Questions and Answers of Brand Leadership

7. How is your firm organized to manage brands? Is a person or a team in charge of the brand? Is it a top or middle management function? How might it be improved?
6. Evaluate the quality of your execution of brand building. Does the organizational brand-building system and structure lead to excellence, or does it lead to mediocrity? How might it be changed?
5. Evaluate your planning system. Does it have a common planning template? Does the process encourage the development of global brands?
4. Evaluate your global brand communication system. How might it be improved? How does the brand identity influence or impact the communication system? What mechanisms are in place?How might it be
3. What are your global brands? Should you have more? Which are candidates? What is holding them back?
2. What are the global brands in your industry? What exactly have they standardized across the world? Name and logo? Positions?Product? Advertising? Channel strategy?
1. Address the questions at the end of the McDonald's vignette from the outset of the chapter.
How will the brand building be measured?
What are the brand equity goals?
What are the distribution goals?
What are the sales and profit goals?
What are the action plans and supporting programs in different areas?
What are the strategic initiatives?
What is the brand position, the goal of current brand-building efforts?
8. Ask yourself: If we were a fashion company, how would we go about building the brand? What can be learned from the suc- cesses of Ralph Lauren? What are the five or six existing and dominant
7. If media advertising (or whatever is your most important brandbuilding tool currently) no longer existed tomorrow, how would you build your brand with consumers?
6. Engage in some out-of-the-box creative thinking to identify somepotential brand-building programs.
5. Identify some ineffective brand building, and explain why you consider it ineffective.
4. Which brand-building effort reported in these four chapters are you most impressed with? Why?
3. Identify some brand-building best practices directed at achieving visibility both inside and outside your industry. Which are effective at creating associations? Which are effective at creating
2. Evaluate current brand-building programs. What are their objectives? How are those objectives measured? How well do they achieve their objectives?
1. What are the contexts in a customer's life where the brand can be made relevant? What is the customer sweet spot?
7. Check out your brand's presence on the Web by conducting a Web audit based on the above six questions.
6. Do you have a Web presence that is consistent across brands andmarkets, and with offline media?
5. Does your Web site establish a dialogue with current or potential customers? Does it connect you better with your customers?Does it facilitate customer feedback? How is this information used in
4. Do those who are in charge of building your Web presence havea clear understanding of the brand identity?
3. Does your Web presence augment the brand by providing addedvalue to the customer?
2. Is there a hook to get the visitor to keep coming back?
1. Does your Web presence support the brand? Are symbols usedand enhanced?
5. How are your sponsorships managed? Could that be improved?How do you coordinate sponsorships across the organization?
4. Identify sponsorships of competitors that have achieved a perfectfit with the brand. Identify sponsorships outside your industrythat have a perfect fit. Consider owned events as well.
3. Sponsorship can be particularly effective in reinforcing elementsof the identity. Do your sponsorship efforts complement otherbrand-building approaches by developing or reinforcing elements of the
2. Take one of the priority items from the core identity. Identify properties that will have similar associations; consider sports, entertainers, and cultural events or entities.
1. Evaluate the sponsorships with which your brand has been involved. What are the associations of those sponsorship properties? How did they contribute to brand building?
5. Develop some new brand-building options that are not currently being successfully employed in your industry. What are the problems in implementing them? How could those problems be overcome?
4. Do you have a brand identity statement that provides a clear road map for building the brand? Does your brand identity statement provide sufficient guidance for deciding on communications
3. What are the success models of building brands in your industry?How can these success models be improved or refined?
2. Why did Adidas and Nike both miss the aerobics trends? How could they have been so careless?
1. Evaluate the brand-building approaches presented in this chapter. Which do you admire the most? Why? What was the key to getting that approach implemented?
2. Identify programs to address the emerging issues.
1. Conduct a brand architecture audit.
Who is in charge of the visual presentation of the brand? What is the process by which the visual presentation of the brand is managed?
