Webalue.com Communications » Brand Managers

Introducing an improved version of Consumer Feedbacks

Meheer Thakare — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:33:38 +0000

Voice of Consumers

Yesterday evening we launched a couple of new tools to the Webalue.com System. The tools are still in the development mode and hence not all details can be let out at the moment. Nevertheless, we’d like to encourage you to make use of these tools for your Marketing Research.

Consumer feedbacks have always been an essential component of Brand Management. We realised this early, during our research and conceptualizing stage at Webalue.com. That first prompted us to have Voice of your Consumers as a Key Performance Indicator in quantifying a Brand’s performance.

‘Voice of Consumer analytics’ has an unimaginably large horizon that is yet to be completely tapped and made effective use of. We couldn’t resist taking a plunge into this market. As we recognise a huge potential insights for our clients (You) in collecting consumer feedback data that consequently acquires a better understanding of consumer profiles, the attempt is to empower Brand Managers with optimum research tools for a consequentially better decision making. So, today we are announcing two new features in Consumer Feedback.

1. Customized survey of your website visitors, and
2. Consumers voice reporting

Stay connected to http://communications.webalue.com/ for details into latest features. In the upcoming posts we will publish the Usage Manuals and Benefits of the new branding tools Announced today.

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Have you forgotten to integrate your original Brand Values to your Online Marketing activities?

Meheer Thakare — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:32:56 +0000

Internet is a new medium of communication; it has changed the way we market our products and services. It has managed to challenge several marketing processes pushing a new way of implementing the same techniques with a different approach. Off late with the rise of interactivity in the guise of Web 2.0, the way we market products and services has encountered great levels of dynamic approach.

Brand managers conveniently forget application of the basic principles of Branding. It is important that they do not consider Interactivity as an alternative to Branding. Interactivity is simply a new channel that is largely misinterpreted. Several brand managers believe that they are required to portray and re-create different brand values for their presence on the Web with something that relates to Interactivity. On the flip side, there are still a lot of organizations that exist with merely putting up their offline brochures on display in the website thereby killing the interactivity and blending. Webalue.com’s Marketing Head, Vipin Patil, who has spent a decade in web development agrees, ‘Most companies looking at developing their identity online evidently misunderstand the characteristics of Internet. In the past 10 years I have had a few clients who even refused to display their email IDs on the website citing them as an unmanageable added source of enquiry management (They would only display their physical office address and telephone numbers on the ‘Contact’ pages). ‘Interactivity’ still has a long road to cover before such businesses adopt them on right lines.’

The right approach is to adopt interactivity as a new channel to branding (just like TV and Radio) and creatively align this new medium with the current offline brand values. This also ensures consistency constituting to brand strength. M&M did this quite fabulously. Their customers can actually order a customized bag of M&Ms where messages they create can be printed on each piece of the candy with any of the available colours and delivered at the comfort of consumer’s home. And Interactivity doesn’t end their consumer’s can even send in a photo and have their face printed on every M&M candy. This is interactivity and brand attachment at its best. Result?? Brand’s Consistency remains INTACT and Brand’s Interactivity seems Fabulous. Another example of this could be SUNSILK Gang of Girls initiative, which we recently covered on Webalue.com Communications.

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The Most Common Mistake Brand Managers make: Golden Rule

Meheer Thakare — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:47:15 +0000

Today we are looking at addressing all those Brand Managers who have continually faced failure within their campaigns. This may have well been the greatest drawback of all your branding campaigns. How often, do we hear of million dollar campaigns gone wrong due to unseen and unaccounted for errors? We have ourselves, at Webalue.com Communications, regularly pointed out several real time examples of huge companies failing to effectively conclude their big-budget branding campaigns. Sometimes, thus, it is wiser to rely on credible veterans to answer the reasons of failures, rather than depending on our new generation instincts.

It is difficult to believe that the most common mistake Brand Managers commit is, ‘to lose the focus of their target market and consequently spending their campaign budget across so wide that they eventually cannot attract the individual or consumer effectively’.

