MAR036-6 Brand Communication and Reputation Management Assignment Sample
MAR036-6 Brand Communication and Reputation Management Assignment Sample
Introduction
Brand communication and Reputation Management is where the consumers monitor and perceive their business to take strategic actions while improving the business and the brand’s image. Reputation management can be illustrated through protection via social media campaigns and Google Reviews (Heding et. al. 2020). This report focuses on two brands Sunsilk and Vaseline of Unilever Private Limited, to analyse their identities in the market and improvise their customer experience by sharing and listening to reviews and feedback. This report discusses the Extinction Rebellion Letter’s achievement and its resonance with the advertisement agencies. It also analyses the approaches towards its marketing strategies through various frameworks like the Vuca Model, Triple Bottom Line, Business Continuity Planning and Horizon Scanning, which helps examine the set of practical and measurable guidelines to manage their Approach towards Climatic Change, Communication and Reputation.
1. Achievement from Extinction Rebellion Letter
Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an environmental movement created in the United Kingdom in 2018 to compel government actions by maintaining non-violent disobedience in biodiversity losses, climatic systems and social collapses (Paul, 2019). With the help of the Extinction Rebellion letter and website, the inception of UK government started following aims that protestors during that time demanded:
- The government must create a proper assembly on ecological and social justice along with a climatic change in the communities.
- Government must act in relevance to protect and halt all the losses in the biodiversity environment and its emissions towards greenhouse gas.
- Government must be faithful towards its working culture in the environment and climate to communicate and work through them in the same uniform direction as the company.
The citizen took the charges into their own hands, which led to many formations of civilian protest movements. The Extinction Rebellion letter gained much attention through its actions during this climate crisis via social media outlets and traditional approaches. This letter urges the advertising industries to use their powers for good and manipulate public opinion by protesting against it. The main perspective of this Extinction Rebellion Letter was firstly to address the authorities to ‘TELL THE TRUTH ‘About the economical unjustly emergencies and climate. This demand helped governments and businesses to take action and deal with this crisis through marketing actions. The letter also addresses the Founders, CEOs, CMOS, CFOs, MD’s and CDs of the global advertising industries in a statement, “You don’t think we’d forget about you”, to assign the loggings of all the toxic industries. The protestors achieved demands by declaring economical and climatic emergency acts to persuade their Client’s communication development. The activists of Extinction Rebellion spoke to the guardian about the experience in the advertising industry that disrupted the fashion week, which challenged and influenced the skills which defined the crisis. Making small campaigns by not drinking from plastic straws was one example of making some pro-bono for taking initiatives. All business plays a certain row as advertising is the most powerful tool for managing the behaviour of society. The advertising challenges the community to emerge into climate change in the coming years.
2. Resonance Towards Ad Agencies in the UK with their Clients
An advertising agency is a creative agency or an ad agency to which a business is maintained by planning, creating and handling advertising campaigns in the forms of marketing and promotion for its client, and an aid agency is completely dependent on the Client whether it is an external department or an internal department (Du Preez et. al. 2017). The advertising agencies take specific action by encouraging the people in the context of direct response to get an instant marketing strategy. Traditional marketing also helps advertisement agencies to promote their brand image in the long term and create brand awareness quickly. The main aim of advertising is to persuade, remind, and inform informative advertising, manage the products and create awareness of its services by creating creative ideas.
A common set of objectives of the Client creates the ownership of the strategic management and its process. The advertisement’s success builds upon the good relationship between the agency and the Client (Iglesias and Ind, 2020). Advertising agencies are to be in the position to lead the project, but a collaborative relationship between the Client and agency creates a stronger bond between both parties. Advertising agencies are more like media, planners and researchers because of the personal relationship between the clients. Strategic planning can only be successful if both parties understand the mindset and use of each other by involving the ideas between both ends. Creativity is unexpected in an advertising agency because it captures the clients’ attention, which is more likeable. The best use of creativity is to make the Client think about the brand or the product through a communication clutter management process. For example, WPP plc is a British multinational communication advertising and public relation agency headquartered in the UK the largest advertising company. WPP has approximately 1,30,000 employees and focuses on experience, technology and communication between clients, which helps the company holdings to become the largest advertising agency group (Anagnostopoulos et. al. 2018). This shows that creating a bond with clients in the best possible way helps the business grow with Ad Agencies’ help.
