Brand Identity and Brand Positioning - Case Study Example

Introduction It is only after seeing the company’s brand identification that consumers will get the temptation to buy products in the firm. Therefore, the common aim of developing a good brand to all business organizations is creating new and loyal customers. In the past, in order to offer customer loyalty, business organizations employed classical techniques such as pricing or placing techniques based on products or services. However, this has shifted to brand identity, brand positioning and integrated marketing communication (IMC) in the modern world. This report seeks to examine the relevance of brand identity in the context IMC, discuss issues contributing to successful brand positioning in the UK market and develops a well designed IMC strategy that will help Burt’s Bees in attaining communication objectives for market penetration in the UK. Brand Identity Integrated marketing communication (IMC) has been broadly accepted, thus becoming an essential part of brand strategy that requires broad brand improvement activities within the company before the start of any external brand communications efforts. Brand development and management should be used for instigating and sustaining continued dialogue with clients as well as promoting relationships amongst them. Therefore, strategically oriented integrated brand communication will help Burt Bees to progress in this competitive world of business. Even though various factors influence customer-based brand identity, including price, product, and distribution, in this paper, I will focus on the influence of IMC on brand equity. Brand Identity Strategy and IMC Creating and sustaining a brand identity is viewed as the first step towards developing strong brands. Three years ago Pickton and Broderick (2004) claimed that the study on the management, development and significance of brand identity is necessary to keep the importance of academic brand development research to the marketing practice. While brand identity assists in establishing a relationship between the customer and the brand through generating value proposition that involves emotional, functional, or self-expressive benefits, it becomes very difficult for brand identity to perfectly match with brand image following the intricate nature of the existing communications system. Fiske (1994), observes that, brand image is one of the input and should be an integral part of strategic brand analysis where brand strategists carefully evaluate their existing brand image as well as those of competitors to assist them in establishing their own brand identity. After creating a brand identity the business organization should consider how suitable the intended positioning is against the brand's identity i.e. after developing a unified brand, the organization should come up with the ways in which the identity will be communicated to all agents and employees who are responsible for marketing communication with prospects, customers, and publics. Fiske (1994) notes that, there is increased potential for conflicting messages since diverse communication options have different points of contact with various message receivers. In addition he asserts that brand identity should control integrated marketing communication in creating as well as maintaining effective and synergistic messages. An effective brand identity strategy is the one that guides, informs, and assists in nurturing, developing, and implementing the company’s overall IMC strategy through different brand identity contacts. Brand identity contacts can be managed effectively through brand identity factors, incorporating top management support, internal market orientation and identity-oriented culture. On the other hand brand equity contacts can be properly managed through brand equity contact factors for example, IMC effectiveness and IMC synergy. As noted by Brassington and Pettitt (2005) IMC has changed from being a simple inside-out mechanism that assembles promotional tools to being a calculated process which is connected with brand management. It stresses on the benefits of connecting synergy across multiple media so as to develop brand equity of products as well as services. Brand identity contacts can also be effectively managed through the brand identity factors, which comprise internal market orientation, top management support and identity-oriented culture. In addition, brand equity contacts can be managed well through brand equity contact factors for instance, IMC synergy and IMC effectiveness. Brassington and Pettitt (2005) views brand equity as a discrepancy consequence of brand knowledge on customer response to the brand marketing. They suggests that brand knowledge is central to brand equity definition and argues that high levels of brand knowledge will always increase the prospect of brand choice, and defined brand knowledge in terms of image and brand awareness. Brand Equity Contact Factors Integration of marketing communications will ensure that Brand equity contacts are effectively managed. Thus, factors linked to the flourishing integration of marketing communications such as IMC effectiveness and IMC synergy will be helpful in brand’s equity contact management and, therefore, are positively related to brand equity. Moreover, the brand identity assists the brand in achieving high equity. A well-communicated