How Brands get benefited from Marketing & Communication

As a marketing & communication professional we all must have come across one common question asked by almost all our clients. How are all the marketing activities you suggesting for my company are going to help me?

So here is how companies / brand benefit from Marketing & Communication activities: 

• Branding / Communication helps create sustainable competitive advantage i.e. the most powerful barriers to competition are no longer controlled by companies but by customers. Factories and even access to finance are not as powerful barriers as the barriers erected inside customers’ minds. Only a few chosen winners are allowed inside. These are the successful brands with which customers have relationships. Successful brands build differentiators. The CEO of one of the world’s greatest brands, Coca-Cola, reputedly once said: ‘They can take everything we have, our machinery, our plants, our distribution – as long as they don’t take our brand – and we will be able to rebuild our organization in six months.’
• Boost relationship between the user and the company
• Branding / Communication boost sales by helping customers make their purchasing process easier. Brands are easier to recognize and to associate with quality; it is easier to understand their benefits, and they are less risky than unknown commodities.
• Branding / Communication helps increase profits. Brands,rightly or wrongly, can command premium prices, which results in increased profits, which consequently allows more money to be spent on better (relevant and tested) communications with clearer messages – which continually strengthens the brand.

Customer benefits from Marketing / Communication / Branding

• Saves customers time i.e. Marketing / Communication / Branding helps customers find goods / services quickly. Unilever’s chairman, Niall FitzGerald, calls a brand ‘a storehouse of trust which matters more and more as choices multiply’ and we face what David Ogilvy once called ‘the misery of choice’. People want to simplify their lives, simplify their decision making and get on with the rest of their busy lives.
• Reduce perceived risks i.e. a strong brand is an implicit guarantee or promise of consistent quality, image and style. A brand is built on trust. Customers trust the promise made through several communication campaigns, advertisement and on the pack, which helps customers form relationships with brands.
• Satisfy Aspirations i.e. Brands give status and recognition. Brands reflect aspirations, images and associations that are carefully gleaned from in-depth customer motivation research.
   

The above mentioned pointers also answer the question why companies should spend on Marketing / Communication even thought it might not affect their sales directly during the initial marketing period.

Importance of Public Relation in India

Every day, hundreds of so-called experts are quoted in the newspapers, on the radio, on news-oriented Web sites and on television. We often balk at adding a line for public relations services. How often do you hear fellow business owners say, "There's no direct line between public relations and increased sales"?

It is very important for industries to understand the power of media and the effect of Public relation to build in a layering effect, in which each mention in the press heightens your visibility, adding another layer of credibility to your company. This credibility in turn creates a desire among viewers and listeners to pay attention to you. In effect, you've been sanctioned by a trustworthy, objective third party.

As PR in India is still in its growing stage not many companies are managing their Public Relation effectively. Effective use of Media and PR opens the doors for new business and gives a competitive edge over their competitors.  An effective public relations plan for an organization is developed to communicate a message that coincides with organizations goals and seeks to benefit mutual interest whenever possible. The communication must be carried out through an effective and proper communication channel.

Key points:

• Maintaining image and relations of an organisation with the public
• Managing communication between an organisation and its target audience
• Manage crisis situations faced by the organisation
• Managing government affairs
• Internal marketing of the organisation among its employees, stake holders, communities, customers, industry, investors, media and visitors
• Managing websites
• Generating annual reports
• Employee newsletter
• Conducting and managing CSR activities

Public relations has gained a high importance in India today as companies realize the need and necessity of maintaining public relations apart from devising good advertising and marketing strategies. 

What are Brands? How are they different from products?

Ever since more firms and other organizations have come to the realization that one of their valuable assets is the brand names associated with their products or services. In today’s increasingly competitive world, all of us, as individuals or as business managers face more choices with less time to make them into brands. Thus a strong brands ability to simplify consumer’s decision making, reduce risk and set expectations is invaluable. Creating a strong brand which would deliver the promises made by the organisation, maintain and enhance the strengths of the brands over the period of time, is a management imperative.

It is very important to have a deeper understanding of the difference between a brand and a product without which understanding psychological principles at the individual or organisational level in order to make better decisions about brands is very difficult.

So first let us try and understand what brands are? 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 competitors, whereas a product is anything we can offer to a market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. In simple terms we can say that brand is the identity of a product.

In marketing, a brand is a symbolic manifestation of all the information connected with the company, product or service. It is typically composed of name, logo, and other visual elements such as images, colours, and icons. Studies have shown that brands put forth an impression to the consumer on what to expect of the product or service being offered. Examples of brands are product (Coca-Cola), service (Eurostar trains), company (L&T Infotech) or even an individual (Michael Jordan), most popular fast food franchise (Mc Donald’s).

On the other hand product is more than just a material object. It is t is also an inclusive package of benefits or satisfactions that the consumer or buyer may achieve upon purchase or usage. A product is the total amount of all physical, psychological, symbolic, and service attributes. Examples of products are hamburgers, fries, soft drinks etc.

By creating perceived differences among products through branding and by developing a loyal consumer franchise, marketers create value that can translate to financial profits for the firm.