By Nitasha Kapila:
Brands are all about how consumers position themselves. Powerful brands succeed by establishing a relationship and a connection with their costumers. To establish that connection – to earn a place in their world – a brand must know its customers and see how the costumer values that brand. We can define brand in simple language as “a promise to the customer, a mirror in which the customer sees a reflection of him or herself and identifies with or rejects the promise he or she sees.” Likewise a brand is also a reflection of your organization. Your brand serves to define your organization and influences every aspect of your opinion right down to corporate culture. The power of your brand has far-reaching impact on stock valuation, on marketing costs and even on employee retention rates.
Brand management in layman language can be defined as a process of managing marketing techniques for a particular brand or a product; it is used to increase product’s value in the market. Branding is the foundation of marketing and is inseparable from business strategy. It is therefore more than fixing a label on a fancy product.
Nowadays a corporation, law firm, university, museum, hospital, celebrity and even you in your career are considered to be a brand. As such a brand is a combination of attributes communicated through a name or a symbol that influences a thought-process in the mind of an audience and creates value. In today’s era, people are so conscious and aware about brands that brand management has become a very becoming career option nowadays. Moreover we are also influenced by the Western world and their style that we are getting more aware about brands and logos. Brand management is an organizational framework that systematically manages customer-centric processes. It aims at gathering intelligence, allocating resources, and consistently delivering the brand promise over time at each contact-point with the customer.
A brand manager carries a ‘line management’, which is related to profit and loss of a brand. A brand manager should adhere to the principles of brand management. With the exception of the top levels of corporate managers, employees forming the brand team are the only workers in the firm who are involved in every part of the firm’s business related to the brand in question. Brand managers co-ordinate efforts and responsibilities with workers who carry out specific functions related to production, sales, advertising, R&D, promotion, marketing research, finance, etc. In a consumer goods firm most beginners start as brand assistants, who undergo training program.
Closely linked to advertising in many ways, careers in brand management can vary depending on where a brand is in its market. If a brand is a leader, often the role is more about being a branding custodian, and is all about maintaining the portfolio of products. New brand management is arguably the most exciting, especially if it’s in a new market. This type of management often requires a lot of research, passion, energy and even a natural instinct if you know or have identified the market. Brand management is all about ownership and as a brand manager you end up being very protective of your brand.
Nowadays, online brand management has also widened its area in the market. Therefore, brand management is a great career option for the present generation. Keeping in view of its popularity, many institutions in India are conducting courses in brand management.  To be precise the course are generally offered at the post-graduate level (MBA). The main purpose of the course is to teach the value of a brand manager, principles of brand management etc. For example, Coca-Cola has become the cliché of brand management.