During the first years of the new millennium we entered into what some call the experience economy, where companies need to compete on the basis of memorable experiences. Goods and services were declared no longer enough (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Organizations have been forced to adapt to the developments in the environment and to the consequent changes in consumer demands …
In this post I will share a simple model that will help you understand the most important aspects that a company should take into consideration to proactively manage a brand by building a value co-creation process online with its consumers. It is inspired by the brand journalism term originally coined by Larry Light in 2004. Larry Light declared that mass …
Touch-points Along with the emergence of the experience economy, a great emphasis has in recent years been placed on actively managing and coordinating all the touch-points a company faces its customers with. This is in order to create a consistent brand image and brand experience whether visiting the web site, physically entering a branch or receiving an invoice (Shaw & …
Brand values As a consequence of the globalization, many product- and service categories have been commoditized due to the diminishing difference between companies and their offerings. A parameter like for instance “quality” is within many industries no longer a mean for differentiation (David A. Aaker, 2007) as the quality standard has leveled out along with the maturity of the product …
Branding started in Sweden in the middle age (476-1492) when the ruling economy was the agrarian and commodities were extracted from the natural world: animal, mineral, vegetables, etc. A brand was the action of burning a symbol into the flesh of a Norse in order to signify ownership of the animal. Entomology tells us that the word “brand” is a …
During the Industrial Revolution (1830-70) a clear shift was seen with the arrival of brands such as C&A 1841 and Levi’s 1850 (clothing sector); Tabasco 1868 and Heinz 1869 (fast moving consumer goods FMCG sector). However, in those days the power of the distribution chain was in the hands of the wholesale traders and as a result most producers made …
In the last decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, manufacturers started making use of advertising and representatives in order to avoid the power of the wholesale traders. One of the first advertising agencies was founded in New York in 1864 as Carlton and Smith, an advertising broker buying and selling space in the popular religious …
As more brands appeared within same market sectors while competition within categories increased, managing the creation of ads and resulting images was not enough. It is said that in 1931, Neil McElroy changed marketing forever when he wrote the classic memo at Procter and Gamble (P&G), which lead to the creation of the discipline of brand management (Aaker, Joachimsthaler, 2000; …
It is not clear who invented the expression of brand equity, but few uses of it have been traced before the mid-eighties (Ambler & Styles 1995). In the mid 80s academics such as Kevin Lane Keller, began studying the effects and importance of memory factors in advertising and its relation with consumer brand evaluations in the moment of purchase, “Memory …
Brand management is continuously evolving as the economy changes and requires new approaches and other ways of thinking. Consequently this post serves to highlight the main trends within brand management during the first years of the new millennium. Today the competitive landscape has become much more complex as companies compete around the globe and across industries online. Meanwhile brands have …