Q.

Does branding guarantee a long term

association with consumer?
A. Branding is a continuous process of investment in
building a strong brand so that it acquires a special place
not only in the market place but also in the minds and
hearts of consumers. Consumers do not mind in paying a
premium in case of strong brands which stand for quality
and deliver whatever is promised to them. So, brand
building surely helps in the long run.

Q. How to measure the impact of advertising in

creating and maintaining brand awareness?
A. Post advertising research is conducted in order to
understand the impact of advertising in relation to its
objectives. Researchers would conduct qualitative or
quantitative studies to find out whether the consumer is
aware of the brand and if yes how far and what all does
he know of the brand. It can be done through a set of
questions using a questionnaire or simply through an
unstructured interview. For e.g. while checking the brand
awareness of recent Airtel commercial of Vidya Balan,
researchers would check whether the consumer knows
the celebrities, message content, can remember the
storyline or not.

Q. How important is brand endorsement for a well-

established brand?
A. Brand endorsement is part of a strategy, so it all
depends on the strategy of the branding team. Like for
e.g. for an established brand like Dairy Milk, celebrity
endorsement was needed when it had to ride through the
crisis of worms found in the chocolate bars. Whether an
endorsement is useful or important for a brand, it all
depends on a lot of factors.

Q. How can one build a brand without spending

much money?
A. This is a very general question. If a company wants to
build a brand without spending money, then it will have
to look out for innovative solutions. Word of mouth or
below the line promotions can help to some extent.
Sometimes a buzz may also spread the word so much
that people start getting involved and the communication
spreads like a virus.

Q. What is the role of a brand endorser?

A. Brand endorsers are people - usually celebrities - who
provide a push to the brand and its communication. Use
of an endorser makes people attend to an advertisement
and makes the brand aspirational for them. But the role
varies as per the objective of communication. For e.g.
Amitabh Bachchan endorsed the Dairy Milk brand at the
time of worms crisis; John Abraham gives the aspirational
touch to the Fastrack brand.
Q. What is the brand personality of Fastrack?
A. The personality traits of the brand "Fastrack" are:
spontaneous and witty; experimentative, mischievous,
fashion conscious and infectious enthusiasm. And
therefore, the brand essence is 'playful irreverence'.

Q. What is brand knowledge? Is it a summation of

brand image and brand awareness?
A. Brand knowledge is basically the knowledge that the
consumer has about the brand. A consumer may be
aware about a brand but may not have knowledge. Brand
knowledge is a step beyond brand awareness. For e.g.
you may be aware that a new drink by the name "pulpy
orange" has been launched in the market but you may
not know about the product as to what is the price,
features, if it is a low calorie drink, the place can you buy
it from, the different sizes in which the drink is available
and so on and so forth. Brand awareness and brand
knowledge together makes consumers form some beliefs
about the brand and that's brand image.

Q. What is brand cannibalization?

A. Brand cannibalization takes place when “A” product of
a company impacts “B” product from the same company
negatively. This happens because the brands belong to
the same product category. For e.g. if Balaji Telefilms
have two soap operas on Star and Zee in the 9 pm slot
and if the viewership is higher on Zee, then one can say
that this is a case of brand cannibalization.

Q. How should a brand face the media when faced

with image crisis? or e.g. Pepsi/Coke facing
pesticide issue.)
A. Brands have to initiate a lot of damage control
activities in order to tide through a crisis. If the company
is responsible for the crisis, the first step is to boldly
accept the mistake and start rectifying the same. In cases
other than this, brands take the route of pacifying the
sentiments of people by giving clarifications and
information on the issue in mass media. For e.g. when
Nokia suffered from a crisis recently regarding its battery,
it started by giving substantial information on the issue,
gave replacement and also educated consumers to
prevent future damage.

