1. Under the umbrella of Brand Report Card Mirza Haider Ali 8971 2. Pre Script Clarification The report deals with the Brand ‘Gul Ahmed’, not the company ‘Gul-Ahmed textile Mills’. Rather than passing the report through all the formalities of Letter of authorization, transmittal and acknowledgment. I, being the responsible of the report, is exempting these formalities and giving the report a new way to look, via analysis and conclusion by auditing the brand. Report strategy The report has very firm roots from the Brand Report Card by Kevin Lane Keller. The report strategy is to put the selected brand in the funnel of Brand report card and rate the brand in all ten perspectives as described in the article comparing every aspect in parallel with competitor Brand (AlKaram) and finally graphing and evaluating the results. Claims The report is solely based on the understanding throughout the session (Brand Management by Mz. Farheen Zehra), analysis of Brand by venturing the Report card and personal perspective about it. Claim to have each and every word of mine. 3. Brand Symbol Brand Products If we say Gul Ahmed the Parent brand; it used to have the following Sub -Brand of the brand (because Gul Ahmed is offering different categories under the same brands but we cannot say it as a brand extension because they don’t have their individual brand names and are known with the parent name i.e, Gul Ahmed’s XXX thing.) The sub brands are: Bed linen Curtains Fabric Yarn Also another point is that we cannot say it brand extension because after all Gul Ahmed is selling “fabric (kapra)”; either in the form of bed sheets, lawn or curtains. For category extension it needs to have some other product to be offered under same brand name. 4. Gul Ahmed’s Latest Summer Magazine 5. A short story Ali is a good boy having a very good attitude, he never get engaged in any kind of quarrels with any one and used to talk with others very less. Whenever he meets is neighbors he just pay a hello and how are you comments nothing else than that. Why? Because of his nature that he doesn’t beat about the bush and talk of here and there, but what people think about him?? A rude person having attitude problem and don’t want to talk anyone………………………………… Where the things went wrong?????????????? And is it important that what others say or think about Ali????? Yes!!! This is exactly the case with BRAND PERSONALITY as the case with Ali’s personality; that the most important thing is that what people think, feel, believe and recall about your brand… Because ultimately these beliefs adds value to your BRAND EQUITY!!! 6. Focusing on Top 10 Traits taking Gul-Ahmed as a sample Format of the game Well will be discussing Gul Ahmed in all the tem points as well as assessing its competitor Al Karam and deal in the same way with it and at the end of each page we will assign marks to both out of 10 for each point as below: Gul Ahmed: X/ 10 Al Karam: Y/ 10 7. 1. The Brand excels at delivering the benefits customer truly desire The main purpose of this study is that “we want to build, maintain and improve the Brand Equity”, but keeping in view today’s competitive world it is not easy to manage brands so easily specially in the textile field where your one mistake can hurt your image very badly and can automatically give advantage to others, just because of neck to neck competition in this market. Therefore, in this point # 1 context Gul Ahmed has to answer the following; Why one should buy Gul Ahmed? Is Gul Ahmed providing what exactly the customer wants? Gul Ahmed : Yes ! Gul Ahmed is do providing the same class what the customers expects from them that’s why they are the current market leader. They are working out in lawn, bed sheets, curtains and yarns etc. and the answer that why one should buy Gul Ahmed has two answers. (i) Gul Ahmed has become a status symbol due to being expensive as well as quality of the fabric (ii) the brand name of Gul Ahmed has created such a value that people want to buy the product that suits good to them as well s the spectators know about the brand they are wearing. Al karam: As Al Karam is the 2 nd best market leader in the market; they are also fulfilling all these points so we can rate both the brands equal points in this trait. Gul Ahmed: 9/10 Al Karam: 9/10 8. 