Is the brand architecture periodically reviewed?
What is the process by which a brand or subbrand gets added to the portfolio? What criteria are used?
Are the driver brands and subbrands adequately leveraged? What are some possible horizontal brand extensions? Does the potential exist to extend brands vertically (with or without a subbrand)?
Are some brands overextended? Are their images being jeopardized?
Are there other components, features, and services now being offered that could be packaged and branded?
Identify the branded components, features, and services. Should these be given a greater or lesser role?
Identify co-brands. Are they well-conceived? Should new ones be considered? What types of partners would serve to enhance the brand?
Do the existing endorser brands add value as endorsers? Do they detract? Is their identity appropriate for that role? Should their role as endorsers recede or be deleted in some contexts?Are there
Identify the subbrands and scale them on the driver-descriptive subbrand spectrum. Given that appraisal, are they all receiving an appropriate amount of resources and management?
Identify the brands and subbrands with substantial driver responsibility. How much equity do they have? How strong is each one's link to customers? Which brands need active management and brand
What brands should be playing cash cow roles? Do they require the resources they now receive?
Are strategic, linchpin, and silver-bullet brands being supported and actively managed?
What brands or subbrands are playing (or should play) silver- bullet roles? Are additional silver bullets needed?
Are there (or should there be) any linchpin brands that will leverage important business arenas?
Which brands are the strategic brands (that is, brands representing substantial future profits)?
5. Create a brand architecture decision guide that would specify the conditions under which a new or existing offering would use an existing master brand, a subbrand, an endorsed brand, or a new
4. For what portion of your offerings is a house of brands appropriate? Why? What portion should be modeled as a branded house?Why? Under what circumstances would additional subbrands or endorsers be
3. Analyze your subbrands. What do they add to the brand architecture? Are they confusing and complex? Could they be simplified?Rate these as well on the driver/descriptor subbrand spectrum(shown
2. Analyze your endorser brands. Should there be more? Fewer?How much of a driver role do they take in each distribution channel? Rate each on a percentage scale. What percent of the buying and use
1. Pick two diverse firms—one that is close to a branded house, and another that is close to a house of brands. Look closely at their branded offerings and identify the subcategories in the brand
4. Design a brand identity elaboration presentation.
3. Focus on a brand identity element such as trust. Identity role models and visual metaphors. Cluster them into groups and interpret the resulting groupings.
2. Do the same with your brand.
1. Fpcus on a brand with a well-defined identity. Elaborate on the identity, using each of the elaboration approaches. Whichapproach was the most helpful?
Will it contribute by delivering functional, emotional, and/or self- expressive benefits?
Does this association resonate with the customer?
7. Is your execution consistent with your strategy? Give a good example of on-strategy and off-strategy execution for your brand and a competitor.
6. Should your brand have multiple identities? Why? How?
5. Use ads or visuals or strategy statements to portray the positions of competitors. How is your brand differentiated from them?
4. What customer insight is motivating your brand strategy?
3. Does your brand have a strong position on a functional benefit?How is that being exploited? Has your brand moved beyond product attributes and functional benefits? How?
2. Evaluate the brand essence statements listed in the text. What criteria are appropriate? Which seem to be the best? Identify some taglines that are particularly good brand essence state- ments.
1. Develop alternative brand essence statements for Virgin Airlines.
Is it believable?
Does it energize employees?
Does it resonate with the customer?
Does it help differentiate the brand from its competition?
Does it capture an element important to the brand and its ability to provide customer value or support customer relationships?
3. Comment on the studies showing how brand equity affects financial returns.
2. Examine forces influencing brand management in your industry, such as competitive pressures, channel dynamics, global realities, and market factors. How will your brand strategy have to change to
1. Look at the dimensions in Figure 1-3. For each dimension, position your organization on a seven-point scale between classic brand management and the brand leadership paradigm. Compare your actual