3. Marketing Communication Strategies of Sunsilk and Vaseline
Unilever is one of the biggest spenders and marketers in marketing and media. Unilever invests up to $8 billion yearly in brand communication with its clients worldwide (Mensah and Amenuvor, 2022). What all matters to Unilever is to be at the top of the advertising and media industry in the world through creative thinking on emerging markets, agency, relationships and advertising technology. This report discusses Unilever’s two big beauty brands, Sunsilk and Vaseline, which is an approach through people-centric in this fragmented world of the media and advertising industry. Unilever is aiming to make sustainable living commonplace for all compass organisations (Pisicchio and Toaldo, 2021). Unilever’s beauty and well-being account for a US$10 billion turnover. The most prominent brands of Unilever are Dove, Vaseline, Tresemme, Dermalogica, liquid IV and clear. Vaseline, established in 1870, is the oldest among all the products and is growing fast. Its pro-dermal line accounts for more than 20% of its business worldwide. At the same time, Sunsilk is a hair care brand established in 1954 UK. Sunsilk had the advantage of washing fewer natural oils from the hair by only applying one application. Over the years, the market share of Sunsilk has reduced to 32% because of new competition in the market.
Critical Analysis of Vaseline’s Growth
Vaseline has always been an addition to make-up bags, first-aid kits, and bathroom cabinets for over 150 years, and it is not slowing down (Peter and Dalla, 2021). Baseline is one of the fastest growing brands of Unilever and its ability to soothe, heal and smoothen. The skin is enduring to clients. Firstly, Vaseline is a petroleum jelly used to treat hair pomade and chapped hands, but it took off when women started applying Vaseline to their lips, skin and lashes. Vaseline observes a sustained search in its sales because of new demographics and skincare enthusiasts using the product. Vaseline’s major benefit is not its lasting popularity but its premium product innovations (Noris et. al. 2021). The digital evolution by adding a winning formula which affected many years of affection countless users who use Vaseline glow-giving powers is celebrated in its growth.
Reasons for Vaseline becoming a successful brand:
Vaseline has been selling its products for over 150 years in over 70 countries and millions of homes. Have experienced Vaseline’s revival during the Covid-19 hit. Vaseline is a part of a skincare routine with a little part of skin healing jelly, which one can apply as body lotion, lip balms, deodorants and much more.
Vaseline is stocked on a small scale by retailers, chemists and supermarkets worldwide, but online sales of Vaseline have immensely taken off, particularly in Asia and the UK (Cartwright et. al. 2021). The classic Vaseline jelly Tab is the brand’s highest-performing product through which many influencers and digital creators promote new product launches. It also helps the large audience of winning affection and future-proofing to accept this product.
Vaseline aims to give everybody healthy skin to live and has partnered with humanitarian organisations through direct relief on its healing projects. Vaseline also provides dermatological care, products, healthcare, working training, medical supplies and education to heal the skin of millions affected by poverty and emergencies all across the globe (Arya et. al. 2022). Vaseline has excellently managed to exceed the expectations of customers and stockholders with its activity to address climate change, communication and its brand image reputation. A better way to understand the growth of Vaseline can be analysed through the Business Continuity Planning framework and the Vuca Model framework.
Business Continuity Planning of Vaseline’s Growth
Figure 1: BCP Pillars
(Source: Implementation of the Four Pillars of a Business Continuity Program, 2019)
A business continuity plan is a system of recovery and prevention from potential threats to a company, and personal assets are protected to function quickly in any disaster or cyber attack. By considering a well-being company, BCP helps Vaseline to protect its client files site and prevent disruptions from spreading and improve risk management (Mercier, 2022). The downtime of technology and networks saves the company money.
