Brand and Reputation Management: A Business Leadership Way of Life

The Icfai University Press

Advertising Express  ,  Nov.2009

STRATEGY

-- Anuupama Ghoshal
Assistant Professor - Marketing
Alliance Business School, Bengaluru.
The author can be reached at
anuupama.ghoshal@alliancebschool.ac.in

Brand reputation results from the journey that begins with the value-proposition for the market space/place. Reputation affects all the stakeholders of the brand. The importance of achieving a good reputation is what drives brand building and management. Thus, from a strategic perspective, brand reputation promotes stronger brand management construct and mobilizes top management vision for the category.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step—such is the journey of a brand's life.

In marketing parlance, a brand is a `promise' that is made to stakeholders such as customers, investors, public, government, critics, market forces, etc. What finally is actually delivered once this promise has been communicated is the ultimate litmus test of the brand. Reputation is the resultant intangible asset that the corporate entity acquires at the brand contact points during the brand's engagement with its stakeholders. What your stakeholders perceive of your brand (and its promise), vis-à-vis delivery/conformance to your promise, is what is commonly referred to as `reputation'.

All the brands in a marketplace constantly vie to build brand equity on a strong foundation of brand reputation. There is a direct correlation between positive brand reputation and the resultant brand equity commanded by the brand in its product category. One can think of reputed brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Titan, Tanishq, Raymonds, Van Heusen, Himalaya, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Surf Excel, Dove, Lakme, etc., that have successfully overcome the competition and have emerged as stronger, victorious and trustworthy brands. What we need to remember is that competition is ultimately good for consumers at large in the marketplace. Eventually, it is the customer who stands to win amidst the brand battles. The process of building perceptual images of the brands in the minds of the consumers is very crucial and beneficial for the brand.

Brand and brand reputation are like two sides of a coin; each requiring focused perspectives of brand and reputation/image management. A company building a brand also envisions a reputation that it wants to create for the brand. Once the company decides on the reputation, all that is required is the tenacity to stick to it, conduct timely appraisal of the navigation towards the goal while being alert to spot any strategic gap between the reputation that the company aspired to create and the milestones reached on that track. The company also needs to be courageous enough to challenge the existing models of operation while being creatively focused with a solution-centric approach towards meeting any challenges.

Let us take the cases of Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Amul, NDTV 24x7 and Maruti to analyze the process of brand and reputation management.

Brand Coca-Cola has been around since over the past century. Simplistically perceived, the brand promises to impart a pleasant emotive drinking experience of a carbonated cola beverage. Its stakeholders hold the brand in very high regard, resulting in the brand Coca-Cola having an unmatched and enviable reputation.

Johnson & Johnson is trusted by mothers across the globe. Irrespective of whether a woman is brand conscious or not, when it comes to her newborn baby, almost every urbanite mother reposes her trust in Johnson & Johnson. Starting from that first bath which touches the very sensitive skin of the newborn, to the shampoo that touches the hair, it is Johnson & Johnson all the way! Personal preferences can be lifelong; wherein you may find a handful of such babies who have matured well-enough into their adulthood still using Johnson & Johnson ignoring the lure of other cosmetic brands aggressively clamoring for their attention by employing untiring and persuasive marketing communications. Johnson & Johnson has an expansive bandwidth of personal hygiene products catering to customer segments demographically from infants well into adulthood, complemented by a reputation built and founded on trust and expertise—a benchmark for its category. Exhibit 1 highlights the different factors that affects brand reputation.

The Amul moppet, which is popularly known as the `Utterly Butterly' girl, is the evergreen symbol of innocence and simplicity. It is as if the brand proclaims the promise of a very simple truth by innocently persuading customers with its `round eyed, chubby cheeked' little girl happily winking at you from hoardings that are strategically placed. The brand imagery also implies a product that is safe for children and is vividly displayed as an innocent pleasure in consuming the product! Does this brand have a reputation? Definitely yes, one would agree! It has retained its image as an extremely respected and popular brand that has remained contemporary by engaging with stakeholders on varied contextual platforms and by sprinkling in subtle amounts of humor on contemporary issues with wit thrown in good measure. All these aspects synergize the brand; aiding it to deliver consistently, never failing its customers and stakeholders! It is also these aspects that have contributed to the immense popularity of the brand.

NDTV, with its flagship news channel and anchor-champions like Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt, epitomizes a media channel meant for genuine, unbiased and informative journalism. Gen `X' and `Y' have all at one point of time in their lives been exposed to NDTV and its courageous journalism. The channel has been able to remain competitive and contemporary with a subtle elite presentation despite the intense competition on the media front.

Maruti started its journey as a brand built for the middle-class. Today, Maruti is famous and popular across all categories of customers and is regarded as one of the best automobile companies. Maruti is popular because it is regarded as a brand that is reliable and delivers value. Brand Maruti, thus, has a very formidable reputation, which the likes of Hyundai during their initial foray into the Indian subcontinent had to definitely reckon with and subsequently benchmarked against. Subsequently, Hyundai built up its unique brand reputation that ensured that both players created separate niches for themselves in the car segment. The customers of the country were pampered with customer service standards unheard of during the early part of the 20^th century. Eventually, it is the customers who buy the reputation of the brand. The reputation of the brand clinches the sale. This is the acid test which differentiates sustainable and successful companies from the not so successful ones. In this context, it is relevant to remember the SWOT strategy framework that all marketers need to refer in one form or the other. Exhibit 2 highlights this framework.

