Evolution Of Brand And Brand Personality Marketing Essay

Brand management is a very intriguing field. It requires a correct and accurate understanding of consumer behaviour. Any brand manager should be able to understand how his customer would react to different stimuli and based on that should also be able to decide how to develop and position his brand. It is a dynamic and challenging task.

One of the most important tasks for a brand manager is to develop a proper brand identity of the brand and manage it along with time. Brand identity refers to the attributes through which customer differentiates the brand and associates with the brand. Secondary studies show that Brands are perceived as a product, person, organisation and symbol. Thus, a brand manager should take care of all these things while constituting the brand map.

Just like a person, even brands and product have a life cycle. A brand’s lifecycle goes through 3 periods throughout its life time- introduction, growth, maturity. In this report, lifecycle of Lux has been analyzed. It has dominated the Indian soap industry since pre-independence days. Lux as a brand has matured in Indian market. It enjoys high brand salience and as a product line soaps have also matured and going for a decline.

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Lux has always tried to promote itself as an aspirational product. Over the year most of the top and the most beautiful actresses have endorsed Lux. So much that being the brand ambassador of Lux is a sure shot signature of stardom. Lux started in 1928 was priced higher than its biggest competitor Lifebuoy. It used Leela Chitnis as its brand ambassador. It started gaining market share rapidly and over the years established itself well in the Indian market. Over the recent years, it has seen a decrease in its market share. The primary reason for this is increase in competition with a large number players entering the market.

An online survey helped us to gauge the brand personality of Lux. According to the Aaker’s brand personality model, there are 5 attributes for any Brand Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness. On basis of this survey, it was found that 4 out of these 5 factors are related to Lux. Except sincerity all the others had influence on personality of Lux. The value of ruggedness was low which showed it was a feminine brand while value of Excitement, competence and sophistication was above average showing that lux is considered sophisticated, and a competitive product.

The main objective of the study is to apply the models learnt in class to the brands that are existing in market since long time. So, we will be analysing the history of lux from 1920 till date. Study will cover the process of how lux has evolved from a product launched for laundry to a beauty soap.

Various factors that affect the brand personality in soap industry will be analysed. On the basis of these factors a primary research will be conducted so as to find brand personality of lux and compare it across different age groups.

Justification of the Study:

What is a brand?

A brand is made up of all these things- it has value , it has a vision , it has a personality , it has attributes associated with itself , it has benefits-some tangible some intangible and it has its own positioning. Brands are like names of the people. Each person has a separate name and as u get to know the person better you associate certain characteristics with that name for ex. Mark is a smart guy or John is reliable. Similarly with brands as u get to know and connect with them you start to assign them characteristics like a person.

Branding is a caused due to an interaction of promotion , experience and conversation. Branding is like the art of story telling. Not everyone can tell a good story . Its tough to have the listeners attention and keep him intrigued.Also some companies keep on changing the storyline and even that does not help.

A Brand goes beyondd the physical product . it also consists of the emotional connect which a consumer/costomer has to the product.The aim of branding is to hange the buyer into a partner so that he feels connected with the product .

Brand relationship consists of sharing of the mind, resources, felling of oneself with the brand. A consumer should willingly share his resources; he should be connected with the brand and should think of him and the brand as one. That is the measure of a successful branding.

As seen in the figure a brand performs multiple functions. It gives an identity to the product. It instils a brand locality and brings in name awareness. There are perceived quality with a brand and certain associations with it. The provide value to the customer by enhancing their interpretation /processing of information and increasing their confidence in their decision making skill and satisfaction of use. They provide value to the firm by bringing in a competitive advantage of brand loyalty, enhancing the effectiveness of the marketing programs etc.

So, we can say that the ultimate aim of branding is to connect with the users. It is to create a brand image with the user wherein the brand gets a personality. The user perceives the brand’s persona and gives it attributes like that of a person. These could be physical like nationality, quality etc and/or emotional for ex Peter England “The honest shirt”.

It is a really interesting to note that how these brand personality is developed and what attributes the customer gives to these brands. The best example of brand personification is the campaign by Apple in which the users of both PC and Mac are shown and compared. While the Mac user is shown as friendly cool and laidback, the PC user is a nerd and all stiff.

The customer starts perceiving the qualities of these personas as those of the brand. Thus we can see that brand can also be represented in a form of human being which has the characters associated with the brand and successful branding involves getting the picture of that persona clear in the mind of the customer and getting him connect to that persona at an emotional or inspirational level.

It was only recently when its positioning was changed a bit, but still more or less Lux has been known as a ‘beauty soap’.

