Branded innovations

Branded innovations can potentially help advance a business in three
distinctive ways.

▪ They can create or improve the offering, making it more differentiated
and more attractive. In this context, the innovation can be represented by
a branded or sub-branded product or by a branded feature, ingredient, or
service.

▪ They can create a new subcategory to change what customers are buying.
The branding challenge is to manage perceptions of the subcategory and
to influence which brands are relevant to it.

▪ They can affect perceptions of the organization or corporate brand with
respect to innovativeness in order to make it respected, to give it energy,
and/or to make its new product offerings more credible.

In each of these roles, the ability of the innovation to achieve its potential
impact will be enhanced if it is branded, assuming that the innovation merits
branding and that the brand strategy is well conceived and executed.

David Aaker
Innovation: Brand It or Lose It
CALIFORNIA MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOL. 50,NO. 1 FALL 2007 9

Neglect of Long Term Health of Brands

If Brands Are Built over Years, Why Are They Managed over Quarters?
By: Lodish, Leonard M.; Mela, Carl F..
Harvard Business Review,
Jul/Aug 2007, Vol. 85 Issue 7/8, p104-112,



Our research into the role of marketing strategy in brand performance indicates that companies are paying too much attention to short-term data and not enough to the long-term health of their brands. They routinely overinvest in price promotions and underinvest in advertising, new- product development, and new forms of distribution.




Leonard M. Lodish (lodish@wharton.upenn.edu) is the Samuel R.
Harrell Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School,
in Philadelphia, and the vice dean at Wharton West, in San Francisco.
Carl F. Mela (mela@duke.edu) is a professor of marketing at the
Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, in Durham, North
Carolina.

Leadership Brand

BUILDING A LEADERSHIP BRAND. (cover story)
By: Ulrich, Dave; Smallwood, Norm.
Harvard Business Review,
July/August 2007, Vol. 85 Issue 7/8, p92-100



A product’s brand connects a company’s output and reputation with customers’ needs and investors’ hopes.

A leadership brand is based on marketplace expectations for the behavior of a company’s representatives.


Dave Ulrich (dou@umich.edu) and Norm Smallwood (nsmallwood@rbl.net) are partners and cofounders of the RBL Group, a leadership development and human resource education consultancy, in Provo, Utah.

Ulrich is also a professor of business administration at the University
of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, in Ann Arbor.

They are the coauthors of Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to
Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, forthcoming from Harvard Business School Press in September 2007.

Brand reinforcement and revitalization strategies

Managing brands for the long run: Brand reinforcement and revitalization strategies
Kevin Lane Keller.
California Management Review.
Spring 1999. Vol. 41, Iss. 3; pg. 102, 23 pgs


Reinforcing brands involves ensuring innovation in product design, manufacturing and merchandising and ensuring relevance in user and usage imagery.

Revitalizing a brand, on the other hand, requires either that lost sources of brand equity are recaptured or that new sources of brand equity are identified and established.

Shifts in consumer behavior, competitive strategies, government regulations, and other aspects of the marketing environment can profoundly affect the fortunes of a brand.

Delivering the Brand Promise Through Employees

Strong brands are built on the actions of employees over time. Yet many compelling ad campaigns are undercut and corporate brands are tarnished when a customer encounters a surly employee or is trapped in the voice-mail maze of “customer service.”

Leading companies fully understand the value of continually engaging employees as their “brand ambassadors.” They can spot the points where employees’ behavior has the most impact on perceptions of the brand, and they can identify the organizational barriers that prevent employees from fully supporting the brand. Most importantly, they have developed processes that enable employees to “deliver the brand” effectively and consistently.

This article describes effective approaches for aligning employee behavior in the service of brands.

Visit (for the full article)
http://www.mmc.com/knowledgecenter/viewpoint/archive/lebard2006.php