Quantum Solutions - The Professional Vista For Media Management
Brand Quantum
Brands grow and evolve over a period of time. In the course of this, they face defining moments of change and find themselves at a strategic crossroads, when this challenging moment is called a “strategic inflection point” - a term coined by Andrew Grove, the former Intel CEO and author of modern classic, “Only the Paranoid Survive”. There are times when brand owners find themselves confronted with a great self-defining challenge that can only be met by responding to (in some introspective detail) questions like:
1. What is most important to us right now that would serve our customers?
2. Where–and what–do we hope to be in three, five and ten years into the future?
3. What do we do when we get there?
4. How will we assess our success along the way?
Sometimes the strategic direction is clear, while at other times it is far from perceptible even to those at the top of the organization. In the mad rush to manage change, to create powerful brands and brand images, companies spend tons of money reinventing themselves with ambitious marketing and advertising plans long before taking the most important first step -- knowing exactly what it is they are seeking to build upon -- their brand’s foundation. This substructure of a brand’s foundation is not built on physical materials, product features and the like, but fashioned from the intangible, dynamic forces that are nearly impossible to define and quantify, yet hold the keys to greater brand meaning and understanding. The intuitive process of brand re-alignment and re-definition is often under-valued by metrics obsessed financial managers. “I didn’t invent brand image. I pinched it,” he volunteered. He took the idea from an article in the Harvard Business Review by two academics, Burleigh Gardner and Sidney Levy, and put it into his own sweeping terms: “Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.” The concept was not entirely new in advertising circles, but after putting the spotlight on it, Ogilvy was dubbed the “apostle of the brand image.”
Brands took on greater importance as products themselves became increasingly similar, and branding became central in advertising discussions, eventually entering the language in worlds far removed from marketing. In-Shop Branding is a novel way of advertising, which includes advertisement in any retail store, placement of a product in visible locations in a store etc. In-Shop Branding is a sort of showcasing of eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, with the information or the specific usage of respective product.
1. What is most important to us right now that would serve our customers?
2. Where–and what–do we hope to be in three, five and ten years into the future?
3. What do we do when we get there?
4. How will we assess our success along the way?
Sometimes the strategic direction is clear, while at other times it is far from perceptible even to those at the top of the organization. In the mad rush to manage change, to create powerful brands and brand images, companies spend tons of money reinventing themselves with ambitious marketing and advertising plans long before taking the most important first step -- knowing exactly what it is they are seeking to build upon -- their brand’s foundation. This substructure of a brand’s foundation is not built on physical materials, product features and the like, but fashioned from the intangible, dynamic forces that are nearly impossible to define and quantify, yet hold the keys to greater brand meaning and understanding. The intuitive process of brand re-alignment and re-definition is often under-valued by metrics obsessed financial managers. “I didn’t invent brand image. I pinched it,” he volunteered. He took the idea from an article in the Harvard Business Review by two academics, Burleigh Gardner and Sidney Levy, and put it into his own sweeping terms: “Every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.” The concept was not entirely new in advertising circles, but after putting the spotlight on it, Ogilvy was dubbed the “apostle of the brand image.”
Brands took on greater importance as products themselves became increasingly similar, and branding became central in advertising discussions, eventually entering the language in worlds far removed from marketing. In-Shop Branding is a novel way of advertising, which includes advertisement in any retail store, placement of a product in visible locations in a store etc. In-Shop Branding is a sort of showcasing of eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, with the information or the specific usage of respective product.
