Brand strategy

Task 1: Brand strategy

Before building a brand you should create a brand identity and coordinate across organizational Units, media and markets. The Goal of a brand strategy is that someone is in Charge of the brand and an identity gets created. Firms, which are good in building brands have normally a strong brand - building culture with clearly defined values, norms and symbols. The top Management should Support the brand through visibly Actions through the whole organization.
By building brands you should be Aware of:

• Pressure to compete on Price
• profileration of competitors
• fragmenting markets and media
• complex brand strategies and relationships
• bias toward strategies
• bias against Innovation
• pressure to invest elsewhere

Accoring to Aaker making and Managing brands could be really difficult. Aaker mentioned a example with Coca Cola: There is Coke classic, coke Zero, coke light, coke Vanille, coke cherry and so on. Coke is a product brand and at sporting Events a Sponsoring brand. This is a huge complexity. The brand should understand his role in which he is involved.


Task 2: Brand hierarchies, Brand architecture, Brand Portfolio

According to Aaker brands fall into a hierarchy and every brand Level has his own System and strategy.

Corporate Brand: (e.g. General Motor): which identifies and represents the Company behind the brand

Rage brand: (e.g. Chevrolet): brand ranges over several products

Product line brand: (e.g. Chevrolet Lumina) brands associated with the organization´s specific products

Subbrand: (e.g. Chevrolet Lumina Sports Coupe) Basic product brands can be refined through subbranding

Every brand has his own identy. The Task is it to put those identies togehter to form a whole corporate brand.  Every brand has a own role in the System. These roles are:

Driver role: drives the purchase decision, it represents what the customer primarly expect to receive from the brand. Customers buy the value Proposition.

Endorser role: this role provides Support and credibility to the Driver role brand.the endorser brand respresents the values, organization and culture of the brand.


Strategic brand: is important for the future perfomance of the corporation and the brand. It should fit in the future Vision of the Company to gain more market share

Silver bullets: is a subbrand or branded benefit which should Change or Support the brand Image of a parent brand. e.g. Ford tauraus to create a innovated Image

Source: David Aaker - Building strong brands