Personal Brand Development Project Personal Brand Development Project Demonstrating a command of all of the branding concepts taught via this class, devel

Personal Brand Development Project Personal Brand Development Project

Demonstrating a command of all of the branding concepts taught via this class, develop and describe your personal brand.Specifically, your Personal Brand Development Project paper should, at least, address these topics:

1)What brand elements are descriptive of you now?

2)What other brand elements do you desire to develop and how will you do such?

3)Describe your strongest brand factors and your weakest brand factors.

4)How will you communicate your “brand”?

5)Who will likely be your primary target market?

6)How will you develop and manage your evolving personal brand?

7)What research will you conduct?

8)Display your brand via your developed resume

This highly creative paper should be 7-10 pages (double-spaced, stapled).Please include a cover/title page and, if relevant, a research sources citations’ page—both of which do not count in the required page total.)The paper’s “Appendix” should be your developed resume, i.e., one of your brand elements.

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Address the eight topics mentioned in the description of the assignment in syllabus (included above)
Apply branding concepts learned from lecture and textbook to your personal brand
Demonstrate strong understanding of class material
Tie material back to personal brand (how it applies to real life)
Analyze your personal brand
Current personal brand
What does your ideal personal brand look like and include?
Elements to think about
How is your personal brand perceived by others?
Your elevator pitch
What makes you unique?
What is your “message”?

■Why is each aspect important?

■Strengths and weaknesses

■How will you achieve that?

■How will you make sure you effectively communicate your personal brand?

■What is it?

