Brand management defenation Brand management involves a number of important aspects such as cost, customer satisfaction, in-store presentation, and competition. Brand management is built on a marketing foundation, but focuses directly on the brand and how that brand can remain favorable to customers. Proper brand management can result in higher sales of not only one product, but on other products associated with that brand. For example, if a customer loves Pillsbury biscuits and trust. the brand, he or she is more likely to try other products offered by the company such as chocolate chip cookies. Brand management is Disciplines > Brand management > Brand management is The total approach | Creating the promise | Making the promise | Keeping the promise The total approach Brand management starts with understanding what 'brand' really means. This begins with the leaders of the company who define the brand and control its management. It also reaches all the way down the company and especially to the people who interface with customers or who create the products which customers use. Brand management performed to its full extent means starting and ending the management of the whole company through the brand. It is simply far too important to leave to the marketing department. The CEO should be (and, in fact, always is) the brand leader of the company. Creating the promise Creating the promise means defining the brand. A good brand promise is memorable and desirable. It cannot be effective if nobody remembers it, and is no good either if nobody wants it! A good brand promise evokes feelings, because feelings drive actions. Volvo offers feelings of safety. Mustang offers feelings of excitement. The promise must be unique and identified with you alone. Within an industry, promises can be very close, but if you want any hope of success, you must stake out the very specific territory of your promise and know clearly how it is different from the promises of other firms. The right promise is not just something you make up on a Friday afternoon. It comes through a deep understanding of your marketplace and your customers. It also comes from a deep understanding of the capabilities and motivations of the people in your company. Creating a promise you cannot consistently keep, year after year, is plain suicide. Making the promise Once you have created the promise, the next (and not so trivial) step is to somehow inject it into the minds of your customers, your staff and everyone who receives anything from you or has any impact on what you deliver. This is where marketing people come into their own. Although it is still not their sole preserve, a large part of marketing, which includes advertising and PR, is about positioning the company and its products in the minds of customers and against your competitors. Keeping the promise 1 Creating and making the right promise is one thing, but then you have to keep it. If you do not, you brand will still exist, but now the promise will be of slipshod products and inconsistent delivery. Keeping promises means managing capability. It means consistent processes that are capable of delivering what is required. It means technology and systems which are reliable and usable. It means motivated people who are willing and able to deliver the goods. A function of marketing that uses techniques to increase the perceived value of a product line or brand over time. Effective brand management enables the price of products to go up and builds loyal customers through positive brand associations and images or a strong awareness of the brand. Developing a strategic plan to maintain brand equity or gain brand value requires a comprehensive understanding of the brand, its target market and the company's overall vision. Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-management.asp#ixzz1yQ0tMOYk Brand Management Overview Brand management is difficult to define because the actual job description varies widely across the vast universe of consumer products companies. Many CPG companies have at least one thing in common, though: They’re part of huge conglomerates that produce many name-brand products. Size gives them economies of scale, and a diversity of products gives them protection against down cycles. Which is not to say that small mom-and-pop, mail- order pickle-and-jam companies don’t crop up every now and then and make a serious go of it. They do. They aren’t where the majority of the jobs are, however-at least, not until Unilever or Nestlé takes them over. The basic analogy for brand management is that brands are treated like businesses within the company, and brand managers are essentially small business owners. The job involves: 2 .Monitoring the competitive landscape of the category in which your brand resides. Developing strategies to exploit market opportunities. Executing those strategies with the help of a cross-functional team. Delivering the sales volume, market share, and profit projections for the business. Brand managers craft elegant business plans and submit them to senior management. Then, when the price of the key ingredient in their product goes through the roof because of locust plagues, they rewrite the business plan from scratch with many more contingencies. They focus on the minutiae of a daily sales-volume report, and they dream big dreams when it’s time to update the vision for the brand. They approach upper-level management for capital to fund a new product launch or a line extension in much the same way that small business owners go to venture capitalists or banks to fund expansion. Requirements Brand management is considered part of the marketing function, and most aspiring brand managers have had some experience in advertising, promotions, or sales. However, consumer packaged goods companies are very interested in candidates who have honed their analytical and leadership skills in other disciplines, including consulting, investment banking, or strategic planning. If you have no previous experience in marketing, a summer internship can be enormously helpful. Many companies offer summer internships, which often result in a job offer after graduation. Recruiters look for leadership, analytical skills, problem solving ability, teamwork, and creativity. Successful applicants should have at least an undergraduate degree in business, liberal arts, or a related field. Philosophy majors and engineers are equally welcome to apply, if they can demonstrate skills in the five areas just mentioned. Most companies look for candidates with at least a 3.5 GPA. The more work experience and leadership and teamwork experience (in a sorority/fraternity, school club, or sports team) you can show, the better. Job Outlook 3 Record-high gasoline prices and generic competitors able to cheaply replicate brand name goods have stuck CPG companies between a rock and a hard place. These market pressures have led to budget cuts, weakened revenues, and stock declines. Recent product price increases at Campbell Soup, Starbucks, Hershey Foods, Clorox, and General Mills attest to the strain large consumer products companies are under to remain profitable. Yet, at most companies, the increased competition has made brand management more valuable than ever. Brand management was once an exotic practice known only to the CPG industry, but now companies in a wide array of industries are finding value in well-managed brands. Companies are also finding branding useful in more corporate functions. Human resources departments are fretting over the internal branding needed to attract employees and keep them loyal. The boom in new ways to reach consumers-video on the web, satellite radio, and blogs to name the most recent-also requires brand managers to keep pumping branding messages through the endless capillaries of media. And thanks to these increased venues for marketing, as well as more uses for branding within companies and in more industries, job opportunities for brand managers have expanded. Employment in the field of marketing is expected to increase faster than average-at over 27 percent- through 2014. The BLS says this sustained job growth will be supported by increasingly intense domestic and global competition in consumer products and services. It also cautions budding marketers, however, to expect increased competition for full-time corporate marketing positions as marketing projects (including brand management) are increasingly outsourced to ad agencies and contract specialists. Brand managers who were able to hang onto their jobs through the most recent recession have been forced to work with drastically reduced budgets, leaving them hard-pressed to deliver the major product wins they need to advance their companies-and careers. On the other hand, brand managers with specialized scientific or industry expertise may find they are better poised to land plum positions with major ad agencies as the economy continues on an upswing. Career Tracks The career track at most companies features plenty of opportunities for cross-functional experience and varied work assignments. At some companies, experience in functions other than marketing has become a prerequisite for advancement. One brand management professional reports that in her 25- year career at Procter & Gamble, she has held seven different jobs in departments ranging from marketing to cost accounting to corporate recruiting. 4 Despite flexibility in career path development, there are clearly defined entry-level positions: marketing analyst (undergraduates), assistant brand manager (MBAs), or sales representative (undergraduates). The path from marketing analyst to assistant brand manager to brand manager is a progression from executing to developing strategy. Continuing along the path involves a shift from participating in cross-functional teams to leading them, and from monitoring a business budget to assuming profit and loss responsibility. At some point along this path, most companies send aspiring managers out into the field for extensive sales training, a.k.a.