BRAND POSITIONING
Brand positioning refers to “target consumer’s” reason to buy your brand in preference to others. It is ensures that all brand activity has a common aim; is guided, directed and delivered by the brand’s benefits/reasons to buy; and it focusses at all points of contact with the consumer.
Positioning is a marketing strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the customer.
Companies apply this strategy either by emphasizing the distinguishing features of their brand (what it is, what it does and how, etc.) or they may try to create a suitable image (inexpensive or premium, utilitarian or luxurious, entry-level or high-end, etc.) through advertising.
Once a brand is positioned, it is very difficult to reposition it without destroying its credibility. It is also called product positioning.
PROCESS OF BRAND POSITIONING
- Identifying the business's direct competition (could include players that offer the same product/service amongst a larger portfolio of solutions).
- Understanding how each competitor is positioning their business today. (e.g. claiming to be the fastest, cheapest, largest, the #1 provider, etc.)
- Documenting the provider's own positioning as it exists today (may not exist if startup business).
- Comparing the company's positioning to its competitors' to identify viable areas for differentiation.
- Developing a distinctive, differentiating and value-based positioning concept.
- Creating a positioning statement with key messages and customer value propositions to be used for communications development across the organization.
STRATEGIES : BRAND POSITIONING
1. Quality Positioning
- The quality of a given product is one of the most important components of a company brand, and can be combined with other positioning strategies rather easily.
- Since every business is trying to emphasize its commitment to quality, a good way to distinguish the brand from competitors is to narrow the focus to one area of expertise, thereby branding the company as a high-quality and trusted specialist.
2. Value or Price Positioning
- There are two ways to approach value or price positioning, both of which are crucially dependent on quality.
- One approach is to use a high-end tack, which exploits the psychological belief that the more expensive something is, the more intrinsically valuable it must be.
- Positioning the brand as the provider of high-quality, value-priced products or services.
- Example - Southwest Airlines. In a tough economy, its policy of offering affordable flights as well as promising free checked luggage has allowed it to flourish while other airlines struggle.
3. Benefit Positioning
- Communicating the unique benefits of a product or service has long been a popular brand position.
- With this strategy, the goal is to highlight your company's most powerful attributes — attributes no competitor can claim and that are valuable to the consumer.
- Colgate toothpaste uses a benefit strategy with an effective message: Brush with Colgate and prevent cavities and gingivitis, a benefit promise that appeals to consumers.
4. Problem and Solution Positioning
- Positioning a brand as the solution to a consumer's problem is also a powerful strategy.
- The idea is to demonstrate that the company has the power to relieve customers of whatever problem they may be facing, both quickly and efficiently.
- Example- Pre-packaged chopped vegetables solve the consumer's problem of time-consuming food preparation in a snap.
5. Competitor-Based Positioning
- Business is nothing if not competitive. Therefore, with this positioning strategy, a company takes aim at one or several competitors to demonstrate its superiority among others offering the same type of product or service.
- Car insurance companies often employ this strategy to establish a powerful brand by comparing their rates or service to those of other companies. The message is that consumers should cancel their old policies and purchase their coverage from a different and better insurer.
6. Celebrity-Driven Positioning
- Hiring celebrities as spokespeople or to endorse a company's product or service is a popular way to position a brand.
- The goal is to garner brand awareness and recognition by associating your company with a glamorous individual.
- While this is an expensive route to take, the consumer tends to trust celebrities implicitly because she's familiar with their faces.
- This familiarity inspires buyers to follow the celebrity's lead or to emulate him, making this strategy ideal for selling luxury goods or athletic apparel.
IMPORTANCE OF BRAND POSITIONING
- Understand the brand’s strengths and weaknesses from customers’ perspectives.
- Know how customers perceive the brand vis-à-vis competitive brands.
- Understand which benefits are the most important to the customers and which of those benefits brand could uniquely “own” in customers’ minds.
- Know which benefits are believable for the brand.
- Understand how different customer groups perceive brand’s product/service categories (and the brands within them) differently.
