Brand Management Involves Subtle Adaptation Skills

When considering how to employ brand management with your company or brand, there are some important considerations to take into account. Are you offering people what they want? Do they have easy access to your services? Does your brand stand out among your competitors? Are you keeping up with the technology? All of these are important questions to ask when you are managing the effectiveness of your brand.

A brand, like anything else in the world, evolves subtly over time, and changes with the people. As the needs for more efficient technology, access online, and mobile implementation grow, so does your need to try new methods to get your brand out.

These issues, in turn, determine what you should do about your marketing plan, and how you should focus your efforts on future digital ad campaigns, and other aspects. There is no doubt that this subtle evolution and adaptation over time will result in your brand becoming something a bit different than it was in the past. But does this mean you have to change your brand itself? No! You are who you are as a business. Changing it now, in the middle of the game, would be counterproductive. What you need to do is to grow and expand in directions you haven't thought of before.

When considering how your brand should evolve and which direction you should go in the future, consider these important questions:

• Are you using multiple formats to advertise and promote your brand?
• Are you coordinating your efforts between direct mailings, landline ads, and digital marketing for your website?
• Is your brand logo, image, and presence on every mobile platform?
• Does your brand have "stage presence" which makes people sit up and take notice?
• Is your brand synonymous with your products and services?

Answering these questions will get you on the path to considering specifically how your brand should evolve and adapt to the new trends in the coming years. It truly is "survival of the fittest," where the best brands stand out among the changes. Good brand management is always adaptable and subject to change. The key is to stick to your ideas and the concepts that make your unique business what it is, without sacrificing your principles or central concepts, while being open to new ways to reach out to an ever changing world full of new surprises.

Kevin Lane Keller discusses specific strategies in this video about Brand Management. He discusses how to create "points of difference" and "points of parity." The points of difference, he explains, are ways in which you distinguish yourself from your competitors in some unique way which creates originality for your brand in the mind of consumers.

Points of parity are how you "break even" with your competitors, in the minds of customers. Both of these points are important. It is not a bad thing to be compared to other giants in your industry or niche area which came before, whether in competition with them or not, while also being unique and original.

These parallels people will draw between you and famous brands may help you, while the difference will set you apart from others.

Watch this video as Keller explains how to "capture your brand" in 3-5 words and offers suggestions in marketing your brand and adapting to the world and the market around you as things change and evolve.

This video is an hour long exploration in the building of a brand from the ground up and explores the various aspects involved in creating a brand and keeping public loyalty from the beginning of a brand to its climb to fame.

Several well-known marketing and branding professionals speak in this conference, including one of the leading marketers of Coca-Cola™, who shares his insight in order to help those of us who are building a brand from the ground up.

This is an important video because it illustrates how much a brand much change and adapt over time, as things around you change. Branding is not only about creating a company, but about adaptation and change. This video serves to remind us all who are in the process of building a brand that we must keep focused on our brand and our vision, while at the same time, keeping up with the societal trends and changes, so that we can successfully adapt our brand to a changing world.

In this video, famous rapper, M.C. Hammer talks to the Stanford School of Business about the significance of using social media in branding to take your brand to higher levels. He also attended an entrepreneurial conference in Atlanta, and brings some of the knowledge he learned from that event as well to this lecture.

He speaks to "a culture of YOU," meaning that a brand focuses on you as the CEO, such as musicians do when they develop a brand around themselves.

CEO's must do the same in essence, he argues, because you are selling yourself as well as your image and products.

© 2014 Deborah L. Killion

Deb Killion is a well-known blogger and media content producer. All of her work including blog entries and posts are protected by copyright law. None of her work may be copied or reproduced in whole or in part without express written permission.