Brand Management (MKT624) VU
Lesson 7
BRAND VISION
Purpose of brand vision
To earn the right level of profitability, you have to leverage your brand rightly. It is here that
we start treating brand as an asset and manage that asset by having a vision.
Vision fulfills three basic purposes1
•Consensus among management
•Commits company to research
•Mandates telling all stakeholders
Consensus among management: A bottom-up approach, it extracts understanding and
consensus from management about brand’s contribution. All concerned with the brand give
their input regarding brand’s potential and an effort is made to have all of them committed
to the respective tasks they are to perform toward brand’s contribution.
Brand vision brings management to a platform from where they all have to agree what level
of growth the brand will generate to fulfill company’s objectives. It is not a function limited
to the boundaries of marketing management; it is an objective for total management to
agree on one point – brand’s reason for being (why it exists?) and its potential toward
profitability.
The question of why the brand exists entails detailed discussion on many exciting areas of
marketing, which will be touched upon from time to time in their proper perspective
throughout the course. What it essentially means is the “fulfillment of a particular need” of
customers. Identifying the right need and then committing yourselves to fulfill that with the
right product takes you on the journey of starting with a vision to complete development of
the brand.
Commits Company to research: Consensus leads management to initiate research on so
many vital research projects. Because of the commitment, no one wants to make decisions
without any solid basis. The tendency to make assumptions on the ground that we know the
market well and therefore there is no need for research should be avoided. Only research
provides the company with grounds like:
oCustomer attitudes and usage
oBrand attributes to maintain and change
oSegmental changes; multi-segment brands
oGeographical changes; new categories etc.
The list is not exhaustive. It can be much longer depending on the needs of the company at
any given point in time.
Knowing customers’ attitudes offers insights into product build-up, service requirements,
and any other fulfillment of customers’ requirements. Maintaining or changing product
attributes relate responding to changing needs, preferences, and competitive pressures that
exist and the ones that are anticipated.
You can also determine the differences among different offerings of the brand as perceived
by your consumers in different segments of the market. You can make decisions about
which segments are more attractive and which are less attractive. That may also take you
into what geographic areas to be emphasized more in relation to strength of different
offerings. Brand strength may lead the management to start considering introducing its
brand across categories. What is it that took Nestle from milk to yogurt to juices to
chocolates? This is a good example of going across categories.
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