Brand Positioning Strategies

Brand Positioning Strategies A product can be positioned based on 2 main platforms: The Consumer and The Competitor. When the positioning is on the basis of CONSUMER, the campaigns and messages are always targeted to the consumer himself (the user of the product) Peter England always campaigns their product concentrating on the consumer, the user of its product. Louis Philip also concentrates on this kind of campaigns. The other kind of positioning is on basis of COMPETITION. These campaigns are targeted towards competing with other players in the market. Dettol television commercials always concentrate on advertisements, which show that this product would give you more protection, then the others. A number of positioning strategies might be employed in developing a promotional program. The 7 such strategies are discussed below: POSITIONING BY PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES AND BENEFITS Associating a product with an attribute, a product feature or a consumer feature. Sometimes a product can be positioned in terms of two or more attributes simultaneously. The price/ quality attribute dimension is commonly used for positioning the products. A common approach is setting the brand apart from competitors on the basis of the specific characteristics or benefits offered. Sometimes a product may be positioned on more than one product benefit. Marketers attempt to identify salient attributes (those that are important to consumers and are the basis for making a purchase decision) Consider the example of Ariel that offers a specific benefit of cleaning even the dirtiest of clothes because of the micro cleaning system in the product. • Colgate offers benefits of preventing cavity and fresh breath. • Promise, Balsara’s toothpaste, could break Colgate’s stronghold by being the first to claim that it contained clove, which differentiated it from the leader. • Nirma offered the benefit of low price over Hindustan Lever’s Surf to become a success. • Maruti Suzuki offers benefits of maximum fuel efficiency and safety over its competitors. This strategy helped it to get 60% of the Indian automobile market. POSITIONING BY PRICE/ QUALITY •

Marketers often use price/ quality characteristics to position their brands. One way they do it is with ads that reflect the image of a high-quality brand where cost, while not irrelevant, is considered secondary to the quality benefits derived from using the brand. Premium brands positioned at the high end of the market use this approach to positioning. Another way to use price/ quality characteristics for positioning is to focus on the quality or value offered by the brand at a very competitive price. Although price is an important consideration, the product quality must be comparable to, or even better than, competing brands for the positioning strategy to be effective. Parle Bisleri – “Bada Bisleri, same price” ad campaign.

POSITIONING BY USE OR APPLICATION Another way is to communicate a specific image or position for a brand is to associate it with a specific use or application. Surf Excel is positioned as stain remover ‘ Surf Excel hena!’ Also, Clinic All Clear – “Dare to wear Black”. POSITIONING BY PRODUCT CLASS Often the competition for a particular product comes from outside the product class. For example, airlines know that while they compete with other airlines, trains and buses are also viable alternatives. Manufacturers of music CDs must compete with the cassettes industry. The product is positioned against others that, while not exactly the same, provide the same class of benefits. POSITIONING BY PRODUCT USER Positioning a product by associating it with a particular user or group of users is yet another approach. Motography Motorola Mobile Ad.n this ad the persona of the user of the product is been positioned. POSITIONING BY COMPETITOR Competitors may be as important to positioning strategy as a firm’s own product or services. In today’s market, an effective positioning strategy for a product or brand may focus on specific competitors. This approach is similar to positioning by product class, although in this case the competition is within the same product category. Onida was positioned against the giants in the television industry through this strategy, ONIDA colour TV was launched with the message that all others were clones and only Onida was the leader. “neighbour’s Envy, Owners Pride”. POSITIONING BY CULTURAL SYMBOLS An additional positioning strategy where in the cultural symbols are used to differentiate the brands. Examples would be Humara Bajaj, Tata Tea, Ronald McDonald. Each of these symbols has successfully differentiated the product it represents from competitors

