The Fundamentals of Brand Management: Marketing Planning

I had the privilege of developing and delivering a seminar on the “Fundamentals of Brand Management” for the University of Toronto. It was challenging to condense 25 years of brand management and marketing experience into a two-hour seminar. I decided that focussing on how to develop a brand and marketing plan would be most helpful for the students. With this Blog, I share key components of this seminar.

Why Brand Management is Important?

Brand management is defined as the strategic development and systematic management of differentiation. Our full definition of brand management is shared on the Canadian Marketing Association website, a definition that we were invited to develop for membership.

Brand management is more important than ever before due to digital and social media proliferation and the consequent need for consistent and relevant marketing messaging.

Importantly, brand management, when done right, builds brand equity over time. Key considerations with brand equity include:

• Competitive strategy – market share
• Financial accounting – goodwill
• Psychology – consumer perception
• Consumer engagement – digital, social media and more

Build Brand Equity Through Marketing Planning

The Marketing Plan is fundamental to building brand equity:

• Developing a successful plan is both an ‘art and a science’ and requires both management and analytical skills.
• The Marketing Plan is the most important document in guiding the marketing team.

Defining effective marketing strategies is key to successful marketing planning:

• Marketing strategies are the ‘road maps’ developed in strategic planning – they are the marketing guide to achieving your objectives.
• Strategies are distinct from tactics in that strategies are the ‘what’ and tactics are the ‘how’.
• The tactics (action plans) are the details that address how to make progress along each marketing strategy serving as a road map toward the destination of your accompanying ‘objectives’.

Measure Progress to Your Destination

Ultimately a strong measurement framework determines a brand’s success with rational factors and emotional components.These measures should reflect progress made with marketing strategies against your plan objectives.

Rational Measurement factors fall into two broad segments:

• Functional properties of the brand such as usage benefits, price, packaging, ease of use, convenience, taste/texture.
• Brand image properties are those that represent what the brand stands for, such as environmental awareness, knowledgeable, trustworthy, traditional, prestigious.

Emotional elements include:

• Emotional needs that capture how the brand makes the consumer feel, such as comforted, excited, welcomed, energized, in charge.
• Personality attributes that address the brand character, and represent what the brand says about the consumer; for example, smart, friendly, cheerful, successful.

To learn more about brand management, we invite you to follow us @BrandMattersInc as well as two leading US brand management gurus, Keller and Aaker. A recent lecture on Brand Relevance was delivered by Aaker in which he emphasizes the need for brand relevance in times of rapid category and subcategory innovation.