2. The Brand stays relevant No point to dispute in this brand trait. Gul ahmed : Every summer the brand is adopting the change in the environment and reshape the wearing styles with luxurious model that are relevant to young ladies and girls (specially).New styles, beautiful models and up to date fashion trends keeps Gul Ahmed relevant to the market and continuously add value to the brand equity. Gul Ahmed show User Imagery, Usage Imagery and the brand personality in their each ad Gul Ahmed is showing the feel you will have i.e. targeting the intangible factor of Gul Ahmed to get a competitive edge. Al karam : not a bit less, Al Karam is doing the same. Let us have a look at the latest trends and fashion designs of both Gul Ahmed and Al Karam for staying relevant to market on the next page. Gul ahmed : 10/ 10 Al karam : 10 /10 9. 3. The pricing strategy is based on consumer’s perception of value. The heading explains itself very well. But the point be noted is that I disagree with this point to a bit of extent: Why? Because it also depend on the economic conditions of the region and country as well. In the support of this comment see the pricing of Gul Ahmed as below: In summer 2009 lawn collection: the Shehnai duppatta with 3 piece suit is started from 2000 PKR to 2800 PKR. In summer2010 lawn collection : the Shehnai duppatta with 3 piece suit is started from 1800 PKR to 2800 PKR Does it mean the value of the brand decreased??? No it’s due to the economic downturn of the global environment. In short, Gul ahmed , has a class and yes it is pricing very well in correspondence with its consumer’s perception. Al-karam : Though Al Karam is a bit cheaper in some cases of ‘karhai’ and 3 piece suits, but overall they are not very far behind in the same basis of pricing. Gul ahmed : 9/ 10 Al karam : 7/10 10. 4. The brand is properly positioned. Gul ahmed : No to worry about in the positioning of Gul Ahmed in the local market. They are superb with a sense and feeling of class lawn wearing, bed sheets, cushions etc. Even in the export market; they are renowned but due to high competition and the local suppliers of the foreign country they have not yet captured any reasonable market share out there. While in Pakistan they are well renowned in not only in lawn category but also in each and every aspect of household (by introducing IDEAS we will discuss it below. Al karam : doing everything in the same manner; they are also exporting. In fact only Al Karam and gul ahmed are the two giants in textile industry of Pakistan who are exporting lawn and fabrics while al Abid textile mills is the third and new player that is emerging now a days. POP : Both make lawns, bed sheets, Yarn, fabric and curtains. And both are the renowned giants in the textile industry of Pakistan. POD: Both of them did the brand extension very well as below. Gul Ahmed Introduced: IDEAS (the complete household fabric collection from lawn to cushions) Al Karam introduced: IDENTITY (not the same class as IDEAS is offering) Gul Ahmed: 8/ 10 Al Karam: 7/10 11. 5. The brand is consistent There are 2 important things here continuity and change. For making your brand stringer and stronger you don’t have to give conflicting messages to your customers in your ads , bill boars etc. be consistent and if you are introducing a change it should be relevant. Gul ahmed : they are consistent in the continuity domain ,. They have positioned themselves to be the best fabric seller out there in the market and have been consistent in it for almost decade. Even when they introduced IDEAS they were relevant to their brands image and brand personality. Though they have given the extension to their brand but they refrain from giving conflicting messages in their ads and promotional schemes to their consumers. Al – karam ; they followed IDEAS and brought out their IDENTITY in the market; though they were on a good move to not lack behind the market leader but what IDEAS did, IDENTITY couldn’t. Gul Ahmed: 8/ 10 Al Karam: 7/10 12. 6. Brand Hierarchy makes sense Maintaining different brands for different segments is the message from Brand report card in this context. According to Keller; “Don’t try to cover too much ground with one brand so that the other brand overlap with the first”. But here is a problem; we do not have a well defined portfolio and hierarchy for both the brand s under discussion. It is not something like Unilever and P&G where there we find hierarchy of brands. Though the proper portfolios of brands do add value to the brand equity but it is not necessarily for all the brand to build hierarchy. If you are doing very well under a single umbrella with some line extension, that is enough to cater the majority of the market segments. Going for the niche market sometimes become risky as well and can hurt the brand image very badly. Gul Ahmed: 0/ 10 Al Karam: 0/10 13. 