Celebrity Endorsements - A Brand Building Concept The billions of dollars spent per year on celebrity endorsement contracts show that celebrities, like Liz Hurley, Britney Spears and Tiger Woods, play an important role for the advertising industry. This shows that the practice of using super stars in advertising generates a lot of publicity and attention from the public. The underlying question is, if and how the lively interest of the public in ‘the rich and famous’ can be effectively used by companies to promote their brands and consequently increase revenues. CELEBRITIES AS SPOKESPERSONS

Companies frequently use spokespersons to deliver their advertising message and convince consumers of their brands. A widely used and very popular type of spokesperson is the celebrity endorser. The reason for using celebrities as spokespersons goes back to their huge potential influence. Compared to other endorser types, famous people achieve a higher degree of attention and recall. They increase awareness of a company’sadvertising, create positive feelings towards brands and are perceived by consumers as more entertaining. Using a celebrity in advertising is therefore likely to positively affect consumers’ brand attitudes and purchase intentions. SOURCE CREDIBILITY AND ATTRACTIVENESS A central goal of advertising is the persuasion of customers, i.e., the active attempt to change or modify consumers’ attitude towards brands. In this respect, the credibility of an advertisement plays an important role in convincing the target audience of the attractiveness of the company’s brand. Pursuing a celebrity endorsement strategy enables advertisers to project a credible image in terms of expertise, persuasiveness, trustworthiness, and objectiveness. To create effective messages, celebrity advertisers also have to consider the attractiveness of the spokesperson. Source attractiveness refers to the endorser’s physical appearance, personality, likeability, and similarity to the receiver, thus to the perceived social value of the source. The use of (by corresponding standards) attractive people is common practice in television and printadvertising , with physically attractive communicators having proved to be more successful in influencing customers’ attitudes and beliefs than unattractive spokespersons. This behavior mainly goes back to a halo effect, whereby persons who perform well on one dimension, e.g. physical attractiveness, are assumed to excel on others as well, e.g. happiness and coolness. Simply assuming that a person just has to be famous to represent a successful spokesperson, however, would be incorrect, with a considerable number of failures proving the opposite. Very well accepted and attractive super stars have failed in turning their endorsements into success. The late '80s saw the beginning of celebrity endorsements in advertising in India. Hindi films and TV stars as well as sportspersons began encroaching on a territory that was, until then, the exclusive domain of models. There was a spurt ofadvertising, featuring stars like Tabassum ( Prestige pressure cookers), Jalal Agha (Pan Parag), Kapil Dev (Palmolive Shaving Cream) and Sunil Gavaskar (Dinesh Suitings). Of course, the first ad. to cash in on star power in a strategic, long-term mission statement kind of way was Lux soap, a brand which has been among the top three in the country for much of its lifetime. Detergents on the other hand ran the whole gamut from Lalitaji (the antithesis of celebrity) to Shekhar Suman, stepping into the lives of ordinary housewives. In the much talked about Shah Rukh-Santro campaign, the organisation wanted to overcome the shortcoming of an unknown brand, Korean at that. The objective was to garner faster brand recognition, association and emotional unity with the target group. The Santro ad. showed the highest recall amongst auto ads.. despite average media spends for the category. Even the ill-fated Home Trade had hits going up to seven lakhs a day after their campaign featuring Hrithik, Shah Rukh and Sachin.