■Explain the reasoning behind what you include Personal Brand Development Project
Demonstrating a command of all of the branding concepts taught via this class, develop and
describe your personal brand. Specifically, your Personal Brand Development Project paper
should, at least, address these topics:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
What brand elements are descriptive of you now?
What other brand elements do you desire to develop and how will you do such?
Describe your strongest brand factors and your weakest brand factors.
How will you communicate your “brand”?
Who will likely be your primary target market?
How will you develop and manage your evolving personal brand?
What research will you conduct?
Display your brand via your developed resume
This highly creative paper should be 7-10 pages (double-spaced, stapled). Please include a
cover/title page and, if relevant, a research sources citations’ page—both of which do not
count in the required page total.) The paper’s “Appendix” should be your developed resume,
i.e., one of your brand elements.
——————————————————————————————————————————●
●
●
●
Address the eight topics mentioned in the description of the assignment in syllabus
(included above)
Apply branding concepts learned from lecture and textbook to your personal brand
○ Demonstrate strong understanding of class material
○ Tie material back to personal brand (how it applies to real life)
■ Why is each aspect important?
Analyze your personal brand
○ Current personal brand
■ Strengths and weaknesses
○ What does your ideal personal brand look like and include?
■ How will you achieve that?
Elements to think about
○ How is your personal brand perceived by others?
■ How will you make sure you effectively communicate your personal brand?
○ Your elevator pitch
■ What is it?
■ Explain the reasoning behind what you include
○ What makes you unique?
○ What is your “message”?
Chapter 1
Book note
WHAT IS A BRAND?
What do people think and feel about your personal brand?
Branding yourself individually and uniquely, but not based on your university
Brand yourself to be particular unique in one of the million to be selected to the competition
Positive or negative YOU?
Values. Foundation for your brand
Attitude. Fix or remove your attitude
Passion. Do what you love!
Purpose. What you wanna be? Plan your future!
Six words. Describe yourself. PACKAGING! (and content) you are worded to people who
don’t know you. Go ask friends and family.
Brand equity is a phrase used in the marketing industry which describes the value of having
a well-known brand name, based on the idea that the owner of a well-known brand name can
generate more revenue simply from brand recognition; that is from products with that brand
name than from products with a less well known name, as consumers believe that a product
with a well-known name is better than products with less well-known names.
Branding has been around for centuries as a means to distinguish the goods of one producer
from those of another. In fact, the word brand is derived from the Old Norse word brandr, which
means “to burn,” as brands were and still are the means by which owners of livestock mark their
animals to identify them.2
According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), a brand is a “name, term, sign,
symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of
one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.” Technically
speaking, then, whenever a marketer creates a new name, logo, or symbol for a new product, he
or she has created a brand.
In fact, however, many practicing managers refer to a brand as more than that—as something
that has actually created a certain amount of awareness, reputation, prominence, and so on
in the marketplace. Thus we can make a distinction between the AMA definition of a “brand”
with a small b and the industry’s concept of a “Brand” with a big B. The difference is important
for us because disagreements about branding principles or guidelines often revolve around what
we mean by the term.
Brand Elements
Thus, the key to creating a brand, according to the AMA definition, is to be able to choose a
name, logo, symbol, package design, or other characteristic that identifies a product and distinguishes
it from others. These different components of a brand that identify and differentiate it
are brand elements. We’ll see in Chapter 4 that brand elements come in many different forms.
Brands versus Products
How do we contrast a brand and a product? A product is anything we can offer to a market for
attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. Thus, a product
may be a physical good like a cereal, tennis racquet, or automobile; a service such as an airline,
bank, or insurance company; a retail outlet like a department store, specialty store, or supermarket;
a person such as a political figure, entertainer, or professional athlete; an organization like
a nonprofit, trade organization, or arts group; a place including a city, state, or country; or even
an idea like a political or social cause. This very broad definition of product is the one we adopt
in the book. We’ll discuss the role of brands in some of these different categories in more detail
later in this chapter and in Chapter 15.
We can define five levels of meaning for a product:4
1. The core benefit level is the fundamental need or want that consumers satisfy by consuming
the product or service.
2. The generic product level is a basic version of the product containing only those attributes
or characteristics absolutely necessary for its functioning but with no distinguishing features.
This is basically a stripped-down, no-frills version of the product that adequately performs
the product function.
3. The expected product level is a set of attributes or characteristics that buyers normally
expect and agree to when they purchase a product.
4. The augmented product level includes additional product attributes, benefits, or related services
that distinguish the product from competitors.
5. The potential product level includes all the augmentations and transformations that a product
might ultimately undergo in the future.
A brand is therefore more than a product, because it can have dimensions that differentiate
it in some way from other products designed to satisfy the same need. These differences
may be rational and tangible—related to product performance of the brand—or more symbolic,
emotional, and intangible—related to what the brand represents.
Ten Firms Rated Highly on Innovation:
Apple
Amazon