Q. Why do people discontinue well-known brands

like Hutch, UTI etc?
A. The reasons are different in different situations. The
re-branding exercise of any brand has to be studied with
a context. The UTI re-branding was done to move away
from the UTI brand as US64 scheme history had resulted
in a negative image among consumers. Hutch re-
branding to Vodafone is a case of change in ownership.
Q. What do you think about the innovative
launching strategy of Vodaphone and how long will
it succeed?
A. Hutch is a brand deep rooted in the minds and hearts
of consumers. Therefore, it will take a while for the
Vodafone brand to get registered and accepted by the
market. However, the launch strategy has resulted into a
lot of brand visibility with activation happening at all
levels. Right from television ads to radio to hoardings to
Vodafone shops to care centre to POP display, everything
has been changed to Vodafone brand. As of now, we are
witnessing the first layer of change and it has been a
success.

Q. What is a cult brand?

A. Brands that become popular beyond the obvious level
with consumers are known as cult brands. Consumers
love cult brands and are passionate about being
associated with the brand. Marketers enjoy this position
as extra efforts to sell the brand are not needed in cases
of cult brands. For e.g. Harley Davidson bikes.

Q. What is a brand?
A. A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, logo that
differentiates a product from competitors in a given
category. Consumers recognize the brand due to the
unique name, colour schemes, design, logo and thereby
gives them the power to choose. For e.g. a cola drink is a
product but Pepsi, Coke, Thums Up, Sprite, Mirinda, 7 Up
are brands. Companies invest time, money and energy in
making strong brands as it helps in differentiation in a
product category. Brands also stand for quality and value
and therefore consumers are ready to pay a premium.

Q. How can we build a sustainable brand equity?

A. Brand equity can be built through consistency in
delivering customer value. A brand is successful if it
enjoys a good reputation among people. Good reputation
is a result of good and consistent performance as against
the consumer expectations. Companies need to keep
their brands relevant with the changing times through a
continuous track of the category, competition and
consumers.

In order to maintain the equity of the brand, company

needs to invest time, money and energy and at times
need to take decisions of repositioning, increasing ad
spends, entering newer segments, withdraw poor
performing products. In short being “consistent” and
“relevant” in the changing times is the key to sustainable
brand equity.

Q. What is a Brand Differentiator?

 A. A brand differentiator is anything that differentiates
the brand from others. It can be a unique feature,
attribute, shape, colour. It can also be uniqueness in any
of the four “P”s of marketing mix. The differentiator is
created and communicated to the consumer for them to
be aware of the uniqueness. For e.g. the brand
differentiator for Wagon R is the tall structure of its
design versus an Alto whose differentiator is fuel
efficiency. A big bazaar differentiates itself from other
retail brands on the basis of “economy” of transactions.

Q. What do you mean by the death of a brand?

A. Death of a brand can be market forced or company
controlled. It means that if the brand dies due to poor
performance and consumer rejections it is known as
market forced. For e.g. Ekta Kapoor’s serial on MTV called
“Kitni Mast Hai Zindagi” stopped after a few episodes as
youth were not watching it and as a result it died a
premature death. This is an example of death of a brand
due to market forces.

Sometimes a company may decide to withdraw a brand

from the market due to various reasons like low
revenues, low sales, distribution problems, low future
growth prospects. In such cases, death of a brand occurs
due to strategies which are company controlled.
Q. How is brand communication different from
brand building?
A. Brand building involves a lot of activities and brand
communication is one of them. In other words brand
communication helps in brand building. For e.g. brand
communication of Airtel is done through TV and
newspaper advertisements, hoardings, sponsorships of
college fests, tie-ups with Café Coffee Day outlets, and so
on. All these communication efforts are ultimately
increasing the brand visibility and building a brand.

Q. What is brand jugalbandi?

A. Brand jugalbandi is also known as co-branding. When
two brands come together to create synergies of
operation, jugalbandi comes into picture. It’s like the rich
music that emerges when two different musical
instruments are played in synchronization with one
another. For e.g. Kingfisher along with NDTV launching a
lifestyle channel is a good case of brand jugalbandi.

Q. What is brand health track?

A. A brand health track is a research taken up by firms
on a periodic basis in order to know the brand
performance in terms of customer satisfaction, sales,
territory growth, competitive performance. It gives
information on key attributes on a continuous basis to the
brand manager and enables him to predict problems and
design strategic solutions for best health of the brand.