SUCC

CESSF
FUL BR
RANDING

BY
B PR
RAN K CHO
OUDHU
URY

A BOO
OK REV
VIEW
W
BY
Y BHAV
VISH SHIILA PAT
TEL [PGDM-C, JICM, BH
HOPAL]

SUBM
MITTED TO

Profe
essor: ATUL TAND
DON
Chapter: 1

What is Brand?
According to this book Brand is nothing but a way of creating an identity for a product,
somewhat like identifying a specific person within a large crowd. As far as my understanding
about Brand after studying this chapter Brand is something …a consumer is willing to pay more
than the commodity. An example given in this book: Amitabh Bachchan whose name evokes a
certain identity which makes him uniquely distinguishable from other actors.

Is it as simple as that? Of course not. It has taken a lot of time and effort to become the “Big B”
as we know today. That is how a brand built. A brand is not a single association. A brand is
essentially the sum total of the particular satisfaction that is delivers to the consumer who buys
that specific brand. This sum total relates in its entirely to its Name, Logo, Ingredients, Price,
Packaging, Distribution, Reputation, and finally performance.

Brand Equity

Brand Equity encompasses a set of assets linked to a brand’s name and symbol that adds to the
value provided by a product or service to a company’s customers.

The major assets of Brand Equity can be categorized as:

-Brand Awareness: This refers to the strength of brand’s presence in the consumer’s mind.
Awareness is measured according to the recognition and recall of the brand.

-Perceived Quality: Perceived quality lies at the heart of what customers are buying and in that
sense it is the ultimate measure of impact of brand.

-Brand Loyalty: A brand’s value to the company is largely created by the customer’s loyalty.
Company considers loyalty as a major asset. It’s help to create and enhance Brand Equity. Loyal
customers get emotionally attached to the brand.

Brand Identity: The Power of Mnemonic

One of the best ways of giving a distinctive identity to brand is to formulate a suitable
mnemonic.

Pran K Choudhury a author of this book share his personal experience and explain the important
role of mnemonic. The author observed that a lady came to the shop and asked for a 20gm pack
of Lipton’s Kora dust tea. She had specifically asked for Lipton tea. But Kora brand belonged to
Brook Bond. The shopkeeper took out a packet of Lipton’s Tea Girl and gave it to the old lady.
Both Kora and Tea Girl had yellow wrappers, but these were competitive brands. But she did not
want a packet of Tea Girl tea. Since she asked for Lipton’s dust tea, so the shopkeeper had given
her Tea Girl, which is Lipton produce. Actually she wanted the packet which had a picture of
mother and child. Kora packets did have picture of the mother and child as a mnemonic. When
the shopkeeper showed her a packet of Kora, the lady smiled nad confirmed that was indeed the
tea she had wanted all along. The shopkeeper explained to her that this was Brook Bond tea and
not Lipton, which was actually what she had wrongly asked for, by name. Thus the lady actually
wanted Kora Tea with mother and child picture, the company name Lipton or Brook Bond had
never matter to her. So this is the whole incident demonstrated the power of easily recognizable
mnemonic as an important part of branding.

Chapter: 3 Brand Positioning

The idea of brand positioning is based on the assumption that consumers have
limited mind space for commercial messages and that the most successful brands
hence are once able to position themselves in the minds of consumers by adapting
the most congruent and consistent commercial message.

The book has given example of “Bacardi” brand positioning entry into India.

Defining core value:

Internationally, the brand statement is:

The world’s original, premium smooth rums, created in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, which
captures the freedom, color and passion of the Latin Caribbean spirit.

In India, the brand statement is:

Bacardi Carta Blanca’s core value was defined as vibrant sensuality. This represents an
unaffected pursuit of enjoyment through one’s senses.Vibrant because the character of the brand
is passionate, energetic and upbeat. Sensuality, strictly speaking is the appreciation through
tactile sense…feel, hear, taste.

Selling Strategy for Bacardi Carta Blanca in India

Brand/ Product

A range of rums, under the Bacardi name

Brand Position:

What is the position the brand currently holds in the consumer’s mind – and why?

An international brand of alcohol.

Brand Objective:

How do we want the brand to be positioned in the consumer’s mind?

As an icon of new age drinking.

Target Audience:

Young adults

Core Desire:

Unshackle themselves

Brand essence:

Vibrant Sensuality

Brand Activities:

Television activity:

Bacardi Blast program was properly designed to build an association for the brand with partying
and music. It was tied with channel V.

