Brand consultant
1. What does a brand consultant do? Brand consultant, also known as brand management consultant, is a person who provides professional consulting services for enterprises in brand building, brand image building, brand asset accumulation, brand extension, brand upgrading and demotion.
Professional brand consultants are often both brand theory researchers (academics) and brand theory practitioners (doers); There are both rich theoretical accumulation and detailed implementation cases; We should not only master the traditional marketing theory, but also always pay attention to the foreword marketing thinking. We are professionals who combine theory with practice. Although there are many domestic brands, there are few truly powerful brand consultants.
Second, the past, present and future of the role of brand consultant was born soon. In the early days, because brands often need advertisements to develop, many people confuse brands with advertisements, and brand planning consultants often confuse them with advertising planning. However, with the increasingly clear division of labor, brand consultants gradually ushered in its bright moment. Today, there are still advertising planners engaged in brand planning consulting, which is also a cross-border or transformation. After all, brand is the core, and advertising is only one of the means to realize brand power. In the future development, I believe there will still be many people crossing the border to the brand industry. They may have been engaged in advertising, public relations, marketing, activities and even variety shows. It is their continuous participation and transformation that the brand industry will usher in more development paths and greater development space.
Third, the value of brand consultants What is the greatest value of brand consultants? As we all know, brand is a very important intangible asset, but few professionals are proficient in the operation of brand assets, and more people often transform from marketing, advertising and even public relations to brand posts. Although this situation is conducive to the diversified development of the brand industry, but also because of the lack of historical accumulation, it directly affects the depth and breadth of brand owners' understanding of brand theory, and indirectly affects the future success or failure of enterprises. A good brand consultant can point out a clear development path for the brand according to the development stage, core advantages and business opportunities of the enterprise and even the industry, and make a clear development plan outline to help the enterprise embark on the right path as soon as possible.
Four, the five major services of brand consultants 1, brand building
Also known as branding, this is mainly aimed at start-up brands. In brand building, it is mainly divided into two aspects: one is strategic positioning, which directly determines the life and death of the brand; The other is the construction of brand image, which is very similar to what we usually call "people-oriented". Brands also have "people-oriented", which is brand image, and its high level is brand personality. The quality of brand image directly affects people's likes and dislikes of enterprises, which is related to the level of premium ability of enterprises. Therefore, since CIS was introduced into China in 1980s, there has been a wave of image-building. In brand building, brand name, slogan, color, symbol, mission, vision, story and other elements are very important.
2. Brand management
With the continuous development of enterprises, there are more and more contact points with customers and media. If there is no complete management system to effectively control these nodes, the brand feelings that consumers come into contact with may not only be quite different from those imagined by enterprises, but also be chaotic. Good brand management should be able to consistently make a sound, so that customers can hear, see and touch the same set of signals in various scenes and at various time points. In other words, 100 consumers have only one cognition of the same brand; And poor brand management is just the opposite. They either can't stick to one voice to spread, or spread different information in different scenes, which eventually leads to fragmentation of brand image and it is difficult to form cumulative effects. From this perspective, one of the main tasks of brand consultants is to help enterprises manage customers' mental cognition. Guo, founder of PR House brand management consulting company, said.
The purpose of brand management is to focus on war and destruction. It is to concentrate all the energy of the enterprise on a fixed point, concentrate all the energy of all channels on one point, and persistently attack this point. Only in this way can enterprises gain a firm foothold in the fierce competition. Look at the development of Huawei and you will know the power of concentration. Of course, if we look back at the blind diversification of Stone and Chunlan in those years, we will have another feeling. In the process of brand management, the core point is strategic choice. Enterprises should understand the existence value of their own brands and don't blindly seize all the selling points. Many times, the more selling points you promote, the less you sell; The fewer selling points you spread, the more you may sell. Marlboro has been insisting on a core selling point for decades. The selling point of Rejoice in many countries around the world is suppleness. The brilliant achievements of these big brands are closely related to their excellent brand management capabilities.
