positioning

• Defining how a brand is perceived in the minds of consumers vs. competitors

• Answering the question: “Why should customers choose us?”
  
  

3. Brand Equity

The value and strength of the brand based on:

• • Brand awareness

  • Perceived quality

  • Brand associations

  • Customer loyalty
    
    

4. Brand Strategy

• Long-term plan for brand growth

• Includes target market, brand values, voice, and promise
  
  

5. Brand Communication

• Advertising, social media, public relations, packaging, customer service — all used to convey a consistent message
  
  

6. Brand Monitoring

Measuring brand performance using:

• Customer feedback

• Social listening

• Brand equity metrics (e.g., Net Promoter Score, brand recall)

Brand management principles

Managing a brand includes understanding key principles, such as:

1. Brand positioning

Sometimes called differentiation, brand positioning involves establishing your brand and what makes it different from competitors.

2. Brand awareness

A well-planned and cohesive brand can make it easier to build awareness of your brand, attracting new customers and expanding into new markets, which means a lower spend per sale. 

3. Brand recognition

Once consumers become aware of your brand, brand recognition is the act of maintaining your company's visibility and reputation in the marketplace.

4. Brand equity

Brand equity A well-managed brand can help you improve your company’s impression and help you earn a higher price for your products or services. 

5. Brand loyalty

Brand loyalty occurs when customers prefer to buy a specific brand without considering if other items are available. 

6. Brand reputation

Once you have established your brand, it's important to effectively management it moving forward so you can help your company protect its intellectual property and defend itself against imitators.

Importance of Brand Management

• Differentiates products in competitive markets

• Builds emotional connections with customers

• Helps command premium pricing

• Encourages customer retention and loyalty

• Protects the brand during crises or market changes

Example

Apple:

• Strong brand identity (clean design, innovation, quality)

• Consistent branding across devices, packaging, and stores

• Loyal customer base and premium pricing due to strong brand equity

Branding Strategies

With the passage of time, successful companies grow and the number of products handled by most companies also grows. These companies face the question as to what kind of branding relationships these products will have. The branding strategies that companies adopt reflect this relationship. There is no best branding strategy and the choice is not easy. Different companies adopt different strategies, and since there is no best strategy for all types of products, a company may adopt different branding strategies across its product mix. Companies differ in their approaches to branding. A casual look at Western World and Eastern World shows that companies of the Western World generally adopt product-branding strategies (one product one brand or many products many brands).

Example: At the top of this approach are three giant and familiar companies, P&G, HUL,and Xerox.

Eastern companies, such as those from South Korea and Japan adopt a mega branding approach.

The company tagline covers all products “Chips to Ships.”

Example: Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toyota, etc.

These two general approaches reflect customer or market-oriented logic, or cost-oriented logic. Companies enlarge their product mix by either stretching existing product lines or adding new product lines, or both. In these situations they either use existing brand names or use new brand names, or some combination of company name and product brand name. The six branding strategies discussed here can be termed as generic branding strategies, each having its own set of pros and cons.

1. Product Branding Strategy

This approach is driven by customer-orientation. The thinking focuses on customer perception and information processing and the company believes the most effective method to differentiate its offer in a customer’s mind is to give the product an exclusive position and identity. What the brand represents is clearly comprehended and internalised by its target market. Placing several products under one brand name may cause confusion among consumers. 

Al Ries and Laura Ries say: “A successful branding programme is based on the concept of singularity. It creates in the mind of the prospect the perception that there is no product on the market quite like your product.”   —Al Ries and Laura Ries, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, 1998

This strategy focuses on promoting the brand exclusively so that it reflects its own personality, identity, associations, and image. The brand does not take on company associations and any benefits from its name.

Example: Procter & Gamble is an ardent follower of product branding strategy in its purest form as shown in. Hindustan Unilever Ltd. also largely follows product brand strategy, but shows some shifts by leveraging established brand names into areas outside its product category. Actually, very few companies follow only product branding strategy. HUL has brands such as Dove, Lux, Rexona, Lifebuoy, Liril, Pears, etc. Dove moisturises skin, Lux is the toilet soap of film stars, Rexona is a gentle soap with natural oils, Lifebuoy fights germs, Liril is ‘the’ freshness soap, and Pears is the ‘original’ translucent glycerine soap. It is worth noting that both P&G and HUL use separate brand names for products that are in the same product category (Ariel and Tide are detergents; Lux and Liril are soaps). 

Product branding approach is also followed by ITC for its tobacco-based products. At the product level, most cigarettes generally tend to be the same and what counts really is the perceived differentiation among consumer groups who show strong brand preference. This is more distinct in the upmarket segments. The basic product by itself does not offer much opportunity for differentiation. This differentiation has to be created in consumers’ perceptions of a brand. This is the major reason why ITC adopts the product differentiation approach for cigarettes. 

Example: ITC’s brand portfolio of cigarettes includes India Kings, Classic, State Express, Benson & Hedges, Gold Flake Kings, Wills, Navy Cut, etc. Each brand is highly differentiated and occupies a distinct position. However, ITC seems to have diluted its product branding approach in case of its powerful Wills brand and has extended the brand into ready-to-wear clothes.

Product branding delivers certain advantages. It helps create an identifiable brand enjoying a unique position and directed at a well defined target segment, and the company can cover an entire market composed of several segments by creating multiple brands each addressing a different segment. This leaves very little chance of creating confusion among consumers. Product branding is especially advantageous when products are similar, such as detergents, or soaps.

By extending established brands in other categories, a company tries to minimise its risks and excessive promotional expenditures. When a new product is given a familiar and established brand name, consumers are likely to feel more confident about the new product such as HUL extended the Lux name to introduce its shampoo. HUL’s brands Signal (toothpaste), and Blue Seal (peanut butter) failed and most people did not even know these were from Hindustan Lever Ltd. All brands of P&G are standalones in all of its SBU’s, leaving the company to venture into many unrelated fields.