To create a business continuity plan, Vaseline should develop a solid plan which includes
- Business Impact Analysis to observe the growth
- Recovery of the product in the market
- Organisational objectives to maintain the growth
- Training the team
Along with testing the continuity team, the company should also test the plan. Several times to make sure that it can adopt different risks in areas to identify the weaknesses in the plan. According to Vaseline’s growth, the BCP had helped the team to require the backup data and information stored under the impact of analyses. This helps Vaseline to deter mind those risks and affect operation to safeguard.
Vuca Model
Figure 2: Vuca Model Framework
(Source: VUCA Model in Strategic Sales Management, 2022)
Vuca is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity qualities, which helps to analyse and respond (Abitbol and Meeks, 2021). These qualities improve the strategic abilities of a leader to get better outcomes in any situation.
- Volatility: This trait helps to open up to considerable changes. The prices may increase or decrease significantly in a certain period in a volatile market. The direction of the trend can change its commodity and services.
- Uncertainty: When the result is unpredictable, uncertainty occurs, which can cause an unclear relationship between the volatile market and its production of increase and decrease in prices.
- Complexity: This includes a wide range of problems Vaseline faces, which helps the company to grow intricately (Mansur al. 2021). It is challenging for other people to relate to one another through this product.
- Ambiguity: to understand the situations, the shape of ambiguity lakhs in terms of difficulty and clarity. Misinterpretation of the information can lead to clearer objectives, and the desired result needs to be obtained.
Vuca framework will help Vaseline rapidly evolve the technology department industry. It also helps the interconnected systems and global supply chains to understand in a better way (Casado et. al. 2022). The organisational environment creates a solid understanding through VUCA as necessary skills and attitude is required to meet them through flexible, emotional and mental capacities.
Vaseline should adopt strategic management, success, and tools to make decisions, create plans, and implement to evaluate the data to maintain its growth. Scenario planning of the process is a plan and a collection of different perspectives used to test the strategy to determine the product’s future growth. Blockchain, in the popular culture of this century, helps traditional applications to transform their digital identity, verification, intelligence, automation and data security to expand. This will help the company to grow in digital transformation services in future (Sutherland, 2020). Road mapping is the most important VUCA tool that can help Vaseline understand the concept of planning, ongoing adaptation and dynamic and learning outcomes by creating ideas of dynamic planning and logical incrementalism.
For example, Vaseline is a brand that can be used in multiple ways, like lengthening eyelashes. It can also be used as a cleanser and to gloss lips. Vaseline also helps in protecting leather jackets and shoes by just putting petroleum jelly on them. Medicine is also used for self-care and medical purposes like softening abilities and as a moisturiser. Vaseline has come out as a wonder jelly as it seals the bones from infections, and consumers are using it daily. Vaseline is a brand which has managed to exceed the expectation of consumers in terms of quality and survival hacks for every user.
Critical Analysis of Sunsilk’s Deterioration
Sunsilk is a cosmetic beauty shampoo established in 1955 through an advertising campaign focused on hair issues. Sunsilk advertised the communication of the brand through different product variants and promoted shun of its brand image (Mende and Misra, 2021). Sunsilk introduced many such products as its shampoos and conditioners.
Sunsilk wants its ground back as the competition is intense in the hair care market. The change is vital to stay in the race. Unilever is pumping more than $10 million to re-launch the Sunsilk brand and its products in the hair care market. The brand admits that Sunsilk has been on life support in recent years. Sunsilk’s sales and brand health have been in decline for several years, and it is a blind old fashioned and boring brand in the hair care market.