and a well-conceived brand identity makes positive contribution in developing brand equity through influencing the IMC processes i.e. firms can efficiently integrate and inform their marketing communications through managing brand identity contacts by top management support, internal market orientation and a brand identity-oriented culture. Successful positioning Burt’s Bees embraces the principle that successful brands stands for something essential such that without it the brand will lack traction specifically in the UK market. The company takes note that a brand’s positioning must attain seven factors in order for it to be interesting as well as noticed by the consumers. If any of the seven factors is neglected the entire positioning platform collapses since every factor plays a vital role in the branding psychology. These factors are; 1. Being focused – as a business organizations Burt’s Bees ensures that its brands are focused in the UK market and whenever they have a problem that they can fix on their own, they do not need to go looking for specialists but instead they do it themselves. This not only saves them in terms of finances but they also tend to expand most of their services thereby attracting more and more customers. Since broad competition and lack of focus can result to commoditization in this approach, Burt Bees finds a niche enabling more clients who are willing to pay more to go looking for their services. 2. Differentiation. In line with being different, Burt’s Bees Brand in the UK sticks out from their competition enabling them to attract huge and loyal following. Since over-abundance of similar products as well as services has been forcing customers to look for anything to assist them in separating the winners from the muddle, the company has adopted differentiation which offers required contrast thus helping people in making choices. They are simply aware that a brand needs to be different and tangibly hold the difference a thing that they practice in totality. 3. Relevance. It is now obvious in the broad UK market that if a firm is not relevant, then it will be kicked out of the business by competitors i.e. a firm may be highly specialized and differentiated but if consumers are not interested in its products then the firm will fail to make some money. This appears to be very clear with this company, it therefore ensures that a brand matches what their major consumers are expecting and searching for. All promises delivered in their product and message matters to their audiences with practical and discernible value. Here brands develop to stay contemporaneous with their audiences who are also evolving, while remaining consistent and true to their brand origins. Therefore, Burt Bees has been testing the ‘waters’ first to establish if there is adequate interest in their specialty. Although firms can still survive without positioning, branding is more than survival it’s about developing a lifelong emotional relationship with consumers that will fuel growth and reputation. All this starts with positioning and once an organization establishes great positioning its business acquires the energy it requires to grow and flourish. 4. Simplicity: Lots of ideas, words, concepts, and features engulf audiences to the point of shutting down their receptors. Burt’s Bees have viewed it crucial to synthesize their product positioning, brand value, packaging, etc. to the point that the fundamental nature is presented and distilled. This becomes the central part of what audiences take in, and after the reverberation of that clear message, and then the company expands into well structured fashions. 5. Believability: the company ensures that its market audiences/ customers acknowledge what they say as well as deliver and the support of their brand platform. They use this as crucial and core examination point while determining how to launch or reposition products, campaigns, and packaging in the broad UK market. 6. Credibility: the company always delivers on their promises, thereby acting responsibly, doing business according to high standards of business values and ethics and always operates with respect. An enterprise will always build reliability with every interaction in the marketplace and any deviation can damage the trust. 7. Defensibility: It becomes either hard or easy for a competitor to copy what a firm manufactures and introduce it to the market. To come up with defensible market position that is not easy to copy, this firm rigorously and consistently emphasizes on the brand’s positioning. This makes the brand itself to be the most defendable asset in the company. Organizations in the UK are aware of the fact that a brand is the entirety of a firm and its business operations, as noted by Fill (2005) a brand is the totality of the bad, the ugly, the good and the off-strategy. A brand can be your best or even worst employee. They properly express brand through audio, written and visual content. Along with guiding their brands in ways that ensures successful brand positioning, Burt’s Bees have been putting much emphasis on the inherent values of brands by ensuring that its brands are about integrity or honesty, are of high quality and portrays excellent communication and customer satisfaction (Fill, 2005). Knowledge of a firm’s values is generally an internal matter and those values are clearly evident to every