The Future of Branding in Technology

How will brands drive business strategy? How will brands keep pace with the rapid change in technology? Will the existing rules of building and leveraging brands apply in future? How differently will the brands of future be managed?

The Future Of Branding provides insights, frameworks, methods and a road-map on how brand managers need to innovate and redefine branding in their organizations to remain competitive.

“Next practices” are the emerging methods in management that are poised to impact the realm of management.

Changes in the increasingly dynamic competitive environment require a focus on what should be done, not just what is currently done.

With a cross-industry application across both business-to-business and business-to-consumer market sectors, the post aims to help managers refocus on what is important to build and maintain strong brands in the future marketplace.

The Future of Branding post examines the future of branding on key concepts including brand performance management, brand strategy, brand building, revitalizing brands, brand valuation, brand analysis, brand protection, and brand experience.

Branding in Emerging Markets

Emerging economies with its many countries, cultures, business practices and customer segments are much more complex than other any other region in the world.

The clusters are made up of certain highly developed countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong with ultra-urban and modern consumers with deep pockets.

China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and others have consumers willing to experiment with new products and eager to seek out brands.

Unlike the markets in US and Europe where markets and customers have reached a certain level of understanding and sophistication, these markets still demonstrate branding infancy.

The mindset, the complexity of business structures, the diversity of demographic composition and the huge geographic extant requires certain unique brand building efforts.

Brands in emerging markets meet the market with challenges that are not apparent in the developed world.

For example, emerging market brands catering to the rising consumer class require packaging that can withstand greater temperature variations, and units which are designed for single use.

The entire brand management spectrum needs close evaluation for managers to succeed. Some essential steps for such brands are:

• Create a strong differentiation
• Establish a strong distribution network
• Glocalize
• Leverage cross-border synergies
• Recognize and respond to the unique regional markets
• Collaborate and co-create

Section I – Brand Strategy : Brand strategy focuses on choosing how to compete. That means making the choices about which markets to serve, which customers to serve, which business model to deliver value, and how to sustain value profitably. “Form follow function” is a principle in architecture and design that an object or building should be based primarily on its intended purpose. Similarly, brands and their organizations are shaped by the strategy adopted by management.

Section II – Brand Building : Brand building is the activity of developing a brand at the front end of the brand life cycle. This area is operationally focused on creating the brand identify and brand experience which addresses the story of how a brand should look like, sound like, feel like, smell like, taste like, and in holistic terms how the brand interacts with customer’s emotional life over the entire consumption process. Brands are not built by companies alone because they are placed in public space so brand building is also about the dialog between the managers of the brand and the marketplace.

Section III – Leveraging Brands : Leveraging brands address how to multiply the value of the brand by extending established brands into new opportunities like new markets, new categories, or new product lines. Brands in saturated markets may seek to join growing markets or to establish new markets. Brand owners may seek to go upscale such as Toyota did with Lexus. Or brands may decide to serve the bottom of the market like Danon’s efforts in addressing needs at the bottom of the pyramid.

Section IV – Brand Performance Management : Brand Performance Management is about improving and maintaining consistent returns by value, and improving the value to the owners of the brand. Measuring the value of activities, processes, new offers, relationships, and brands by using internal metrics, marketing research, and financial value provides managers with the ability to be proactive with brand performance management.