The other day I was engaged in a very constructive discussion with Ed Burghard, a retired Harvey Proctor Marketer about Branding (Thanks to Ed Roach, who introduced me to Ed Burghard ). Ed is the CEO at The Burghard Group, LLC operating from Cincinnati and is also the Executive Director at Ohio Business Development Coalition. He has previously held positions at P & G designated as the Director of Marketing. Do visit his website, http://www.strengtheningbrandamerica.com to know more about him and his work.

We were specifically discussing some unique ideas to promote Brand Ohio and America, when he swiftly pointed out to me one of the most common mistakes committed by Brand Managers. He quoted, ‘just wanted to give you some insight into the balancing act brand managers need to master in order to successfully compete in the market. Too often, they don’t say no to good ideas and spread their budget so thin across a number of tactics that collectively nothing is achieved. The other thing they do is mistakenly assume that it is sufficient if some of their target is reached by a tactic. In reality though, it is a game of individuals. The overlap of individuals reached in the communication tactical plan is what matters most. Focusing on creating this overlap is critically important.’

Ed has been exposed to quite a large number of brand managers throughout his career which makes his comments extremely credible.

Webalue.com’s Branding Panel Expert and Adviser, Ed Roach has similar ideas. Ed has 25 years of experience in branding, where he helps small businesses position their brands to showcase the differentiating factors. Visit Ed’s website at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca, to know more about his services. According to Ed, ‘Individuals=stakeholders. Each “individuals” agenda should be accounted for and play into the overall success of the brand promise as much as it can be, given the assortment of personalities.’

The extraction of both these successful branding veterans suggest that brand managers often focus on too many channels to promote their brand during a campaign in the bid to reach a wider audience. In the interim of such campaigns the individuals meant to be reached are not effectively communicated with, resulting in a clueless failure. The insights of both these experts further clear the air, strengthening the importance of market research in Branding. Brand Managers cannot make a campaign successful without profiling the target market and then imposing the promotions and advertising to sustain the focus. Concluding, if you’re a Brand Manager or an Owner, make sure you address the most common mistake of ‘loosing focus of your Target Market before your campaign succumbs’.

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Branding in this festival season

Lata Vijaybaskar — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:00:35 +0000

Happy Diwali! This has become the most popular welcome and goodbye chant the last few days. Well it is that time of the year. From Dusshera to Christmas it’s a very festive 3-4 months. So would the marketers and brand managers let this opportunity pass? Festive season calls a highly lucrative audience which a huge amount of brands try to connect with.

The consumer durables market, telecom service providers, textiles, jewellery, even the hospitality industry is placing its bets on the festive season, to end this year on a bright note. But here is the paradox. While all the promotions and advertisements make a lot of noise and even enable good sales, the question of whether they have created the brand any long term impact lingers. Is your product only a commodity sold at a lesser price during the season? Will customers remember your brand attributes post the festival?

In the words of brand guru Aaker (1996), “developing the strength of a brand is not deemed to be easy.” The response to – ‘what is the best approach to branding during the festive rush’ is filled with alternative methods and contradictions.

Branding during a festival or event is an unique opportunity to connect with your customers through every point of interaction and create an emotional connection between the festival, customer emotions and your product/service. The challenge here of course is to stay within your brand identity and still connect to people. For e.g.; Airtel gives online priests and puja hyms for festivals like Ganesh Chathurthi. Staying in line with their identity to “live every moment” they make customer’s festivals momentous.

The concept of festival branding is multidimensional, with cognitive and affective spheres. An amalgam of ideas, beliefs, opinions, expectations and impressions. Thus the festive branding attributes are interactional and strongly based on emotions. It needs to build on the brand value of the festival itself and reflect the essence of brand promise of the product/ service.

With these in mind the brand strategy should start with identifying the values or importance of the festival and articulate this to the brand’s promise. When positioned thus in the minds of the consumer the brand would gather better image.

