WALLS Brand Management Issues - Essay Example

?WALLS WALLS which was initially introduced as an independent brand, is now a brand of Unilever. This brand was first promoted in UK and then in the other parts of the world. Thomas Wall and Son Ltd which was a known meat producer in UK thought of manufacturing ice-cream in the year 1913 in order to fill the loss caused due to decrease in demand of sausages and meat pies during the summer season. However, he was not able to accomplish this objective due to the advent of First World War. In 1920, MacFisheries took over WALLS and then later in the year 1922 it was acquired jointly by Margarine Union (founder of Unilever) and Lever Brothers Ltd. As the demand for ice cream increased with time, Unilever broke into two separate companies in the year 1994, T Wall and Son Meat Ltd and T Walls and Son Ice-cream Ltd. In order to meet the growing demand, WALLS decided to open an ice-cream factory in the year 1959 at Gloucester, England. Later in the year 1981 Unilever combined T Wall and Son Ice-Cream Ltd with Birds Eye Foods Ltd to formulate a new company named “Birds Eye Wall’s Ltd”. The ice-cream factory further expanded and grew with time and Unilever still continues the brand “WALLS” in U.K. and other parts of the world. WALLS is facing tough competition with both, high-profile and lesser famous brands like Nestle and Mars but has still maintained its position as a market leader by constantly coming up with innovative products like Magnum, Cornetto, Viennetta, Carte Dor and many more. Wall’s products are sold and known in almost more than forty countries. It operates under various names in various markets having a common logo (Wall's in the UK and majority parts of Asia, Ola in Netherlands, Langnese in Germany, Kibon in Brazil and Algida in the Italy) STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES Strengths Production of quality, hygienic and affordable products Strong distribution network Available world-wide Use of latest and new technology Outstanding and unique packaging Weaknesses Weather conditions can act as a barrier. The demand for ice-cream decreases in cold weather conditions, therefore, walls should come with some products like coffee, yogurt, shakes and cakes. They are unable to meet the growing demand. MARKETING MIX WALLS PRODUCT AND PRICING WALLS have different Sub brands under its umbrella which includes Cones, Cups, Family Packs and Sticks. The major brands below WALLS with distinctive identity and ability are Cornetto, Magnum, and Feast these brands are powerful and have their own awareness amongst consumers. Other brands are however sharing the same identity and are known as products of WALLS. WALLS is constantly innovating by adding to their product portfolio. They bring new products to capture and retain the market they have, if the product is not doing so well they remove it from their portfolio and discontinue its production a example can be Calypso among the existing products WALLS consider every product as a Strategic one except paddle pop. Walls products include Bulk packs of 4.5 and 9 litres and the main current products of WALLS are listed below. WALLS have fixed pricing for their products but occasionally they give discounts on certain products. PROMOTION ATL Activities WALLS is very energetic in its promotional activities and is always innovating. ATL activities include Print ads; they are continuously using this medium whatever the season maybe. They know that print material generates good response because a person has time to view it again and again on his requirement. Apart from this they use active and strategic Bill boards to promote their products and Tv commercials are also used at high level. The campaigns are also doing well and are getting the product and the company positive response. BTL Activity Walls also pay a lot of attention to BTL activities and we can see them sponsoring many events. Even on lower levels Walls always is interested to sponsor College events and they also used to conduct TTL activities earlier such as WALLS carnival. Walls distribute strategic merchandise to retail outlets and shops which sells their products, they provide them with fridges, banners etc which in turn is able to satisfy shop keepers requirements and in return able to transfer important messages to people who see them. The shop keepers do not mind as this merchandise satisfies their needs and give the shop a nice decorative look cause of high quality graphics and color combinations. A factor which allows such high class promotional activities is WALLS global reputation and strong financial abilities of the company which unlike other local brands is significantly superior. PLACE WALLS has strong distributions network as it is a brand of Unilever and is available due to this advantage worldwide. Which include Supermarkets, retail stores and Malls. They also target consumers through their carts which have a large verity of their products available, due to this practice people do not have to specially go and buy the product the added convenience delivers them products at their homes, offices, schools and universities. V.I.P VALUE PROPOSITION Emotional and Functional Wall’ value proposition can be perceived as functional and emotional benefits, functional meaning a value offering with quality, plus innovative extras delivered with flair and humor, Wall’s do that, they focus a great deal on quality and are very innovative, we always see them coming up with new campaigns and products. They are aggressive promoters of their products as well. Emotional Benefits include Fun and good times. Wall’ is all about fun, we can see it always on the move with new ads and commercials showing good times and people having fun. Children, Adults and the Elderly are all part of Walls Target Market. IMAGE Walls is known by a common logo through-out the world. Its corporate logo and unique visual reorganization plays a very essential role in classifying the brand and defining brand image both, internationally and globally. Walls has an image of being the upper class brand ice cream for adults. Magnum is a brand which has a very classy perception all over the world. So having a brand of such stature can have a really positive impact on the company as a whole. Same is the case with the carte dor