2017 Branding Assignment "Applying branding principles to grow a brand"

This assignment builds on Course Objectives 1, 2 and 3. It draws on the knowledge you have gained on why brand management is important.

Overview:

You have recently secured your dream job working for a brand distributed in the UK (further details provided in tutorials).

Your marketing team has no knowledge of the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute or the law-like patterns that underpin your knowledge of how brands grow.

The latest survey data for the UK market provides you with a great opportunity to demonstrate how the law-like patterns can aid interpretation of brand performance and will help to guide branding decisions in your market.

You will need to confirm with your tutor the brand to use before beginning this task.

Part One: Brand Performance (estimate 400 words):

Your first task is to calculate brand performance metrics for the brand and to discuss whether the brand is performing as expected in this market. Draw  on a variety of sources (industry and academic) when discussing brand performance and recent marketing efforts.

1A. Present results in tables to visually show the brand's performance. Use the principles of data reduction to show whether law-like patterns hold in this context. Highlight priority metrics and explain why they are more important.

1B. Using the same data provide an example of how the survey results can be presented differently, making misinterpretation more likely by those lacking your knowledge. Explain how this could distract the team from the task of growing the brand. Provide evidence from this or other brands on efforts that may be ineffective if the objective is to grow the brand.

Supplement survey results with other credible sources that report the latest market intelligence on the brand and its key competitors. Examples of industry sources include IBISWorld and Euromonitor for market trends and current conditions.

Brand performance data will be provided on the course website for you to undertake analysis and include in your report.

Part Two: Brand Audit (estimate 900 words):

Draw on industry publications, such as Campaign, B&T, Advertising Age or articles from the WARC database to critique marketing campaigns or branding efforts. The brand's website, YouTube and social media sites should also be examined as part of the brand audit for Part Two.

2A. Provide a brief history of the brand; include how it is physically distributed in the UK. Identify your brand's key competitors (these should also feature in Part One). Draw on your audit and data analysis to justify why they are your brand's closest competitors and discuss the effect on competition if market partitions exist.

2B. Highlight an important piece of information to consider when making branding decisions, e.g. is it a growing or declining market, do any brands dominate or are there any trends/government regulations to be aware of?

2C Provide a brief overview of marketing efforts of the brand (refer to appendix for detail). Discuss whether the current media choices are likely to reach all category users or if content and media choices appear to be targeting specific segments.

2D Examine brand messaging across the market for 3 brands. What do you think the key message of advertising is and why? Do you think that message is something only that brand could say? Explain your answer.

2E Think about how consumers buy the category. Discuss whether the messaging of brands is likely to be salient when buyers buy. Provide support for your argument.

2F Provide a brief overview of the brand's physical availability, discussing all three aspects of physical availability. Identify opportunities to help grow the brand.

2G Provide a summary of potential Distinctive Assets for your brand (create a brand palette for DAs). Estimate where branding elements would be positioned on the Fame/Uniqueness grid and add in elements likely to be useable or investable assets for key competitors. Briefly discuss the quality of decisions made from grids compiled from a branding audit compared with grids informed by research with category users.

Part Three: Recommendations (estimate 300 words):

3A: Provide a recommendation on how the brand can improve its mental availability. Explain how this can help the brand to grow.

3B: Provide a recommendation on how the brand can improve its physical availability. Explain how this can help the brand to grow.

3C: Which would you prioritise? Or is there another recommendation you would make based on your brand audit? Explain your thinking.

Length: 1600 words, plus a minimum of 15 references. There is no ‘magic number' of articles or references to use but any claims you make require sources to strengthen your argument. Use the submission template and add headings, because this will provide clarity in the assignment.

Use the Roadmap to Referencing resource available via the course website to check that you have used the correct Harvard referencing format before submitting. Ensure that you are familiar with Academic Integrity policies and submit assignments that show your own thinking and the ability to apply course knowledge to specific branding scenarios.

I am expecting that the understanding of the issues in your assignment will reflect your prior exposure to marketing ideas in previous courses. In other words, the expected level is higher than that for a new marketing student. I also expect that you will draw on the eReadings and lecture content when discussing concepts.

Marking Criteria for Assignment

1 Evidence of understanding of literature and application to a brand currently available in the UK
2 Logical & convincing marketing arguments 3 Correct interpretations of published works
4 Original contribution to assignment (i.e. more than just re-presenting existing ideas) 5 Evidence of incorporating multiple published sources relevant to this task
6 Completeness (covered all parts of the assignment with relevant examples of brand management)
7 Presentation (spell checked etc); Havard style referencing and use of data-reduction principles

Attachment:- Branding.zip