Below the line activity:

This was supported by an extensive below-the –line package for the retail channel as well as on-
premises outlet …pubs, bars, restaurant etc….

The Brand Today:

In the first year launch, Bacardi was reported to generate 10 percent of the international spirits
market in India.

In sum, the to the success of the brand has been not just quality product, but how to position of
brand so it’s a complete brand package that matches with current social trend and with the need
of today’s youth consumers.
Chapter: 5 Creating Brand
Brand building is not a magical remedy for all corporate illnesses, just as fixing a name on the
product does not ensure that the marketers will be able to charge a premium.

How a company converts a commodity into a Brand:

This book has given example of Gujarat Ambuja cement. Can cement be a brand?

Flashback:

Back in the mid 1980s when the Managing Director of the company thought that how company’s
new product cement could be promoted through advertising or could Gujarat Ambuja cement be
converted into a brand. Therefore, the product needed to be promoted as a brand, and not as a
commodity. Both the company and advertising agency accepted the challenge. Over the next few
years they were able to successful launch the product as a brand. And history was created. But a
question was …How?

The Strategy:

When the creative team of Trikaya and marketing team of Gujarat Ambuja Cement met to work
out their “strategy” they took into account the following:

The Objective

Since they were a cement company, and had no corporate equity to use as leverage, there was
need to consciously identify a different in the product so as to make it special. The task therefore
was to create a Brand called “ Ambuja”.
Relationship Building

To consciously create a sense of belonging, The Ambuja Parivar” was created. Activities
included dealer conferences, meetings, awarding of shares family gatherings, celebration of
festive occasions etc..so as to make everybody feel they were part owners of the brand, and not
just recipients of gifts and prizes.

In this book creating Brand author suggest and recommended David Aaker lays down ten
guidelines for creating strong Brand:

• Brand Identity
• Value Proposition
• Brand Position
• Execution
• Consistency Overtime
• Brand System
• Brand Leverage
• Tracking Brand Equity
• Brand Responsibility
• Invest in Brands
Chapter: 7 Brand Extension
Brand extension as a term is strictly used for brands in product categories that are different from
the mother product. There are three ways in which a brand can be expanded.

BRAND
VARIANTING

BRAND
BRAND LINE
EXTENSION

BRAND
EXTENSION

• Brand Varianting: Brand varianting is about offering different varieties of the

brand to the customer.
Example: Shampoos: Black, Yellow, White
Cars: Petrol, Diesel, 1.2 liter
Juices: Orange, Mix fruit

Variants are usually the same product form, offerings the same or similar benefit, to the same
target audience.

• Brand Line Extension: Compared to varianting, a line extension is usually a

different product from but offering a benefit similar to that of the mother product.
Example: A toothpowder and Toothpaste offer the same benefit, but are different
product forms.

Usually line extension are priced differently from the mother product offering, and also aimed at
a slightly different target audience.

• Brand Extension: When a brand name is applied to an unrelated product

category, it is referred to as brand extension.
Example: Godrej went from locks to steel cupboards to refrigerators.
 - Johnson & Johnson offers a range of baby products, made using
different technology, to the same target customer, the young mother.

MAGGI Brand Extension:

Drive the maximum benefit from having established the brand. Nestle did exactly that with one
of their brands- Maggi.

FLASBACK:

Maggi, as a brand, has been known in the market, particularly in the western world, for quite
some time as the maker of Bouillon or Soup Cubes. In fact, when Nestle decided to introduce
Maggi in India. It started by introducing the Bouillon Cube. In 1974 the company introduces
Maggi bouillon in Kerla, as a “test marketing” operation. The initial result was not encouraging.
Further, the company decided to extend the distribution of this product to Goa. Here, Maggi soup
cubes became a success in a limited way because of Goa food habits have some similarity with
western habits.

There is one other one. The flavor of soup cubes jells well with non-vegetarian food, but since
the majority of Indians are vegetarians. Thus, they decided to wait for sometime before further
extension.

Maggi 2-Minute Noodles

In the meantime, Nestle looked at the snack market. But Nestle looked at this market in a
different way – children snacks. The brand was success. At the end of 2 years, volume sale was
approximately 4000 tons.

