Coatings World - September 2015

Strategies & Analysis

by Phil Phillips, PhD Contributing Editor phillips@chemarkconsulting.net

Let’s first define “BRANDING”: Brands facilitate the identification of products, services and businesses as well as differentiate them from competition.

Branding is an effective and compelling means to communicate the benefits and value an offering can provide. They guarantee quality, origin, and performance, thereby increasing the perceived value to the customer and reducing the risk and complexity involved in the buying decision.

Brands, to be effective, must have
three dimensions. Brand width, depth and
length distinguish the strategic branding
options as follows:
• BRAND WIDTH . . . Number of prod-
ucts/services sold under one brand
•BRAND DEPTH . . .Geographical
range of the brands
• BRAND LENGTH . .Basic positioning
of the brands
There are seven types of brands:
• Corporate Brands: The most common
of all brands, embrace all products and/
or services of the business. The brand
serves as an “umbrella” under which
corporate values, vision, personality,
positioning and image is portrayed.

• Family Brands: Family brands involve two or more related products in one group or product line. The distinction between Corporate and Family is that a business using this option may have several family brands in its portfolio.

•Individual Brands: Individual branding strategies simply means to market every single product/service under its own distinctive brand name. The weakness with this strategy lies in the fact that brand establishment requires a large investment, lending itself to low cost efficiencies. Examples: Ransburg, DeVilbiss and Binks under the Carlisle.

• Premium Brands: Premium brands are
characterized by high-quality materials,
exclusive design, and are marketed at
a high price or premium price. Rolex,
Gucci, Rolls-Royce are examples.

• Classic Brands: Is a core product/service with certain additional characteristics attached to it that serves to differentiate it from similar offerings. These brands do approach much larger target groups than premium brands and can become TRUST marks for customers.

• National Brands: These brands are designed to match the local conditions. Strength, no communication barriers: weakness, these brands are vulnerable to attacks from international brands.

• International Brands: A brand can be tagged “international” if it markets in two or more countries.

- International Brand Strategy – must
be to market its products/services
without extensively customizing its
market offerings, brands or market-
ing efforts to match different local
conditions.

- Global Brand Strategy – is to increase profitability by reaping cost reductions resulting from standardization, experience curve effects and location economies.

- Transnational Brand Strategy – develop individual branding concepts for all foreign markets within which they operate.

- Multidomestic Brand Strategy – is an extensive and complete customiza-tion of all the marketing elements... brands, offerings and marketing efforts. It is geared to many different domestic markets. CW