Brand Management 101 Primer for Non-Marketing/Brand Senior Executives (CEOs, COOs, CSOs, CHROs, CFOs, CIOs, etc.)

Brand Management 101 – Best Practice Brand Management Methodologies and Measurement

Brand Management Best Practice Methodology

During my career non-brand professionals and executives have asked me privately what the brand life-cycle looks like from a 50,000 foot level (a.k.a. a simplified elevator pitch version). I finally sat down the other day to map this life-cycle process out and the above chart is the simplified (level 0) representation of this process. I am calling this my brand management primer 101 for non-brand and marketing executives (CFOs, CSOs, CHROs, CIOs, etc.). The overall process consists of four (4) major life-cycle stages as follows:

1. Plan the Brand – Plan the brand such that both quantitative and qualitative brand goals are achieved

2. Position the Brand – Ensure the brand is positioned well in terms of market, competitors, customers, prospects, etc.

3. Deliver the brand promise – Deliver upon the expectations of the brand in terms of stakeholders, regulators, customers, brand interested, etc.

4. Analyze the Brand – Determine if the brand is reaching its intended goals in #1 above

For each of the phases above, I included a sample objective (one of many) for each phase. These objectives while similar across many companies, the specifics objectives would be tailored for each individual company.  The important thing to remember with the above is that the life-cycle processes need to be constantly reviewed and enhanced over time utilizing a continuous improvement process approach and methodology.

Included in the above graphic is a sampling of analysis techniques for each lifecycle phase. When the process lifecycle details are determined, the analysis and ‘health check’ metrics would also be determined in order to continually gauge the overall progress of the brand toward a set of goals and objectives.

Brand Management Health Anaysis

For those more analytically inclined and as an example, we might decide to use a time series or multivariate analysis in determining the marketing effectiveness on the brand(s) in the “Analyze the Brand” phase. On the other hand, a time series analysis would be used to help illuminate brand trends, issues and opportunities in historical data over a period of time as well as be used to predict future values based on previously observed values. For example, it can be used to illustrate the brand decline curve of defecting customers beyond the time that a brand is first launched as to predict the rate of decline into the future for use in projecting future revenues.

The chart above highlights two of the brand analysis techniques mentioned in the previous graphic, that being the Brand Pyramid (Health) Analysis (also commonly referred to as the brand funnel analysis if viewed from bottom to top) and the Brand Pyramid Conversion Analysis. This is meant as an overview, the next graphic takes a deep dive into each analysis technique. The key to the above chart are the questions to the left of each section as these a key in determining overall brand health.

The above chart illustrates the Brand Pyramid (strength) analysis and is sometimes also referred to as the brand health funnel analysis. In this consumers are queried about a set of questions regarding the brand. In order to qualify for the next level query, the consumer must have answered “yes” to ALL of the previous, lower level questions. For example, a consumer would need to “buy” the product to be able to “use” and only then would they be able to rate how well “satisfied with” they are with the brand (products/services).

In a perfect world, the pyramid would look more like a square with 100% of people going from “aware” all the up to “pay premium”, but the above represents the real life pyramid and what real brand analysis results typically look like.

The Brand Management Pyramid

The above brand pyramid conversion analysis measures the brand health slightly differently in that these are the conversion rates of audiences at each level of the brand pyramid.  To use an example, if 100 people were queried about the brand, a full 93.5% were aware of it. Of that 93.5%, 89.5% were familiar. Of the 89.5% that were familiar, only 83.5% (or 69.8 on previous chart) had a high opinion of the brand. This analysis reveals that, while people were familiar with the brand, many didn’t think very highly of the brand due to some negative perception that will need to be determined for root cause(s) (i.e. pricing, quality, warranty, features, etc.).

Brand Management Summary – Need Assistance?

Is your organization planning on launching new brand or optimizing an existing one? If so, give me a call, I call help you achieve world-class brand programs that enable you to surpass your competition and bring your organization or agency to the next level of brand management excellence.

Lastly, this is just one article of 40 total I have written on Customer strategy, CRM, marketing, product management, competitive intelligence, corporate innovation, change management – all of which I have significant experience in delivering for Fortune 500 companies.  In fact, my blog is now followed by nearly 158,000+ world-wide and was just named one of the top 100 CRM blogs on the planet by Feedspot, alongside Salesforce.com, Infor, Microsoft, SAS, etc. – Reference this informative site here: https://blog.feedspot.com/crm_blogs/