Maggi Ketchup & Sauces

By the time the Maggi-2 minute noodle was firmly establishing the brand “Maggi” Nestle was
working on a BRAND EXTENSION in an area where they thought they might be able to
leverage the brand. So they finally in 1985, Nestle launched their “Maggi Ketchup”
Chapter: 8 Power of Branding
Brand like Tata, when we are talking about Tata what’s comes first things in mind as a
consumer…Trust. That is power of branding.

Example: Colgate: Protection

Titan: Style
Singapore Airlines: Hospitality
TESCO: Value
Chapter: 9 Brand Promotions
How will the brand be promoted? How will the brands message reach the prospects?

Promotion Mix
Sales 
Consumer Promotion  Promotion 
Advertising 

Promotion 

Direct 

Sampling  PR  Events 

Integrated Marketing Communication deals with all aspects of marketing communication and
how all these disparate of marketing communication and how all these disparate activities have
to be integrated to provide one brand feel.

All these have to communicate the core brand promise. If the brand stands for sophistication,
then all these have to reflect the same. Similarly if the brand is all about natural ingredients, then
all these too will have to convey the same core promise.

Sales Promotion

This chapter has detail explain about sales promotion and its advantage and disadvantage. The
use of sales promotion, throughout the world, has most often been to “buy” short term extra
sales. India is no exception. Its roles has usually been “tactical” the solving of immediate
problems, like a fall in sales, or a declining trend rather than the building of a brand’s long term
strength. But sometimes sales promotion which have contributed to building added value to the
brand, and thus helped contributed to building added value to the brand, and thus helped in
building Brand Equity.
For example: Bournvita Book of Knowledge
Objective: To enhance the brand image of Bournvita by supporting the main advertising
proposition of the brand: “Brought up Right- Bournvita Bright”, thus an enduring consumer
group for the brand.

The Promotion

Consumers sending in two proofs of purchase from any size of Bournvita were offered Free the
Bournvita Book of Knowledge, a compendium of questions and answers from the Bournvita
Quiz Contest for the year 1972-73.

Result

Demand for the Bournvita Book of Knowledge was so great that a substantial reprint was
required. Market research indicated very high recall and linkage in the public’s mind between
Bounvita, the quiz contest and the Book of Knowledge, ranging from 49% in Delhi to 66% in
Madras.

Bournvita’s brand share increased by 3% points in each of the first years of this promotional
programme.

Chapter: 11 Brand Management

Brand Management Process

Brand Situation Analysis

Targeting Future Positions

Testing News Offers

Planning and Evaluating

The first stage is market analysis. If we assume that the brand in question is a brand of
shampoo, the market analysis would cover analysis, value analysis, geography analysis,
seasonality analysis. Further analysis would revolve around consumers, the width of usage,
frequency of usage, gender difference etc.

The next stage is brand situation analysis, where the brand in question is analyzed for its
growth, usage, benefits, ingredients, packaging, pricing, positioning, etc. Obviously this stage is
not relevant if the market is attempting to create a new brand.

The third stage is all about targeting future position. For example the shampoo brand can it
become a conditioner? May be anti-dandruff offerings?

The fourth stage is where the positioning and offers that are developed in stage three are put to
test. How will these offers work in the market place?

The fifth and final stage is where the brand is rolled out and the organization puts in place a
formal planning and evaluation process.

My Take on this Book

Pran K Choudhury’s book “Successful Branding” Successful Promotions Build Successful
Brands. It provides excellent case studies across several industries and situations: from
introducing absolutely new brands to introducing established multinational brands into India,
revamping brands, helping a suffering brand reclaim its leadership position, and enhancing brand
values. Each of these studies prove that mass media is not the only tool that drives products in
very well-defined target groups. The text is analytical, insightful and practical, written in an
easy-to-read manner. Since Pran K Choudhury associated with many brands like Lipton and
HMM. So the author has shared his experience rather than theory or brand model. A promotion,
as the book points out, in some cases, plays an even bigger role than advertising.

Sales promotions dollars permanently surpassed advertising dollars in the US in the early
nineties and have continued to outdistance traditional media spending. I believe this is also very
likely to happen soon in India with the emergence of organized retailing and the rise of service
industries including telecommunications, banking and financial services. Successful Promotions
Build Successful Brands provides excellent case histories across numerous industries to
demonstrate the power of marketing promotions in building successful brands. Both marketing
practitioners and professionals will benefit from reading this book.