Facebook
General Electric
Google
Groupon
Intel
Microsoft
Twitter
Zynga
WHY DO BRANDS MATTER?
An obvious question is, why are brands important? What functions do they perform that make
them so valuable to marketers? We can take a couple of perspectives to uncover the value of
brands to both customers and firms themselves. Figure 1-3 provides an overview of the different
roles that brands play for these two parties. We’ll talk about consumers first.
Consumers
As with the term product, this book uses the term consumer broadly to encompass all types of
customers, including individuals as well as organizations. To consumers, brands provide important
functions. Brands identify the source or maker of a product and allow consumers to assign
responsibility to a particular manufacturer or distributor. Most important, brands take on special
meaning to consumers. Because of past experiences with the product and its marketing program
over the years, consumers find out which brands satisfy their needs and which ones do not. As a
result, brands provide a shorthand device or means of simplification for their product decisions. 7
If consumers recognize a brand and have some knowledge about it, then they do not have
to engage in a lot of additional thought or processing of information to make a product decision.
Thus, from an economic perspective, brands allow consumers to lower the search costs for products
both internally (in terms of how much they have to think) and externally (in terms of how
much they have to look around). Based on what they already know about the brand—its quality,
product characteristics, and so forth—consumers can make assumptions and form reasonable
expectations about what they may not know about the brand.
The meaning imbued in brands can be quite profound, allowing us to think of the relationship
between a brand and the consumer as a type of bond or pact. Consumers offer their trust and
loyalty with the implicit understanding that the brand will behave in certain ways and provide
them utility through consistent product performance and appropriate pricing, promotion, and
distribution programs and actions. To the extent that consumers realize advantages and benefits
from purchasing the brand, and as long as they derive satisfaction from product consumption,
they are likely to continue to buy it.
These benefits may not be purely functional in nature. Brands can serve as symbolic devices, allowing
consumers to project their self-image. Certain brands are associated with certain types of people
and thus reflect different values or traits. Consuming such products is a means by which consumers
can communicate to others—or even to themselves—the type of person they are or would like to be. 8
Some branding experts believe that for some people, certain brands even play a religious
role of sorts and substitute for religious practices and help reinforce self-worth.9 The cultural
influence of brands is profound and much interest has been generated in recent years in understanding
the interplay between consumer culture and brands.10
Roles That Brands Play:
Consumers
Identification of source of product
Assignment of responsibility to product maker
Risk reducer
Search cost reducer
Promise, bond, or pact with maker of product
Symbolic device
Signal of quality
Manufacturers
Means of identification to simplify handling or tracing
Means of legally protecting unique features
Signal of quality level to satisfied customers
Means of endowing products with unique associations
Source of competitive advantage
Source of financial returns
Brands can also play a significant role in signaling certain product characteristics to consumers.
Researchers have classified products and their associated attributes or benefits into three
major categories: search goods, experience goods, and credence goods.11
• For search goods like grocery produce, consumers can evaluate product attributes like sturdiness,
size, color, style, design, weight, and ingredient composition by visual inspection.
• For experience goods like automobile tires, consumers cannot assess product attributes like
durability, service quality, safety, and ease of handling or use so easily by inspection, and
actual product trial and experience is necessary.
• For credence goods like insurance coverage, consumers may rarely learn product attributes.
Given the difficulty of assessing and interpreting product attributes and benefits for experience
and credence goods, brands may be particularly important signals of quality and other
characteristics to consumers for these types of products.12
Brands can reduce the risks in product decisions. Consumers may perceive many different
types of risks in buying and consuming a product:13
• Functional risk: The product does not perform up to expectations.
• Physical risk: The product poses a threat to the physical well-being or health of the user or
others.
• Financial risk: The product is not worth the price paid.
• Social risk: The product results in embarrassment from others.
• Psychological risk: The product affects the mental well-being of the user.
• Time risk: The failure of the product results in an opportunity cost of finding another satisfactory
product.
Consumers can certainly handle these risks in a number of ways, but one way is obviously
to buy well-known brands, especially those with which consumers have had favorable past experiences.
Thus, brands can be a very important risk-handling device, especially in business-tobusiness
settings where risks can sometimes have quite profound implications.
In summary, to consumers, the special meaning that brands take on can change their perceptions
and experiences with a product. The identical product may be evaluated differently depending
on the brand identifi cation or attribution it carries. Brands take on unique, personal meanings
to consumers that facilitate their day-to-day activities and enrich their lives. As consumers’ lives
become more complicated, rushed, and time starved, the ability of a brand to simplify decision
making and reduce risk is invaluable.
Firms
Brands also provide a number of valuable functions to their firms. 14 Fundamentally, they serve
an identification purpose, to simplify product handling or tracing. Operationally, brands help organize
inventory and accounting records. A brand also offers the firm legal protection for unique
features or aspects of the product. A brand can retain intellectual property rights, giving legal
title to the brand owner.15 The brand name can be protected through registered trademarks;