7. Brand Makes use of Market activities to build Equity Starting this time with NADIA HUSSAIN for Al- Karam brand ; associating Nadia with the brand’s latest 2010’s collection is meant to boost us the awareness and get the minds of the customers remember NADIA khan on the bill boards and everywhere in a Mona Lisa character. The started is not bad because you build up equity of your brand with the help of : Logos, images, ads and celebrity endorsements Logos of both these brands have been shown earlier while their children brands IDEAS and IDENTITY also boost up the value to both brands equity. In the latest, the summer 2010 campaign, Al Karam came up with a more aggressive positioning to let people remember NADIA and thus AL Karam. While on the other hand Gul Ahmed was again out there with the same pace as they were in summer 2009 collections. So , the point is , essence of the brand should be the same in all your brand activities and hence again here Gul Ahmed did the same and had not tried something new that may not sound good to your loyal customers. Gul Ahmed: 8/ 10 Al Karam: 7/10 14. 8. Brand manager’ understand what they mean to consumer To take future decisions, you need to know very well or almost 90 % correct what the consumer thinks about your brand. Gul Ahmed and Al Karam both brands have been successful for a long time and because they let the people know: What their brand means!! Eventually they associated emotions with them like a lot of girls even my sister is crazy about Gul Ahmed every new collection and she has to buy it at any cost. This is what makes your Brand in the vertical direction growing trend and the job of the manager is to keep on going that both these are doing well. Gul ahmed: 5/ 10 Al karam: 5/10 9. Brand is given proper support and support is sustained over a long run As far as Gul Ahmed and Al Karam are concerned they are not associated with anyone to put the brand equity on a long run. They may do the same in future but currently they are not, because at this time they don’t need to. Gul Ahmed: 0/ 10 Al Karam: 0/10 15. 10. Company monitors sources of Brand Equity. Here we have two concepts: Brand Inventory…….”how the brand has been marketed” Brand Expolatory…….”learn about your brand through focus groups and consumer research” Audits tells how a brand is performing in a particular dimension. As far as both these under discussion brand s are considered they would be doing the same for keeping their brand on track. In short; each manager should know the answers of these questions: Why Gul Ahmed / Al karam is out there? Who are we targeting? Why one should buy Gul Ahmed / Al Karam? The brand dimension should be relevant to the company. Is it? Gul Ahmed and Al Karam should have brand management systems implied to keep the dimension and on track monitoring of their brands. Otherwise it would be very difficult to track the changes in the environment and respond to it accordingly. Gul Ahmed: 5/ 10 Al Karam: 5/10 16. Brand report Card Results: point 1 point 2 point 3 point 4 point 5 point 6 point 7 point 8 point 9 point 10 Total Gul Ahmed 9 10 9 8 8 0 8 5 0 5 62 Al Karam 9 10 7 7 7 0 7 5 0 5 57 70 60 50 40 30 Gul ahmed 20 Al Karam 10 0 point point point point point point point point point point Total 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Brand report Card 17. Conclusion Yes! Gul Ahmed is a Strong Brand, but it is not following all the traits mentioned in the Brand report card and it is not also necessary that every strong brand follow all 10 traits as mentioned. We can understand it in the way that with the PLC (product life cycle) all these traits enters to the brand equity step by step and in accordance with the competition out there as well as the market and region’s economy as well. So a final word of mouth is that Gul Ahmed is doing very well in the current market and according to Keller’s Brand report Card as well, but its competitor are not less than it in any domain . Gul Ahmed has to maintain the pace to be the market leader in local market and have to grow in exports to get a larger market share in foreign market to be recognized a s a STRONG BRAND ! Thank you! Haider