Basically, celebrity endorsements give a brand a touch of glamour, and the hope that a famous face will provide added appeal and name recognition in a crowded market. In the battle for the mind, you get the customer excited by showing him a known face, and an effective demand is created. This would normally work best when the concerned brand has close substitutes, or has a need for differentiation, or requires quick entry in a short lifecycle category. Apart from this memorable bit, using a celebrity is supposed to lend instant credibility as well as aspirational values to the brand ----- a hope to get people to follow the Pied Piper. For instance, usage of sports personalities in footwear advertising (where the consumer feels that as Sachin wears Adidas, so should he). But here, the marketer needs to be really disciplined in choice of celebrity and the celebrity needs to match the product. For instance, Coke’s Daler Mehndi campaign suffered from this very problem-----it wasn't aspirational enough. On the other hand, Videocon is using Shah Rukh cleverly to lift the brand from the masses to a more upmarket, techie image. Sports people have always been celebrities. Only now, the advertising industry is trying to cash in on their mass appeal. In the field of sports, the cricketers take the lion’s share of advertisement contracts for their wide mass appeal where this sport is considered as a religion and Sachin as God. The much sought-after players of Indian Cricket are: Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Virendra Shewag. Apart from cricket and cricketers other sport and sportspersons also attract considerable endorsement money. Leading tennis players like Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati (J Hampstead, Adidas), footballer Baichung Bhutia (Reebok, Omega), chess wizard Viswanathan Anand (NIIT), golfers Jeev Milkha Singh and Jyoti Randhawa (Mizuno of Japan), Narain Karthikeyan ( Tata group, Amaron, Kingfisher and JK Tyres) attract sizeable endorsement money among others. In an attempt to fly deeper into the hearts of Indian travellers, tourism promotion boards from the South East Asian region are now looking at Indian ambassadors. Topping the list is Tourism Malaysia, which is in negotiations to sign up both Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai as its brand ambassadors to promote this predominantly Muslim tourist destination among the Indians. Not to be left behind, the Sri Lanka Tourist Board (SLTB) is also planning to ink a similar deal with the Indian cricket team.

Brand Relaunching - A Brand Buliding Concept Re-launching a brand means thinking beyond a new design or a new name. It means, "going deeper." Many a time in marketing, there comes a stage in the life of a brand when it needs to be re-worked and relaunched to take it to a different level. This happens not only for brands which may not be doing well but also for brands that are doing well but would like to do better. Brands go through various stages of evolution in their life and often may need to be restructured and repositioned, revitalised or rejuvenated to improve their sales and market share and profits.

Before getting into the methodologies and ways of launching a new brand(or Brand Relauncing), it is important to define the objectives for the relaunch. Some commonly used objectives are: • •

Is the objective to rejuvenate the brand as a contemporary one, as it is being perceived as dated and traditional? Is the objective to relaunch a brand that has failed due to an inappropriate marketing mix?

Is the objective to relaunch the brand and reposition it for faster growth and market share?

WAYS IN WHICH BRANDS CAN BE RELAUNCHED The first is to keep all elements of the mix the same but reposition the brand in the minds and hearts of customers. Thus, nothing is done to the product, the pricing or the distribution but the communication and the entire repositioning exercise changes the perceived value of the brand. The elements used would be in the area of the communication mix including the packaging. This approach is usually followed when consumers have accepted the product, found it affordable and available but do not want to use it because they feel it does not match their needs or aspirations, keeping the psychographics in mind. Another method to relaunch the brand is to change the channel and distribution strategy. Other elements may be working but the distribution channel may be ineffective due to the choice of in-appropriate outlets or even ineffective trade margins and marketing strategy. This can be linked with the sales effort, sales organisation and structure. This happens in cases where the product is accepted, its awareness is high but it is not available. There is, therefore, wastage of advertising money. In this case, revamping the distribution structure becomes necessary. The third way to relaunch a brand would be to revamp every element of the marketing mix including the brand name, the product ingredients and pricing, and bring it out with a new price and bring it out as a new avatar. Brand Relauncing is a normal exercise but should be dealt with cautiously. If the brand is doing well because its positioning, distribution and pricing are accepted and it is growing as per the desired objectives, then it is recommended not to tamper with something which is working. Finally, it is important to say that while brand relauncing is implimented , the main objective should be to bring it to a better level in terms of sales, market share and profit than what its current position reflects.