The journey of a brand is continuously progressive. Change is the name of the game; a constant factor impacting the life of a brand. Change of marketing forces, consumer profiles, market economics and ways of conducting business is a modern phenomenon. The brand has its share of ups and downs. The challenges that ensue in the path forge a stronger and better brand. The brand that ultimately stands tall, in spite of the testing times survives. It is not only what you do that counts, but how you are perceived that finally matters. A brand forges ahead in an ecosystem that comprises of entities like customers, employees, investors, trade channel partners, suppliers, vendors, government, and the civic society. And if that brand happens to be a goliath, then visibility itself becomes a critical factor that has to be guarded and preserved rightly. Building a brand happens just like building a character or a structure—a bit of it at a time—neither too fast, nor too slow. In the meantime, patience and vision is required to navigate it and help it chart its course along the seas of time—some placid, some horrendously choppy. But as they say—it is the rough sea that forges a great captain. So is it with a brand and its reputation. Being human, we are fallible. And so can the brand, because we are the captains of the brands. It does not matter whether we falter, it matters how best we can survive the test of times and emerge victorious and unscathed. Exhibit 3 highlights a simplistic model of the marketing ecosystem where we factor in the sustenance of the brand strength vis-a-vis competitor strengths and consumer needs. Notice how brand reputation features in each of the domains of consumer needs, competitor strengths (both vulnerabilities and points of parity), as well as brand strengths. The zone of vulnerabilities arises because competition is seemingly able to bridge the gap of consumer needs left unfulfilled by a marketer. The points of parity zone is where the marketers brands are co-existing with competitors; where intrinsic brand equity competes in the marketplace and marketspace along with category competition.

Remember the tough times that Cadbury had to go through during its worm infestation episode? The conventional quote, "Necessity is the mother of invention" is applicable in viewing the challenges that sometimes block the brand's dream run. The trials and tribulations faced by a brand is almost an inflexion point of the brand, from where it refines itself both strategically and tactically. The ultimate aim being, to progressively better the value delivered to its stakeholders. It is these tests and tribulations that forge a resilient brand that makes better products for its customers. It is also these tests that make a strong and firm brand which is confident and better equipped to face the marketing challenges thrown in by detractors.

When a brand wins, all its stakeholders win. The brand, thus, acquires a reputation which results from an intricate synergy of respect, appreciation, reliability and trust that resides within its stakeholders and which ultimately ensures that the brand wins all the way till the end. After all, everyone wants to be associated with a reputed brand. The corporate performance of a marketer is impacted by the organization mission/vision/values, corporate strategy elements, as well as the environment in which the organization operates as well as the customer equity that the marketer has built within its target market (Refer Exhibit 4).

Building sustainable brand leadership is the future of marketing. Green marketing ensures continuity of our human race for our posterity. Corporate social responsibility humanizes the interactive interface of the business brand with its social ecosystems. What we need to do is to build a human capital base of workforce which is willing to face the challenges of the realms of uncharted territories of customer satisfaction and delight. The vision of the top management must be to create business models and value networks, resulting in brands that are not only products but holistic business entities as well. Exhibit 5 highlights the different factors of a business ecosystem. For a marketer to be successful, these business ecosystem factors have to be kept in mind while framing corporate strategies that drive the critical business processes of the company.

While we brainstorm and fuel brand growth and consolidate brand equity, let us track brand reputation on our marketing radar systems. We have to depend extensively on customer/client feedback systems and processes that will honestly highlight brand perceptions and brand positioning states compared to our initial objectives. Quality input necessarily ensures substantial quality output provided there is no pilferage and wastage. Quality enhancement on a quantum leap basis provides the realistic framework that inspires and creates aspirational leadership for new levels of achievement, heretofore unexplored, to be scaled up, thus enhancing value for customers, corporates, social entities and the economic entities. Brand reputation has to be developed as a fortress that has high levels of intrinsic strength while having continuous guards on possible intrusions or threats. Continuous vigilance of brand reputation ensures sustainability and sustenance, the two strong foundation on which any brand rests.

The branding objective of any organization should be to:

Build brands that are sustainable across product categories so as to lessen clutter.

Make brands achieve brand equity by linking it to brand recall, association, brand perception, and brand value.

Build brands which have an innate esteem value.

Build a solid brand construct that commands respect from stakeholders and the business community at large.

Win the market share as well as the customer's heart.

Build sustainable business and social ecosystems.

Create and encourage development of interdependent business partners creating value networks with innovative expertise.

Consolidate on the market trust and become role-models for the next generation of business entities.

Operate with complete transparency of operations.

Develop leadership base of human resources and expert knowledge base.

Encourage excellence in customer-focused activities.

Instill ethics as compulsory culture in the human and technical interface.

The brand we build today needs to remain contemporarily relevant. As business leaders, we need to evaluate our brands contextually. Contextual relevance ensures that brands convey benefits and uses that are contextually relevant to the demographics and psychographics of the target segment of the particular product/service/idea which is being branded.

Thus, can we build and construct a global platform where a name, a brand, will signify what its worth is. It will be rewarded for what it has tenaciously worked for, and not be in surprise when the world calls it to take its laurels!

Conclusion

Brand reputation is the intangible asset that secures a stronghold (or otherwise) for the marketer. Reputation, though builds on slowly, has the potential to become like diamond, capable of forging its way through incredible hard obstacles. It's the jewel that is awarded by the stakeholders in recognition of the marketer's visionary leadership efforts involving sweat, toil and hard work for its customer-centric approach.