Brand Personality of Lux

According to Aaker’s 5 traits of brand personality, survey was carried out to find out the brand personality of Lux. On the basis of survey it was found that:

All traits of personality are not valid for each and every brand. Some brands might show less than 5 traits

For Lux, only 4 traits are valid, which was found by doing the factor analysis. The four traits of Lux are Competence, Excitement, Ruggedness, and Sophistication.

People think that Lux is very low on Ruggedness which goes well with its positioning where it positions itself as a soft brand, a beauty soap basically for women, indicating soft skin

Another observation was that people rate Lux above average on sophistication as well as competence. Lux has been regularly updating its advertisements coming up with new ideas, changing the models in its advertisements which basically show that it is competent and has been adapting itself to changing consumer preferences. While talking about sophistication, people have this perception as Lux has been regularly working with top actresses who basically give a look of a sophisticated lifestyle.

Lux was rated average on the final factore i.e. Excitement. The reason for this could be its subtle advertisements which are not much concentrated on excitement.

All this basically helps us analyse brand personality of Lux in the minds of the people. As per our analysis, it seems same as what company wants to portray.

Conclusions

Lux as a brand has met with immense success in India. It has a lot of Brand Salience and has understood the psyche of the Indian customers really well. On one hand it has used its global strategy well but on the other hand it has customised it according to the local traditions and mentality.

It started out its journey with a differentiation based on price and utilised the concept of brand ambassador very well, over the years being a lux ambassador was equivalent to being a superstar in India.

HUL has evolved lux in a very effective manner over the year and has got its brand personality perfectly thus we see that the qualities that define Lux are the qualities which define its ambassadors. All these has helped Lux Grow and Sustain at a time when a lot of stalwarts of its era like Dalda , HMT started has lost relevance or lost in the background.

A lot can be learnt from the branding strategy and marketing campaign of Lux over the years.

Lux over the years has been a 20-25 successful sophisticated female who is beautiful and radiates oomph and has panache just like its brand ambassadors.

Implications

Brands need to evolve with time and society. A typical customer changes over time and place. A Brand manager needs to be aware of the changes which the society is undergoing and also the history of his brand. All his activity must be in accordance to the frame of reference. He must take care of the brand life cycle and the perception which his customer has in regards to his brand. He must choose his ambassador in accordance to the kind of personality he wants his brand to have. Having the same type of brand ambassadors over the years builds the brand identity in a manner similar to that of the ambassadors.

A brand manager must spend more on branding at two occasions- the introductory phase and the maturity phase where the market starts to saturate and there is a need to reiterate or relook at the brand image and positioning.

Thirdly a brand personality should be such that it attracts the attention of its customer and also in accordance to the positioning of the brand .also when a repositioning is done that should be in accordance to the Brand personality. If there is no fit between these two then the brand is bound to fail.

Learning from the project

As a group we learnt the application of the concept of brand identity. The formation of the brand identity prism was another important learning for the group.

We learnt how over a long period of time a brand evolves and what are the changes that the brand and the society can undergo? We learnt the how there is a continuity in change and this is what helps the brand to survive.

Lux as a brand was able to achieve that, although it went through a lot of changes there was logic and reason behind each change and it was always along the point of parity. This is how the brand should change slowly and continuously. Only by evolving can a brand survive.

The brand ambassador also plays an important role in the formation of the brand identity of any brand. He/she is the first human interface for most customers.

We learnt the concept of phases of brand evolution i.e. that of introductory, growth and maturity phase and how the marketing plan of a brand should change in each stage

We also learnt about the brand life cycle and the 5 phases in it and how the brand life cycle corresponds to the brand evolution.

Limitations

Main Limitation of the study is the reach of the online survey which was floated in different colleges. The data collected was only for age group 22-26. This age group can be increased and perception of different age groups can be compared.

Another Limitation is the factors that have been considered. These facets can be further divided into 2-3 traits and on the basis of this a more in-depth analysis.

A sample size of just 102 might not be sufficient enough to reflect the perception of the population. So, there might be a difference in results from the population.

Also, due to time constraints, secondary research that has been carried out might not be enough in-depth so as to get relevant information about Lux and its strategies.

Further Research Areas

On the basis of Brand evolution cycle that has been studied in the research, marketing strategy for Lux can be formed during the next stages of its lifecycle.

This brand personality model can be formed with more thorough analysis. The 16 facets that we have used can be further divided and analysis can be carried out to have a better factor analysis.

This brand personality model formed using the research can be compared with the way company wants it brand to be perceived. On the basis of this, company can make conceptualize its further marketing campaigns.

Similar research can be carried out for people of different age groups and hence, perception of different age groups can be seen for the brand and accordingly, we can concentrate on a particular target market.