The Basics of Brand Management by Iftikhar Munir (Director at ZM TRADERS). Iftikhar Munir has over 15 years of experience of advertising, marketing and sales management at senior position.

1. The Basics of Brand Management
Step1
Identify your brand stakeholders: Be inclusive
Don’t just think of customers. There are many other groups involved in your brand. Your list of
stakeholders may include employees, business partners, distributors, investors, even yourself as well as
customers. Make sure you have identified all the groups of stakeholders in your brand before you do
anything else.
Step2
Understand where you are now: Be honest
It is essential to understand how your stakeholders currently perceive your brand. Remember: the brand is
not what exists in your brochures or your web site. Your brand is what exists in the mind of our
stakeholders: it is these perceptions that will determine your business success or failure. Take time to
understand your current brand: it exists in the minds of your stakeholders.
Step3
Study Competitor and market trends: Be thorough
How you should position your brand for the future will be affected by a combination of three factors: where
you are now, where your competitors are now, and the trends that will impact on your market.
Understanding all three provides a sound basis for the future. When considering your market be careful to
identify trends that will have a significant impact on your market over the coming years not just the short
term fads. Understand your competitor brands (how customers think of them) and your market trends.
Step 4
Define where you wish to be: Be realistic and focused
A strong brand needs to be distinctive from its competitors and motivating to its customers. Ask yourself:
What are your brand strengths(or could be our strength)
How will this be distinctive from our competitors?
Why will this be motivating to our consumers?
Will these strengths become more important in the market over time, or less important?
Your answer should be realistic and focused. Its will help if you get a “reality check” by sharing the
answers with some of your key stakeholder groups. Check to make sure the answers are believable.
Craft the answers to these questions into a statement of your desired brand.
Step 5
Agree what you have to say and do: Be committed
To build the desired brand in the mind of your stakeholders is perhaps the greatest challenge. It requires
constant review of what you say and what you do and how they live up to the brand you are trying to build.
Begin the process now by listing out the kinds of behavior that will build your desired brand. Be as
specific as possible “role play” the contact that you have with stakeholders. What will you need to say and
do, on an ongoing basis, to build your desired brand.
These five steps are essentials of good brand management. Work on them now and into the future to create
enduring value of your business.

2. It's Not What You Brand, But How You Position
Brand and position may be related but they do not live in the same house. Branding and positioning are not
always interchangeable. Consider branding as ubiquity where everyone knows you, and positioning as
value where everyone wants you. They work in tandem with one supporting the other but they are not
always the same.
You can have brand and no position. You can also have a failed position that erodes the brand.
In fact it is our contention that when a brand is failing or is in immediate and dramatic need of
resuscitation, focus on redefining the position first. Do not take on the entire brand itself. This is not only a
strategic and philosophical exercise but also a tactical and execution issue. How a company goes about
resurrecting its troubled brand image provides a vital clue as to its prospects. How it is said is just as
important as what is said.
A case in point is Worldcom. When Michael Capellas left Hewlett-Packard in November to become CEO
at WorldCom, he brought the promise of a fresh start for the beleaguered telecommunications company.
In an effort to communicate that changes were afoot, the company took out full-page ads in the Wall Street
Journal, a bold first step in an advertising-based, public relations offensive designed to reinvigorate the
brand essentially based on restoring credibility with customers, partners and the financial community.
The ad detailed changes in management and policy, highlighting the hiring of Capellas, as well as touting
the company's financial stability, despite concerns to the contrary and the fact it is in Chapter 11
(apparently a minor issue and temporary state of being). The ad also referred to the company's quality of
service and customer commitment. The ads in essence try and convince readers that it will not be business
as usual and that credibility has been restored because of Capellas, whose reputation here-to-fore is
believable if not stellar.
In other words, case closed. Wrong.
The use of advertising, a one-way, communications platform, rather than laying the groundwork for
restoring viability via a public relations campaign, using Capellas as the point man, highlights a flaw in
WorldCom's external out-bound communications strategy.
And this decision gets to the heart of the difference between branding-here represented by the ad--and
positioning strategies. Certainly, the two are not at odds with each other. If handled correctly, they are in
fact complementary in the most fundamental way.
If Capellas took the lead and met with financial analysts and the media and indeed even took part of "Town
Hall" style meetings with WorldCom customers or even interested members of the public who might be
considered prospects, he would be positioning his new company in the best possible way.
WorldCom's fall from grace and subsequent Chapter 11 filing has been one of the most dramatic and talked
about events in this mean season of corporate scandals. Ads in the Wall Street Journal will not remove the
stain of current and former WorldCom executives now on the hot seat.
That's why it's so important for the man who represents the new face of WorldCom to go out on the road
and explain what went wrong, what he intends to do about it and how he intends to make these changes
happen.

3. It's impossible to overstate the value of Capellas involved in a frank give-and-take with the outside world.
For one thing, he could directly address any lingering doubts some might have about him being a job
hopper with itchy feet, an executive who moves on before the task is truly finished.
After this painstaking-and frankly stressful positioning exercise has been given a chance to work---a
carefully designed advertising campaign will serve to solidly reinforce the message of the new WorldCom,
a WorldCom that can be trusted.
Ad campaigns undertaken before proper positioning is instituted and is given a chance to work have as
much chance of having a real impact as grass growing in asphalt.
As well intentioned as it might be, advertising--especially in this context-is seen as not only a self-serving,
one-way form of communication, but it is an example of risk avoidance. And this risk avoidance comes at
the very time that a company's chief executive should be actively seeking risk-charged encounters in public
forums where he has the opportunity to answer very tough questions.
Whether it's in business, politics or any other field of endeavor, when a person or a company is in major
trouble, it is suicidal to take a comfort first, completely controlled approach to communication.
Positioning, especially when implementation calls for face-to-face contact with a suspicious and angry
public, may be an uncomfortable exercise but it is a vital one.
Sometimes it is not what you say, but how you say it.