Brand Management

The new professor for brand management is an amazing guy. He had these insights to offer into human behaviour that impact the role of  a brand manager.

Watsonian First It is next to imposssible to dislodge the first experiences that you have in life. Our food habits are formed in our childhood, and are therefore difficult to dislodge. Similarly psychologists tells us that the basic nature of  a child that is formed in the initial years remains the same throughout the life, and is thus difficult to change. From the perspective of marketing , the brands that are the first to come out with a product are difficult to forget, so much so that their names that are proper nouns become a verb. Example, Xerox it, teflon coated. We all know that xerox is the name of a company and Teflon is a product from Du Pont. Innovation is the way to go to gain the first mover advantage.

RAM Problems Human mind has RAM problems, and is therefore an inadequate container.There are about 38 soap  brands with an advertising budget of more than 5 Cr, but on an average  a person is about to recall just 7-8 in an instant.Just as an inadequate container requires more frequent fillings, similarly for top of the mind brand recall, a Brand manager needs to take action that bombard the consumer with the image/symbols of the brand.Remember that all parts of the marketing mix, namely Product, Price , Place and Promotion communicate to the consumer. The most expensive being Promotion, less of it would be required if the other three are in order. Some of the companies solely survive on the strength of their product quality that they just do not have to advertise much. example Philips, IFB,Sony etc.