stakeholder in the company from clients as well as prospective customers to employee relations and business-to-business relationships. Whenever organization’s members fail to accurately set the values of the brand, quick steps are always taken to rectify the same. These ensures that values of a brand’s business proposition do not change even when the landscape and its product changes. Most companies are ensuring that comprehensive branding research and objectives is the key to business positioning. At a minimum, the companies do both in establishing clarity on the target audience, competition as well as strengths and weaknesses. Extensive branding research is also carried out concerning the brand’s industry, and chances for future expansion. This, the company does through carrying out research on one body of a brand at a time, in order to gather more information about the target customer. This involves finding out the customer’s needs as well as desires. The detailed information of the target customer includes their gender, age, shopping habits/ (offline and online), income, and anything relevant (McDonald, 2002). Comprehending the target market as well as its requirements has been the key to developing a successful brand in the UK market industry. This has also given organizations an idea on how communication medium and content is supposed to operate so as to involve their market. Other research done by this firms include the offers by competitors and how to counter them, what consumers can get from their products other than what they get from anyone else, and a thorough research and campaigns. Their promise has always been golden, Burt Bees ensure that their company’s services and products are up to their brand promise thus ensures that loyal customers are retained and more are added on the lift. Their promises are always unpredictable but welcome i.e. they do not re-use what their competitors have already promised even though it may work for their product or service and are not blurred in trying to position their firm favorably against that of its competitors. They ensure that they are specific thus gaining business from people (McDonald, 2002). Forming favorable emotional association in the UK market for product or services has been very significant in achieving success in brand positioning for Burt Bees. These have been creating desire or want by the mere mention of their brand, product or service name. That has been very powerful in influencing customers for example, the mere mention of specific brand conjures up some positive emotional associations which are developed overtime through a time-tested relationship and good branding practice between organizations and their customers based on trust, intrigue, support and understanding. To develop a brand promise that creates emotional connections, the company ensures that (1) The promise is based on the core values of the brand. (2) The promise is relevant and clearly engages to their target market. (3) Beyond just being good the promise has the ability of developing positive emotional attachment to the clients (4) The promise is internally and externally repeated within firms. (5) The promise is highly adaptable to the entrepreneurial climate. (6) The promise is reinforced at continued intervals. (7) The promise is consistent across marketing and advertising mediums. (8) The promise is well known by all stakeholders in the business (McDonald, 2002). After a new brand is launched in the market, customers get accustomed to it and begin gathering information about it. Based on the gathered information, customers create opinions of the brand thereby establishing a brand image. To accomplish stable market position of a given brand, creating awareness regarding the new brand in the market is not enough. Clients should prefer given brands and conduct its positive assessment along with considering it in its purchasing decisions. The target position will therefore involve deciding on the brand’s target image as well as how the customers compares it to those other competitive brands in the market (McDonald, 2002). IMC strategy To achieve its communication objectives for the UK market penetration, Burt Bees must adopt a well organized communication program that is internally consistent and customer-focused. As a concept for designing marketing communication programs, IMC will help promote all promotional activities i.e. sales promotion, advertising, public relations, personal selling, and direct marketing therefore providing a consistent message across all audiences (Belch and Belch, 2003). The major aim of developing a successful IMC programs will be creating a process that will enhance IMC audit design and use. The IMC audit will analyze the company’s internal communication network, evaluate customer databases, identify key audiences, assess messages in recent ads, promote sales and help in determining manager’s knowledge of IMC. Once the IMC process is implemented Burt’s Bees will want to assess its benefits, this will be aimed at trying to determine which promotional elements works better for the company. In this integrated program, media advertising will be used to create awareness, direct mail to offer additional information to individual prospects, sales promotion to generate an inquiry and a personal sales call to complete the transaction (Belch and Belch, 2003). Developing the