brand management involves more scope than brand strategy analysis, and brand strategy belongs to brand management, and brand strategy is only based on brand strategy. Relatively speaking, brand management is easier to write. You can refer to the following connotation of brand management and brand strategy brand management. What is a brand? According to Ogilvy's definition, brand is a complicated symbol. It is the intangible general name of brand attribute, name, packaging, price, history, reputation and advertising methods. Brand is also the impression of consumers on their users, which is defined by their own experience. Products are made by factories. A brand is what consumers buy. Products can be imitated by competitors, but brands are unique, and products are easily out of date quickly, but successful brands can last forever, and the value of brands will affect enterprises for a long time. For many small and medium-sized enterprises, the connotation of brand reflects corporate culture to a certain extent. Therefore, for this type of enterprises, brand is not only a sharp weapon for external sales (distributors and consumers), but also a moral force for internal management (employees and suppliers). In marketing, brand is the most primitive motive force to arouse consumers' repeated consumption and the soul in the consumer market. An entrepreneur once said, "Without a brand, an enterprise has no soul; Without a brand, enterprises will lose their vitality. " [Edit this paragraph] Why should we pay attention to brand management? That is to say, under the environment of WTO and driven by the Internet, it is becoming a fashion to pay attention to "brand management". What makes people pay attention to brand management? The first is that the audience and readers are decreasing with the change of the media; The growing development of new media; The emergence of small and medium-sized media; Popularization of cable TV network; The rapid development of Internet. Changes in consumers, increased consumer demand; Consumers become more picky; Consumers prefer to seek entertainment and excitement; Consumers have also learned to bargain and compare; The increase of consumers' demand level and the change of consumption habits. The change of market environment makes the competition more intense; The difference between products and quality is reduced; The evil consequences of vicious competition; The brand's strategy of seeking difference is challenged; The substitutability of products is enhanced; The impact of international brands. The change of the enterprise itself and the innovation of products are challenged; The mobility of talents has increased; The organizational structure faces challenges; Obstacles to corporate culture; The trouble of insufficient funds; Market fragmentation and instability, etc. Due to the above four obvious changes, in the future, it is difficult for products or services without brands to survive for a long time. Only successful brand management can have a sustainable growth enterprise and future glory. [Edit this paragraph] How to carry out successful brand management? Brand management is a complex and scientific process, and no link can be omitted. The following are four steps that successful brand management should follow: ▲ The first step: Draw the "essence" of the brand, that is, describe the rational factors of the brand. First of all, find out the tangible manpower, material resources and financial resources that can be outlined by facts and figures, and then describe what manpower, material resources and financial resources need to be added according to the goal to enrich the essence of the brand. This includes the information of consumer groups, the composition of employees, the relationship between investors and strategic partners, the structure of enterprises, the market situation, the competition pattern and so on. ▲ Step 2: Grasp the "core" of the brand, that is, describe the perceptual factors of the brand. Because brands, like people, have thoughts and feelings besides body and limbs, we must understand the cultural origin, social responsibility, psychological factors and emotional factors of consumers and take emotional factors into account when we understand the core of existing brands. According to the goal to be achieved, reposition the core of the brand and list the emotional factors that need to be added one by one. ▲ The third step: find the soul of the brand, that is, find the brand's unique strategy of seeking differences. Through the understanding and evaluation of the rational and perceptual factors of the brand in the first and second steps, the soul of the brand and its unique positioning and publicity information are sublimated. People like to eat McDonald's, not because it is junk food, but because it brings a sense of peace and happiness to children and adults. People like to go to Disneyland not because it is a simple amusement place, but because people can find their childhood dreams and fun there. Therefore, the brand is not the product and service itself, but the imagination and feeling it leaves people. The soul of the brand represents such feelings and feelings. ▲ The fourth step: brand cultivation, protection and long-term care. Brand formation is easy, but maintaining it is a very difficult process. Without a good brand care strategy, the brand can't grow. Many brands only spend a lot of money on advertising to increase customer resources, but because they don't know the scientific process of brand management, after gaining popularity, they no longer pay attention to the changes in customer needs and can't provide the promised first-class service. Disappointed customers have no choice but to choose a new brand, resulting in a short-lived brand effect. Therefore, the focus of brand management is brand maintenance. In the past, when people talked about brands, they often thought about the trademarks of