BRAND REPOSITIONING
Repositioning refers to the major change in positioning for the brand/product. To successfully reposition a product, the firm has to change the target market’s understanding of the product. This is sometimes a challenge, particularly for well-established or strongly branded products.
Firms may consider repositioning a product due to declining performance or due to major shifts in the environment. Many firms choose to launch a new product (or brand) instead of repositioning because of the effort and cost required to successfully implement the change.
When a company sees a decrease in sales over time and/or major changes coming down the line, they know it is time to implement changes within the company.
Brand repositioning is when a company changes a brand's status in the marketplace. This typically includes changes to the marketing mix (product, place, price and promotion). Repositioning is done to keep up with consumer wants and needs.
BRAND REPOSITIONING STRATEGIES
1.BRAND RELAUNCH
- 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.
- Relaunching a brand is a normal exercise but should be dealt with cautiously. If the brand is doing well because it’s 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 relaunching a brand, 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.
--Change in 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.
--Revamption of whole marketing-mix:
- This to relaunch a brand is 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.
2. BRAND REJUVENATION:
- It is the concept of adding new value, attributes to the existing product to enhance its overall appeal.
- This concept is intended to refocus the attention of consumers on an existing brand.
- This is commonly observed fact where in many of the brand names are added with the prefix like new, super, premium, extra strong etc.
- i. Brand rejuvenation helps in revival of a brand, and ads breather to the brand, which may be showing signs of decline.
- ii. Even healthy and successful brands may also require brand rejuvenation, because of competition, some reformulation and refinement becomes necessary from time to time.
- iii. It helps to keep the brand live and in focus
3. BRAND PROLIFERATION:
- Brand proliferation is the opposite of brand extension.
- In case of brand proliferation more items are brought in with new brand names.
- The firm has several brands in the same product or product category.
- It means that the list of independent brands increases.
Advantages:
i. Brand proliferation may help to expand company market as well as the company’s market share
ii. It may also increase the company’s clout at the retail level by offering variety
iii. New brands may generate excitement for the sales team of the company.
Disadvantages:
i. More brands from a company’s stable enhances competition in the market
ii. Brand proliferation may create brand cannibalisation.
4. BRAND ACQUISITION:
- In this strategy companies adopt the process of acquisition or take over ongoing brands as an easy way to develop and manage the brands.
- EXAMPLES-1. P&G and Gillette 2. Dabur acquired Balsara for 143 crores 3. Godrej Consumer Care bought Keyline Brands 4. Marico acquired HLL Nihar brand.
5. BRAND PORTFOLIO RATIONALIZATION:
- As the business grows, it may accumulate more and more brands and the product lines become longer. At some point, the firm may recognize that it has too many brands, which constrains its resources and efforts. At that point, the firm may decide to cut short the product line and prune its brand portfolio by eliminating some of the brands.
- The idea is to have manageable brand portfolio by shedding some of the brands, the company strive to make the remaining brands stronger by giving them more focused inputs.
6. BRAND EXTENSION
- Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the samebrand name in a different product category.
- The new product is called a spin-off.
- Organizations use this strategy to increase and leverage brand equity.
- Brand extension is an effective tool in brand management and it deals with the extending a brand name to more products.
a) Brand extension to other items in the same product line:
- In this case the same brand name is given to the product of same category i.e. in the same line. This has also been referred as line extension sometimes.
- Example:Sunrise (brand name for coffee) brand name was extended to other offers from the company, sunrise premium, sunrise extra coffee, to cater to different segments, this can be done in three ways i.e. down market stretch, up market stretch, or two way stretch, in the above given example the stretch is of up market.
b) Brand extension to items in a related product line:
- In this case the brand name is extended to the products of same category but serve different purpose.
- Example: Maggi initially was brand of noodles. Later the brand name was extended to other product lines in the related category food – Maggi Ketchup, Maggi Soup etc.
c) Brand extension to items in an unrelated product line:
- Under this head the brand name is extended to the items, which are unrelated with each other.
- Example: The brand name Enfield, initially used for motorcycles was later extended to television and gensets. Tata has brands in Steel, Automobile and Salt.