promotion program Due to the increased media costs, promotion decisions must be carefully made using an orderly approach (Pickton and Broderick 2004). Paralleling the planning, implementation and control stages in strategic marketing process, promotion decision process is narrowed down into: -Developing - executing and evaluating the promotion program. In developing the promotion program, Burt Bees should focus on four W’s i.e. Who is the target? What are the promotion goals, amount to be budgeted for this program and the types of promotion to use? Where the promotion should be run? When the promotion should be run? The promotion process: Planning Implementation Control -Developing the promotion program -Executing the promotion program -Evaluation -Identify the target audience -Pre-test the promotion -Post-test the -Set the budget -Carry out the promotion -Promotion. -Select the right promotion element -Make needed changes -Design the promotion -Identify target audience Identifying the Target audience Burt Bees should employ the first decision in developing its promotion program, this will be identifying the target audience, the group of prospective customer toward which a promotion program will be directed. To the extent to which time and money will allow, the target audience for the promotion program will be the target market for the company’s product, identified from marketing segmentation and research studies. The more Burt Bees knows about its target audience’s profile – including attitudes, values and lifestyles – the easier it will be for them in developing a promotion program. For example, if the company wants to reach you with television and magazines ads, it will be required to know what TV shows you watch (Belch and Belch, 2003). Specifying promotion objectives After identifying the target audience, a decision should be reached on what to be accomplished by the promotion; customers may respond in terms of a hierarchy of effects i.e. the series of stages a prospective client goes through from a product’s initial awareness to final action. (Adoption or trial of a product) The stages are Awareness – Interest – Evaluation – Trial – Adoption For an entirely new product the series applies to the whole product category, whereas it applies to the brand itself in cases of established category. These will serve as guidelines for developing promotion objectives. Although sometimes an objective for a promotion program involves several stages it normally focuses on a particular stage. No matter the specific objectives, the promotion objective should incorporate three essential qualities: 1. They should be designed for a well-defined target audience 2. Be measurable 3. Cover a specified period of time (Belch and Belch, 2003). Setting the promotion budget After setting the promotion objectives, Burt Bees should then decide on how much to spend. Arriving at the ideal amount for the budget can turn out to be difficult since there is no defined way to measure the correct results for spending the promotion dollars. However, Burt Bees can employ one of the methods described below: Percentage of sales approach, here the company finances will be assigned to advertising as a percentage of sales in units. This is a common budgeting scheme with an obvious advantage i.e. it’s straight forward and offers economic safeguard through attaching the promotion budget on sales. Conversely, there is a major fallacy in this approach which implies that sales cause promotion. Using this method Burt Bees will lessen its budget on promotion following a down turn in past sales or an expected down turn in future sales situations where promotion might be needed (Hart, 1998). Competitive parity – Being the second common approach, competitive parity approach matches the spending level of a company’s competitor. It is essential for Burst Bees to consider competition in budgeting. Consumers responses to promotion are affected by competing promotional activities, such that if a competitor runs 20 TV ads every week, it may be difficult for the company to gets its message across with only five ads. The competitors budget level, however, should not be the only determinant in setting the firm’s budget. The competition might have very different level of promotion expenditures (Hart, 1998). All-you-can-afford budgeting- This is a common to many small business where funds are directed towards promotion after covering other items in the budget. Objective and task budgeting – This will be the best budgeting approach to use whereby Burt’s Bees will (1) Determine its promotion objective (2) Outline the tasks to accomplish these objectives and (3) Determine the promotion cost of performing these tasks (Hart, 1998). This method will take into account what the company wants to accomplish and will require the specifications of objectives. Strengths of the other budgeting methods are all integrated in this approach because each previous method’s strength is tied to the objectives. For instance, if the costs will be beyond what Burt Bees can afford, objectives will be reworked and the tasks revised. The difficulty with this method is the judgement required to determine the tasks needed to accomplish objectives. Selecting the Right promotional tools Once a budget has been determined, the combination of the fine basic IMC tools- advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing and personal selling should be specified. While many factors provide direction for selection of the appropriate mix, the lager number of possible combinations of the promotional tools means that many combinations can achieve the same objective. Therefore, an analytical approach and experience will be particularly important in this step of the promotion decision process. The specific mix will differ from a easy that uses a single tool to a complex program that applies all types of promotion. The Olympics, for example, have become a very visible example of a comprehensive integrated communication program. Since the games are repeated after every two years the promotion is almost continuous. The program comprise of public relations programs managed by the most cities, sales promotion activities, personal selling efforts by the Olympic committee ad organizers, advertising campaigns, and direct marketing efforts aimed at a variety of audiences including organizations, governments, firms, athletes and individuals (Hart, 1998). Designing the promotion The major element of a promotion program is the promotion itself. Advertising consists of advertising copy and the artwork that the target audience is intended to hear or see. Personal selling efforts depend on the characteristics and skill of the sales person. Sales promotion activities consist of the specific details of inducements for example, coupons, samples and sweepstakes. Public relations efforts are readily seen in tangible elements such as news releases and direct marketing actions depend on written, verbal and electronic forms delivery. The promotion’s design will always play a key role in establishing that message to be communicated to the listeners. This is seen to demand extra creativity. In addition, successful designs are often the result of insight regarding consumer’s interest and purchasing behavior. All of the promotion tools have many design alternatives. Advertising for example, can utilize fear, humor or other emotions in its appeal (Hart, 1998). Similarly direct marketing can be designed for varying levels personal or customized appeals. Designing every promotional activity to deliver the same message remains to be the IMC’s major challenge. Scheduling the promotion Once the design of each of the promotional program element is complete, the next stage will be coming up with an efficient timing of their use. This is what the promotion schedule entails. An instant-win sweepstake, for example, can be employed to generate interest in products before their release scheduling of the various promotions will be designed to generate interests, bring consumers into shops and encourage additional purchases after testing the brands. Several factors for instance, competitive promotion activity and seasonality will also influence the promotion schedule (Hart, 1998). Executing and evaluating the promotion program According to Pickton and Broderick (2004) the ideal execution of a promotion programs involves pretesting each design before it is actually used to allow for changes and modifications which improve its effectiveness. Similarly post tests are recommended to evaluate the impact of each promotion and the contribution of the promotion toward achieving the program objective. The most sophisticated pre-test and post test procedures have been developed for advertising. Testing procedures for sales promotion and direct marketing efforts currently focus on comparisons of different designs or responses of different segments to fully benefit from the IMC programs. Burt Bees should form a data base for recording test results which will allow comparison of the promotional tools relative impact to that of their execution options in different circumstances. on the other hand data base information will permit informed design and execution decision thus offering support for IMC activities to the administrative personnel as they perform internal assessment. (Pickton and Broderick, 2004). Conducting the promotion program is both time consuming and expensive. Belch and Belch (2003) estimates that a firm with sales not exceeding $10milion can successfully implement an IMC program within one year, sales between $200m $ 500m in 3 years and 2-5 billion in 5 years. To enhance the transition these are about 200 integrated marketing, common agencies in operation additionally some of the largest advertising agencies are employing approaches that embrace total communication solutions. Conclusion Brand Identity and brand’s positioning has worked for Burt’s Bees in its marketing efforts in various parts of the globe especially in the UK. These have led to continued brand loyalty for their products as demonstrated by the consumers. Through employing integrated marketing communication, companies have achieved great brand improvements for their products. It’s no doubt that after employing the report’s proposed communication program Burt’s Bees will achieve its communication objectives for the UK market penetration. This will go along with developing the promotion program, identifying the target audience, specifying the promotion objectives, setting the promotion budget, selecting the right promotion tools, designing the promotion, scheduling the promotion and lastly, executing and evaluating the promotion program. References Belch, G. and Belch, M. 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