manufacturing
processes can be protected through patents; and packaging can be protected through
copyrights and designs. These intellectual property rights ensure that the firm can safely invest
in the brand and reap the benefits of a valuable asset.
We’ve seen that these investments in the brand can endow a product with unique associations
and meanings that differentiate it from other products. Brands can signal a certain level of
quality so that satisfied buyers can easily choose the product again. 16 This brand loyalty provides
predictability and security of demand for the firm and creates barriers of entry that make it
difficult for other firms to enter the market.
In short, to firms, brands represent enormously valuable pieces of legal property, capable of
influencing consumer behavior, being bought and sold, and providing the security of sustained
future revenues.17 For these reasons, huge sums, often representing large multiples of a brand’s
earnings, have been paid for brands in mergers or acquisitions, starting with the boom years of
The price premium paid for many companies is clearly justified by the opportunity to earn
and sustain extra profits from their brands, as well as by the tremendous difficulty and expense
of creating similar brands from scratch.
Brand Value as a Percentage of Market Capitalization:
CAN ANYTHING BE BRANDED?
Brands clearly provide important benefits to both consumers and firms. An obvious question,
then, is, how are brands created? How do you “brand” a product? Although firms provide the
impetus for brand creation through their marketing programs and other activities, ultimately a
brand is something that resides in the minds of consumers. A brand is a perceptual entity rooted
in reality, but it is more than that—it reflects the perceptions and perhaps even the idiosyncrasies
of consumers.
To brand a product it is necessary to teach consumers “who” the product is—by giving it a name
and using other brand elements to help identify it—as well as what the product does and why
consumers
should care. In other words, marketers must give consumers a label for the product (“here’s
how you can identify the product”) and provide meaning for the brand (“here’s what this particular
product can do for you, and why it’s special and different from other brand name products”).
Branding creates mental structures and helps consumers organize their knowledge about
products and services in a way that clarifies their decision making and, in the process, provides
value to the firm. The key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in
a product category. These differences can be related to attributes or benefits of the product or
service itself, or they may be related to more intangible image considerations.
Whenever and wherever consumers are deciding between alternatives, brands can play an
important decision-making role. Accordingly, marketers can benefit from branding whenever
consumers are in a choice situation. Given the myriad choices consumers make each and
every day—commercial and otherwise—it is no surprise how pervasive branding has become.
Consider these two very diverse applications of branding:18
Physical Goods
Physical goods are what are traditionally associated with brands and include many of the bestknown
and highly regarded consumer products, like Mercedes-Benz, Nescafé, and Sony. More
and more companies selling industrial products or durable goods to other companies are recognizing
the benefits of developing strong brands. Brands have begun to emerge among certain
types of physical goods that never supported brands before. Let us consider the role of branding
in industrial “business-to-business” products and technologically intensive “high-tech” products.
Business-to-business products. The business-to-business (B2B) market makes up a huge
percentage of the global economy. Some of the world’s most accomplished and respected brands
belong to business marketers, such as ABB, Caterpillar, DuPont, FedEx, GE, Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Siemens.
Business-to-business branding creates a positive image and reputation for the company as
a whole. Creating such goodwill with business customers is thought to lead to greater selling
opportunities and more profitable relationships. A strong brand can provide valuable reassurance
and clarity to business customers who may be putting their company’s fate—and perhaps
their own careers!—on the line. A strong business-to-business brand can thus provide a strong
competitive advantage.
Some B2B firms, however, carry the attitude that purchasers of their products are so wellinformed
and professional that brands don’t matter. Savvy business marketers reject that reasoning
and are recognizing the importance of their brand and how they must execute well in a
number of areas to gain marketplace success.
B2b Six specific guidelines—developed in greater
detail in later chapters—can be defined for marketers of B2B
brands.
1. Ensure the entire organization understands and
supports branding and brand management.
Employees at all levels and in all departments must have a
complete, up-to-date understanding of the vision for the
brand and their role in supporting it. A particularly crucial
area is the sales force; personal selling is often the profit
driver of a business-to-business organization. The sales
force must be properly aligned so that the department
can more effectively leverage and reinforce the brand
promise. If branding is done right, the sales force can ensure
that target customers recognize the brand’s benefits
sufficiently to pay a price commensurate with the brand’s
potential value.
2. Adopt a corporate branding strategy if possible and
create a well-defined brand hierarchy. Because of the
breadth and complexity of the product or service mix,
companies selling business-to-business are more likely to
emphasize corporate brands (such as Hewlett-Packard,
ABB, or BASF). Ideally, they will also create straightforward
sub-brands that combine the corporate brand name
with descriptive product modifiers, such as with EMC or
GE. If a company has a distinctive line of business, however,
a more clearly differentiated sub-brand may need
to be developed, like Praxair’s Medipure brand of medical
oxygen, DuPont’s Teflon coating, and Intel’s Centrino
mobile technology.
3. Frame value perceptions. Given the highly competitive
nature of business-to-business markets, marketers must
ensure that customers fully appreci…
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