3. Build a brand strategy framework.
When enterprises gradually develop into large and medium-sized groups with diversified operations, brand consultants should promptly consider building an overall brand strategy framework for enterprises. At this time, either sub-brands, sub-brands, endorsement brands and joint brands are adopted, or various brand strategies are comprehensively used, and finally, multiple brands are used to seize multiple mental anchors of consumers and successfully earn maximum profits. The construction of brand structure is a strategic project, which requires not only the participation of brand consultants, but also the personal participation of the boss. Because whether the structure is reasonable is not only related to short-term benefits, but also related to the development layout in the next few years, more than ten years or even decades.
For example, we saw that Haier not only launched a high-end casarte, but also launched a customized commander, and also launched a special model card for TV. In addition, it acquired General Electric, Fisher & Paykel and its own three-winged bird, gooday and so on. From the perspective of brand operation, it should be a model in China. Another case is Procter & Gamble. Many sub-brands launched by P&G, such as Head & Shoulders, Rejoice, Pan Ting, clairol, Gillette, Bilang and Tide, all guard P&G like stars. What is particularly commendable is that the brand manager system initiated by Procter & Gamble has created a brand-new road for brand owners.
On the other hand, we can also see that some companies have not established a good brand structure, resulting in a large number of overlapping brand positioning within the group. In addition, the brand is responsible for its own profits and losses, encroaching on the market and profits, and ultimately damaging the strength of the whole group.
4, brand upgrade and downgrade
With the upgrading of consumption, consumers' needs are not limited to basic functional interests, and more and more consumers begin to pay attention to social currency, emotional identity, value transmission and other needs. Therefore, brand consultants need to focus on these new needs and combine their own advantages to constantly create an image that keeps pace with the times. It should be pointed out that consumption is not only an upgrade, but also a downgrade, but this downgrade is not necessarily a quality reduction in the usual sense. For example, we can often see some famous luxury goods downgraded from luxury goods to high-end products, and of course some brands are downgraded from high-end areas to low-end areas, which is a typical brand downgrade. Guo, founder of PR House brand management consulting company, pointed out that this demotion is not shameful. Many times, the survival of enterprises is the first, and it is not necessarily the best policy to stick to the original position without knowing how to change it. The "downgrade" characterized by giving up product quality is not a real brand downgrade, but a hooligan. )
5. Brand revival
Although many time-honored brands bear the aura of "time-honored brands", under the new consumption trend, this halo effect has been greatly worse than before, and sometimes even counterproductive. How to rejuvenate old brands? How to make the brand younger? This is a major problem for brand consultants. Brand rejuvenation can never be accomplished by changing the colors and patterns on product packaging, nor can it be accomplished by changing the logo (think about how many well-known enterprises have changed the logo because of brand rejuvenation? )。 Brand rejuvenation is a systematic project, which needs to promote the ideological change of the whole chain of products, production, research and development, channels and so on based on the new consumption trend.
Brand consultant
Five, brand consultant 1 six workflow, directional research, through which you can understand the brand, competing products and their industries in the minds of consumers, know the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each participant, know the past, present and future of the industry, find out the problems of the target brand, and determine the core positioning and development strategy of the brand.
2, around the brand core positioning, corporate mission and vision, determine the internal culture of the enterprise. Many people think that the brand is just TOC or TOB, but they don't know that the brand is intrinsic first. Internal brand building and external brand building complement each other. Without internal strategic choice, there will be no external precise psychological positioning. Without a United front at home, it is difficult to have coordinated operations abroad.
3. Around the core positioning of the brand, the overall image, tonality and core value system of the brand are established through various materials and channels.
4, around the core advantages of enterprises, combined with related resources, through advertising, public relations, marketing, sponsorship, activities and other means. Design the best integrated marketing communication scheme to help enterprises gain popularity, credibility and reputation quickly, gather all channels in one selling point and start a brand war quickly.
5. Continue to explore and expand around the core positioning, according to the changes in consumer demand and the core advantages of enterprises, constantly promote the basic scientific research and applied research of enterprises and the reform of enterprise system, and shape this logic into enterprise system, integrate it into enterprise culture, and promote the sustainable development of enterprises with the power of culture.
6. Re-examine the whole brand consulting scheme, complete the report writing and submission, sum up the experience and lessons, and provide forward-looking suggestions for the next strategic planning.