products or enterprises. The real brand started from the reputation card to the emotional card. How to make products rise from trademarks to credibility and finally sublimate to feelings? [Edit this paragraph] Four key elements of brand management ▲ Establish excellent reputation because reputation is the foundation of brand. Brands without credibility can hardly compete. After WTO, the hot spot of many "foreign" brands competing with local brands in China is reputation. As a result of the standardized management and operation system formed by "foreign" brands in the world for many years, consumers' affirmation of the credibility of their brands far exceeds that of local brands. The starting point for local enterprises to compete with multinational brands is to establish credibility, not by hype, but by improving management level, quality control ability, customer satisfaction mechanism and team quality. China enterprises must immediately start to study the changes in customer needs and constantly innovate products or services with personalized functions that can meet their different needs. The future brand competition will depend on speed to decide the outcome. Only brands that know the changes in the market and customers' consumption habits at the first time can adjust their strategies to adapt to the changing environment at the fastest speed and finally occupy the market. ▲ Strive for extensive support. Without the full support of all levels in the enterprise value chain, the brand is not easy to maintain. In addition to customer support, support from the government, media, experts, authorities and distributors is equally important. Sometimes, we need the support of celebrities and use their effects to increase the credibility of our brand. ▲ Establishing intimate relationships Due to the dynamic changes in customer needs and the increasing opportunities for obtaining information, it has become the only way to provide personalized and diversified services to customers. Only those brands that have established close long-term relationships with customers will be the final winners. Therefore, domestic and foreign brands now spare no effort to find ways to establish direct contact with customers and maintain customer loyalty. ▲ Increase the opportunities for personal experience. The buying habits of customers have undergone tremendous changes. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to decide to buy only by the information in the advertisement. Consumers need to try or experience before buying before deciding whether to buy. Therefore, the challenge of brand maintenance and promotion becomes how to make customers fully understand the quality and function of products or services in the most convenient environment without spending too much time and energy. This kind of customer satisfaction experience can increase customers' trust in the brand and generate the desire to buy. For any brand, the index to measure the four elements of the brand can be tailored and become a special index. These indexes can be the baseline of brand evaluation and provide the basis for "tracking" the changes of brand image. Brand management index includes reputation index, relationship index, support index and personal experience index. [Edit this paragraph] The value rule of brand management ▲ Optimal management The enterprise that follows this rule pursues optimized management and operation, which provides moderately good products and services and meets customers at the best price and the most convenient means. Such enterprises do not strive for market leadership by product invention or innovation or by establishing close relationship with customers. On the contrary, they win the market by low price and simple service. For example, Wal-Mart in the United States is a successful example of this kind of company. Wal-Mart is still constantly looking for new ways to reduce costs and provide customers with more comprehensive and simple services. The cooperation between Wal-Mart and yahoo will enable Wal-Mart to maintain its leading position in the global retail of consumer goods. ▲ Optimized products If an enterprise can concentrate on product research and development and continuously introduce a new generation of products, it may become a product market leader. Their commitment to customers is to constantly provide customers with the best products. Of course, it is not just a new product that can become a product leader, but new products or new functions should be available year after year to meet customers' new performance requirements. For example, Intel is the product market leader in the field of computer chips; Nike is the market leader of medium products in sports shoes. The competitive advantage of these product market leaders lies not in the price of their products, but in the practical effect of their products, that is, the "performance behavior" of their products. ▲ Close customer relationship Enterprises that follow this rule focus on how to provide the required services for specific customers instead of meeting the needs of the whole market. They don't pursue one-off transactions, but to establish long-term and stable business relationships with selective customers. Only when a long-term and stable relationship is established can we understand the unique needs of our customers and meet them. The belief of these enterprises is: we know what customers want, and we provide customers with all-round solutions and after-sales support to achieve their long-term goals. For example, Airborne Express is such a company that has become an industry leader by its close customer relationship. This enterprise starts with customers and provides customers with services that exceed their expectations, thus making Airborne Express a high-profile courier company in a short time. With China's entry into WTO, entrepreneurs don't have much time to think and hesitate. Whether entrepreneurs