category. Another similar sub brand of WALLS is cornetto ”Sundae” which represents a premium ice cream cup. This cup has leveraged the perception of cornetto and has introduced it into the category of premium ice cream cups. POSITIONING “To be an essential ingredient of everybody’s everyday fun life.” Their position revolves around this statement. In a broad view, WALLS has throughout the years positioned itself as Fun Loving and Forward looking brand, it caters to each and every segment of the society in every season of the year. Its according to them a essential ingredient of everybody’s fun life and this is how they want their brand to be known. Their products however are positioned uniquely in the mindset of consumers for example Cornetto, Magnum are for the young, paddle pop and moo for the kids, liter packs for the entire family to enjoy, Bulk packs for the parties and related occasions, they have positioned themselves to reach each and every segment of the society through one or the other product they produce. Cornetto is associated with love in the minds of the consumers and magnum is associated with indulgence. WALLS has been very successful, they sold 38 million liters last year as compared to 18 million litres four years ago. They have a lot of demand which they cannot meet easily. BRAND IDENTITY WALLS CORE IDENTITY Brand as Product: Product Attributes: Sweet, Delicacy Quality/Value: As it is a Unilever brand, it follows company’s principles of achieving high quality, nutritious and healthy products. Product Scope: Cones, Cups, Sticks and Family Packs Country of Origin: UK EXTENDED IDENTITY Brand as Organization: Local Vs. Global: Walls is a global brand originating from United Kingdom Organizational Attributes: Innovation Brand as Person: Personality: Fun, love and togetherness Brand as Symbol: Visual Image and Metaphor: Heart Symbol, Unilever brand Brand Heritage: Global brand originating from UK and a Unilever brand BRAND KEY WALLS 1. Competitive Environment: All mainstream and small ice creams brands all over U.K. 2. Target: Everyone 3. Insight: To be essential ingredient of everybody’s everyday fun life. 4. Benefits: A frozen desert that gives everyone a good taste and a good time. 5. Values and Personality: Loving, Vitality giving, Caring and High Perceived Quality. 6. Reason to Believe: Global. Company Heritage of Unilever and Wall’s 7. Discriminator: Innovative Products 8. Essence: Fun and Forward Looking BRAND RELATIONSHIP SPECTRUM WALLS Wall’s lie in the Endorsed brand category in the Brand relationship Spectrum. These are explained below separately. In the Brand Relationship Spectrum, Walls lies in the Endorsed Brand. Endorsed brands are usually endorsed by an organization brand whose primary role is to provide credibility to the endorsed brand and reassurance to the buyer and user. Endorser brand usually has only a minor driver role. There are three types of Endorsed brands, but we are concerned mainly with Strong Endorsement and Token Endorsement. Token Endorser is usually a master brand involved in several product market contexts and is substantially less prominent than the endorsed brand. Walls products of Cornetto, Feast, Magnum and Paddle Pop are token endorsements. These four products have a larger driver role than Walls in the purchase decision and use experience by the customer. Strong Endorsement is visually indicated by a bold, prominent presentation and the endorser has a more meaningful driver role. Excluding the above mentioned brands of Walls, all the rest are strongly endorsed by Wall’s. These include family packs, tubs, cups, bulk packs, etc which are all strong endorsements. Wall’s plays the driver role in these products. PORTFOLIO GRAPHICS “Portfolio graphics is defined as the pattern of visual representation across brand and contexts” (Aaker). It also refers to the packaging, symbols, product design, layout of print advertisements and taglines. It highlights the look and feel of a brand and signifies the positioning it hopes to achieve. Of all the graphical representation used by the brand in its strategies, the foremost is the logo. Seen as the distinguishing characteristic in any brand, the logo is the most effective when presented in a consistent fashion across decades. For Walls, logo was considered only as a symbol to highlight which brand the ice cream belonged to. The concept of viewing logo as a method of creating similarities and associations was not started until much later. Though the most popular logo of Walls was introduced in the mid eighties, the original design was incorporated in an Australian ice cream company “street” which was acquired by Unilever, Australia. (“Streets was founded in Corrimal, New South Wales in the 1930s by Edwin 'Ted' Street and Gordon Rider and is now Australia's largest ice-cream manufacture”). Many famous brands such as Max, Paddle pop and heart were then introduced in this newly acquired branch of Walls. Walls was initially started in 1922 when Walls and Sons started the business. Their graphical representation highlighted the word “W” and posters were passed out to children to hold up in their windows when the ice cream sales man passed. This “W” later became the distinguishing characteristic of the new ice cream company. With the beginning of British ice cream industry, Walls introduced posters of ice cream men on carts, which said “stop me and buy one”. A simple and effective method of communication, children found it much easier to relate to thousands of Walls sellers on their tricycles. Until now, no logo was established and Walls was mentioned in a plain type face but prominently. Walls began advertising in 1925, when the costs of personal selling grew considerably. Now sales men were dressed in blue and their tricycles were colored the same color. Walls had taken its first step at choosing blue to represent the brand. In the late 30's and 40's Walls chose no consistent pattern on graphical representation. Though the type face changed to italics which are prominent till date, the colors and placement kept varying and depended mostly on the product. With the advent of the 1950's Walls started using both emotional and rational appeals. The advertisements contained information about Walls sponsorship in Cricket, Walls being nourishing and fun. The logos once again remained