Question

In her book, What Great Brands Do, Denise Yohn describes seven brand building principles that power great brands.

In a paper no longer than 8 pages describe how each principle applies to a company where you have worked OR (if you are not employed) a company you wish to work for in the future. Talk about how the company has used the principles (if that is true) and how they can/should use (or not use) the principles in the future. It’s alright to say they haven’t used the principle and you don’t think they need to use it going forward, but you need to explain your reasoning for stating that. You need to be very specific as to what you are suggesting. Saying “they need to carry out this principle by increasing their advertising” is not sufficient. You need to talk specifically about what type of advertising and why and what the message should be to accomplish the objective.

The paper should be a MS Word document 5-8 double-spaced pages

Answer 1

If you think branding is a logo or an advertising campaign, think again. You may think you don’t “do” branding, but then you will miss learning some incredibly important business ideas—because corporate branding means more, and all of us have a personal brand. Denise, when most people think of branding, they think of a television commercial, an internet ad or a new logo. It’s ironic to me that branding itself is not branded properly. Your book completely redefines what great branding is.  

Branding actually refers to the practice of putting a symbol on a thing – ranchers used to brand their cattle with a unique mark to indicate their ownership. The practice was then adopted by companies selling products. They developed logos to put on their products to distinguish them and to signal which companies made them. Over time these symbols became cues of product quality and meaning – people would assume a product from a particular company had a level of quality consistent with the company’s past or other products, and they would attribute some meaning to it when they associated the logo with it.   Marketers worked hard to develop compelling logos and strong positive associations with them.