like it or not, enterprises in China are facing global competition, even at home, they are also facing competitors from all over the world. Therefore, the choice of brand management strategy and value law that can make enterprises stand out determines whether enterprises can achieve their goals and continue to grow in the post-WTO economic environment. The object of brand management is different from that of CIS. The object of brand management is brand assets, which is the market value or added value driven by the brand itself, and is a value beyond production, goods and all tangible assets. Brand management aims at enhancing the intangible assets and market value represented by the brand. Brand management is a process of accumulating, enriching and perfecting brand assets, which requires constant attention to consumers' preferences, judgments and choices of a brand. Brand management is more manifested as an outward-looking behavior that pays attention to market performance. Brand strategic brand is the crystallization of the psychological, physiological and comprehensive positive feelings and evaluations of the target consumers and the public about a specific thing. People and landscapes, artists, enterprises, products, trademarks and so on can all develop into brand counterparts. When we talk about brands in marketing, we refer to commercial brands in a narrow sense, that is, the crystallization of the public's comprehensive feelings and evaluation of a specific business person, including products, trademarks, entrepreneurs and enterprises. The so-called brand strategy is an enterprise management strategy that the company takes brand as its core competitiveness to obtain differential profits and values. Brand strategy is the product of competition in market economy. In recent years, some enterprises with advanced consciousness have used the sharp weapon of brand strategy one after another, gained competitive advantage and gradually developed and expanded. The essence of strategy is to mold the core expertise of enterprises, so as to ensure the long-term development of enterprises. In today's highly developed technology and rapid information dissemination, products, technologies and management know-how are easy to be imitated by opponents, and it is difficult to become core expertise. Once a brand is established, it is not only valuable but also unrepeatable, because the brand is a consumer cognition and a psychological feeling, which cannot be easily imitated. [Edit this paragraph] The content of brand strategy The so-called brand strategy includes six aspects: brand decision-making, brand mode selection, brand identification and definition, brand extension planning, brand management planning and brand vision establishment. Branding decision-making solves the problem of brand attributes. Whether to choose manufacturer brand or dealer brand, or whether to create a brand or join a brand, we should solve this problem before the brand is founded. Different brand management strategies indicate different paths and fates of enterprises, such as choosing the integration of production, supply and marketing of "IKEA" or taking the franchise trip of "McDonalds's". In short, different brands have their specific adaptability in different industries and enterprises at different stages. The choice of brand model solves the problem of brand structure. Whether to choose a comprehensive single brand or a diversified multi-brand, a joint brand or a main and sub-brand, although there is no good or bad brand model, it has certain industry applicability and timeliness. For example, when TOYOTA entered the high-end car market in the United States, it did not continue to use TOYOTA, but set up a completely new independent brand Lexus. The purpose of this is to avoid that Toyota will bring a low-grade impression to Lexus and make it a high-end car brand comparable to BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Brand identification defines the connotation of the brand, that is, the brand image that enterprises want consumers to identify with, which is the focus of brand strategy. It standardizes the brand's thoughts, behaviors, appearances and other internal and external meanings from three aspects: brand mind identity, behavior recognition and symbol recognition, including the core recognition centered on the brand's core value and the basic recognition composed of brand promise, brand personality and other elements. For example, in 2111, Hisense's brand strategic planning not only clarified the brand core value of Hisense's "innovation in science and technology, establishing the trust for a hundred years", but also put forward the brand concept of "innovation is life", determined to shape the brand image of "technology pioneer who challenges the peak of science and technology in the new century and is committed to improving people's living standards", and at the same time introduced a brand-new VI visual identification system. Through a series of marketing communication with the core value of the brand as the commander-in-chief, we have changed the vague and chaotic brand image in the past and become the leading "technology flow" brand in the home appliance industry with clear brand recognition. Brand extension planning is a clear definition of the future development field of the brand. It is clear in which fields and industries the future brand is suitable for development and extension, so as to maximize the brand value on the premise of reducing the risk of extension and avoiding brand dilution. For example, the unified use of "Haier" brand in Haier household appliances is a successful example of brand extension. Brand management planning is to protect brand building from the organizational structure and management mechanism, set up a vision for brand development on the basis of the above planning, and clarify the goals and objectives of each stage of brand development.