Festive Brand Promise

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Brand Audits help creating and sustaining Brand Equity

Meheer Thakare — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:29:02 +0000

Creating and efficiently managing Brand Equity has risen up on the priorities of Brand Managers at all companies belonging to various industries. A strong Brand Equity after all, opens doors for consumer loyalty and profits. Rewards of nurturing Brand Equity are evident to all brand managers. Sadly though, only a few managers are known to have the ability to stop and closely analyze the SWOT of their Brands which could help them create a strong brand equity based on insights extracted from audits. For the managers though, analyzing the entire picture while being immersed into the day-to-day operations of managing a Brand is a heavily daunting task.

Exercises that are designed to evaluate the performance of a brand closely are generally called Brand Audits. Most commonly these audits involve detailed internal description of how and through what sources is a brand being marketed and a thorough external investigation, through focus groups and other consumer research techniques that indicate exactly what the brand’s activities do to consumer perceptions.

Brand Audits prove to be extremely effective when they are periodically conducted frequently. Apart from help in building Brand Equity, they give managers a clear picture of the products and service on offer, and how they are being marketed and branded. Consumer Feedbacks, a part of Brand Audits, often uncover conflicting beliefs and attributes between the company’s perception and consumer’s expectations. They often indicate the managers the key areas to work on while building a strong brand image.

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Investor expectations: Impact on Brand Management

Meheer Thakare — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:00:54 +0000

Managers" src="http://communications.webalue.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/investor-expectations-impact-on-brand-management.jpg" alt="Investor's

pressures on Brand Managers" width="291" height="413" />Brand managers have been their organization’s investors since a few decades now. While investors cannot be blamed for unleashing their

subjected to the whimsical pressures of

pressure guns (well, understandably), it does mean that brand managers are targets often finding themselves at the receiving ends of the firing.

Unforeseen levels of mergers, acquisitions and alliances took place on the Wall Street in the later part

of 1980s. These often included activities like leveraged buyouts, pounding the buyers and brand managers with heavy pressures due to the debt constituted as a

result of high profile deals. Debt ultimately invited troubles for brand managers in the form of investor’s pressures; Pressures to produce short-term cash flows to

meet debt coverage; Pressures to produce steady, predictable growth in earnings; and Pressures to justify how and why they could expect investments in marketing

strategies to ultimately add value to the company.

Such situations often take away a lot of the decision making and risk taking capacities of companies

which also pose as barriers to innovative marketing strategies.

As a result of such usually unprecedented levels of investor expectations, many companies have to

resort to strategies that would lend them short-term benefits rather than long-term. Philip Morris, for example, in April 1993 dramatically reduced its prices to wipe

off competitions it faced from low-priced competitors with the help of it new brand ‘Marlboro Friday’ cigarettes. Brand managers also increase their reliance on trade

and customer discounts (promotions) rather than advertising. During early 1990s the advertising expenditures on marketing budgets fell on-to less than 33%

plunging from 60%

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Incoming Links Analysis

Meheer Thakare — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:43:41 +0000

Every website’s success heavily depends upon the incoming links coming in from sources other than search engines. Such links add up to the credibility of the brand. So, if ‘x’ brand recieves an incoming link from BBC NEWS website, its an incredible boost to the brand in more than one way.

There are two kinds of Incoming Links; passive and active. Passive links are dead links which exist only to make a mark of presense and often get pushed in so deep within the linking partners website that it hardly ever sends in targetted traffic. Active links on the other hand are the ones that keep acquiring new visitors ready to be exposed to the new brand.

Active incoming links are of primary importance to Webalue.com. The system filters in such active inbound links recognizing them as essential source of customer acquisition. It evaluates incoming links that send in most amount of traffic to the website to generate a Incoming links analysis score.

Utility

Incoming Links analysis provides Brand managers with deeper understanding of the relevance held by each of the active inbound link. Through this feature brand managers should be able to see if their linking efforts are paying off and/or how much more work would be neccessary to acheive primary and secondary goals in terms on customer or visitor acquisitions on a specific horizon and incoming links on the rather larger one.

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