in the same font but were used over a variety of backgrounds and in any shade. A remarkable introduction to Walls Graphical history was the emergence of Tommmy Walls. A cartoon character of a 10 year old boy being a local hero. He liked to save the day and enjoy walls at the same time. Appearing in the Eagle, the cartoon character soon became a famous icon for many kids at that age. Blue color and light yellow were used in the mid 50's and 60's with the theme appealing to mostly cinema goers and families."You can’t help falling for Walls" was introduced in the end of 1950s after the introduction of the family packs. However graphics of Walls on its products continued to vary from product to product. In 1961 the possibility of introducing a common logo was discussed for the first time during the Ice-cream Conference. The recently acquired Austrian ice cream company Eskimo was already using the same logo as Langanese rectangle of red and white stripes enclosing a central oval in which the name of the company was written. The chairman of the Unilevers Austrian Ice cream business, L.R Montijn reported that a common approach offered major benefits in the purchase of packaging materials and in German language advertisements that were understood both in Germany and Austria. The logo which appeared on packs, freezers cabinets and advertising materials were all easily recognizable by a large segment of German and Austrian consumers as well as tourists. This stimulated sales tremendously in Germany. Blue, Red and White Everywhere In 1963, Walls began introducing an international logo for its ice-cream using a design not very different from the logo already being used by Langenese and Eskimo. It was initially not implemented everywhere but was used in different languages in a number of international countries. However some companies maintained their own logo so it was Sagit in Italy, Frisko in Denmark and GB in Sweden. The international logo remained in use for more than 30 years before being replaced in 1999 by a heart shape in swirls of red and yellow against a white background. The new logo though embodied a new personality and positioning of the ice cream it also caused some loss of equity for those who were by now familiar with the 3 decade old symbol of Quality. Furthermore the change was viewed as drastic since it completely eliminated the elements of stripes and introduced a heart instead. BRAND PORTFOLIO STRUCTURE Brand Grouping “A brand grouping or configuration is a logical grouping of brands that have a meaningful characteristic in common” (Aaker). Walls is grouped into three segments: In-home, Impulse and Bulk. The main reason for this grouping is the packaging and quantity of the brand. In-home segment: This segment has the packaging from ? liter to hexagon i.e. 900 ml to one-liter pack. This is the segment for the family products having variety of flavors. Impulse: Impulse is a unit based ice cream bifurcated into three packaging modes i.e. cups, sticks and slices. Bulk: This segmentation is based for events like weddings, delivery at hotels, corporate events, etc where ice cream in large quantity is required. They are bulk packs of one liter and above. This segment also has a variety of flavors. Brand Hierarchy RECOMMENDATIONS WALLS Increase in Production Wall’s has yet to tap the market of yogurt, cheese cake and diet ice cream. This can be done by Wall’s entering into these categories. A major problem faced by Wall’s is that they cannot match the demand and supply of their cream ice products. Every year their sales are increasing drastically. This shows the immense potential in this category only if the production is raised the company will be able to reap more profits. Brand launch should have focused on the heritage Initially when Wall’s was launched it should have focused more upon the heritage of being a global brand and that it originated from U.K. This would enhance the image of Wall’s as a brand. Kiosks and Ice cream parlors Wall’s can have their kiosks in the malls this will increase the sales result in more brand awareness. By having a presence in the mall also results in improving the image in front of the customers because prestigious brands are associated in being located in the malls. It can also open ice cream parlors or small outlets. Another problem faced by the people is that all the flavors are not present in any store as compared to the amount of products in their portfolio. Increase in budget for the other brands There are times when Wall’s advertises as a company and some advertisements are designed for individual brands such as Cornetto this inconsistent advertisement behavior results in confusion for the customers. There are some brands such as Feast, Cornetto, Paddle Pop and Magnum which receive budgets separately although other brands can become bigger too if they can individual budgets and more focus is devoted to them by the management. Proposed Positioning The positioning of Wall’s is perfect and already the company is very successful. The brand is connected to fun and entertainment while a brand such as Cornetto is associated with love and Magnum with indulgence. Therefore there is no need to alter the positioning. Bibliography Icecream park. Wall’s Icecream. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.icecreampark.com/Walls-ice-cream.html Scribd. Brand Architecture and Portfolio Management. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20219547/Brand-Architecture-Portfolio-Mgmt-Rahul-Verma-Project Scott McKinnon, brand manager for Wall’s at Unilever UK Unilever. Walls. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.unilever.co.uk/brands/foodbrands/Walls.aspx Walls. Products. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.loveicecream.com/uk_en/home/default.aspx Wall’s Ice shop. Our Products. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.iceshop.co.uk/ Walls Ice cream around the world. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://www.hobotraveler.com/photoswallsicecream01.shtml Wikipedia. Streets (ice cream). [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_%28ice_cream%29 Simon & Schuster. Brand Portfolio Strategy. [Online]. May 2011. Available from: http://books.simonandschuster.com.au/Brand-Portfolio-Strategy/David-A-Aaker/9780743249386/excerpt_with_id/1498 Read More