Brand Image - The Image A Brand Caries Consumers vary as to which brand attributes they see as most relevant and the importance they attach to each attribute (brand association ). They will pay the most attention to the attributes that deliver the sought benefits. The market for a product can often be segmented according to the attributes that are salient to different consumer groups. The consumer develops a set of beliefs about where each brand stands on each attribute. These set of beliefs about the brand make up brand image. Brand identity and brand image need to be distinguished. Identity comprises the ways that a company aims to identify or position itself or its product. Image is the way the public perceives the company or its products. Image is affected by many factors beyond the company’s control. An effective image does three things: • It establishes the product’s character and value proposition.It conveys this character in a distinctive way so as not to confuse it with the competitor’simage. • It delivers emotional power beyond a mental image. • The image of a brand may contain different types of associations in memory: attributes benefits and attitudes. BRANDS ATTRIBUTE ASSOCIATIONS These are descriptive features, which are used to characterize a product or service. The attributes could be distinguished on the basis of how directly they are related to product or service performance. The product related attributes are ingredients necessary for the products performance. On product related attributes are packaging, user imagery, usage imagery and price. In the case of Woodland shoes the product related attributes would be: leather that weathers, unique sole, water resistant etc. The non-product related attributes would be: price -1500+; package-green box; user-young, rugged, tough; usage-outdoors, trekking. BRANDS BENEFIT ASSOCIATIONS Functional: These are the outcome of the functions performed by a product of service. These are the intrinsic benefits of consuming a product or service. Mercedes has the functional benefit of sophisticated and ultra modern technology. Experiential: these accrue to the user in the form of feelings. For Mercedes the experiential benefits will be the feeling of a smooth and comfortable ride. Symbolic: These are non intrinsic to the product and correspond to non-product related benefits. For Mercedes it will be the prestige of being a part of a select group. BRANDS ATTITUDE ASSOCIATIONS Attitudes determine buying decisions. They refer to overall evaluation of a concept like person, product, object or a brand.

Brand Loyalty - A Brand Bulding Concept Brand loyalty is the ultimate goal a company sets for a branded product. A company’s main question in relation to selling their products or services use do be: “How do I get people to buy my product?” Nowadays companies still greatly appreciate the answer to

this question but they have also realized that getting customers is not the only thing they need to do. In today’s rapidly moving world consumers don’t stick with products for life. Advertisements and an increased feeling of independence have created consumers that will switch brands or products as soon as the feel the need to do so. What company’s look for in this consumer environment is creating a so-called brand loyalty? Brand loyalty is a consumer’s preference to buy a particular brand in a product category. It occurs because consumers perceive that the brand offers the right product features, images, or level of quality at the right price. This perception becomes the foundation for a new buying habit. Consumers initially will make a trial purchase of the brand and, after satisfaction, tend to form habits and continue purchasing the same brand because the product is safe and familiar Brand loyalists have the following mindsets: • I am committed to this brand. • I am willing to pay a higher price for this brand over other brands. • I will recommend this brand to others. Loyalty Segmentation: Loyalty segmentation helps in building strong brands. A market can usually be divided into the following groups: • Non customers: Those who use the competitor’s brand or are not product class users. • Price switchers: Those who are price switchers. • The passively loyal: Those who buy out of habit rather than reason. • Fence sitters: those who are indifferent between two or more brands. ( these guys sit on the fence and watch - not bothered ) • The committed: those who are committed to our brands. (Hard Core Loyal Customers ! These guys are brands Asset ! :) ) The challenges to improve the brand’s loyalty profile are to increase the number of customers who are not price switchers, to strengthen the fence sitters and committed ties to the brand and to increase the number who would pay more to use the brand or service. Two segments where the companies generally under invest are passively loyal and the committed customers. The passively loyal customers are often taken for granted. At the other end of the spectrum are the highly loyal or committed customers. Firms also tend to take this group for granted. Yet there may be significant potential to increase business from the very loyal. The loyal Marriott customer might be encouraged to select even more than often with a improved portfolio of business support services such as fax machines in rooms. Further there is a risk that loyal customers can be enticed away by a competitor if the performance of the product or service is not improved. For these reasons firms should avoid diverting resources from the loyal core to the non-customers and price switchers. One approach to enhancing the loyalty of fence sitters and the committed is to develop or strengthen their relationship with the brand.