Shampoo and conditioner are the biggest segments of the Sunsilk brand, which generate 39% and 30% of sales, respectively, but the products are dragging down the entire market (Domegan, 2021). The hair care market is clattered, and the Sunsilk market has declined over several years. Brand management in communication gives fierce competition to big advertising budgets compared to this hair care brand. Some of the biggest package good marketers in the world, including Unilever, are Palmolive, L’Oréal and Hankel, the competitors to Sunsilk. The intense competition between Sunsilk and other products is not surprising. Customer loyalty to Sunsilk is also low so that new brands can grab market shares. Sunsilk was the top-selling hair care brand, but it lost the title to dub which is another Unilever brand. In the early 80s, Sunsilk had a 20% share of haircut sales, which is now about 10%, compared to Dove, which currently has an 18% share. Sunsilk has tremendously fallen short of expectations and impacted its reputation negatively by damaging its brand image in the eyes of its users. To understand the fallout of Sunsilk, the Triple Bottom Line framework and Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions is analysed in the following:
Triple Bottom Line (TBL)
The triple bottom line framework maintains that companies should focus more on environmental and social concerns as they do more on profits (Fiedler et. al. 2022). It is also an accounting framework with three parts related to environmental, economic and social performance to create broader and greater business value (Payne et. al. 2017). The expansion of the triple bottom line theory includes the contributions to its environmental health, economic and social well-being, which is referred to as the three P’s: Planet, Prosperity and People.
Figure 3: Triple Bottom Line Framework
(Source: Business benefits of the triple bottom line, 2022)
Profit Aspect of Triple Bottom Line Model
- Sunsilk is a highly sustainable business model that results in economic loss.
- Less risk of people and the public trying to remove all the major production departments from the supply chain as there is no usage of fibres and particles from the endangered quality of production.
- Government backlash towards the goals to lead the compensation, cost and legal challenges provided by the organisations which work towards sustainability (Lies, 2021).
- Gaining lesser loyalty towards the customer demotivates ethical and fair-trade business models through which the beauty and well-being industry can sustain its growth into a developing high-end brand.
- Sunsilk could increase its position in the fashion industry by focusing on sustainability and innovative fashion branding activities.
- Digital supply chains help the benefits of Sunsilk to use multiple technologies, such as RFID, to track the entire supply chain process even after using the applications.
People’s Aspect of the Triple Bottom Line Model
- The public openly shares information about the process of manufacturing and the way they operate by tracking the well-being of their employees working in their factories and industries.
- Sunsilk always encourages the information of the stakeholders in which they work with full dedication in a global organisation of all the suppliers and factories simultaneously.
- Sunsilk keeps track of certain priority areas of its workers, like gender, equality, fair wages, and safety work and works towards the sustainability of the market environment by setting goals for the future.
Planet Aspect of Triple Bottom Line Model
- Sunsilk should build upon global developing strategies, which are sustainable and responsible production market which helps in building an eco-friendly environment (Shiraev, 2021).
- By recycling the products into any donation programme, the company can directly focus on its sustainability through the movement ‘Join life’.
- Sunsilk can use eco-friendly and green alternatives for the packing materials of its products in its offline stores, which is committed and supported to maintaining sustainability in the ecological environment.
Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
This framework is utilised for cross-cultural communication and determines its members’ societies, cultures and values by using a structure derived from factor analyses relative to the behaviour (Duffett, 2017). The theory proposed four dimensions of cultural values, which are uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity and power distance. Through this framework, the brand Sunsilk describe to what extent the people and nation can look out for each other as a team. Hofstede’s developed a research tradition in cross-cultural psychology that helped brands increase their business and communication in brand management. The cultural dimensions of this framework help the brand in a way where the results of the cultural values can be analysed.
Power Distance Index (PDI): The brand’s success in brand management and communication gets disturbed. It has also been defined as the less powerful members of organisations and institutions except unequally.
Individualism vs Collectivism (IDV): This index determines the degree through which the people of society are separated into groups where the brand is supposed to be growing, but it gets demotivated from the market
Uncertainty Avoidance: This index is the society’s tolerance for ambiguity in the brand, which users embrace through an event of an expected product to be launched or unknown status motivated.
Masculinity vs Femininity: In this index, masculinity can be stated as the success of achievement and assertiveness, whereas femininity is expressed as modesty and caring for the weak and quality of life which represents the deterioration of the brand.
4. Guidelines to manage their Approach towards Marketing Strategies
A set of practical and measurable guidelines to inform the brands in steps are to
- Start with a Quality Product.
- Identify the Brand’s Singular Distinction, Define Message, and Position of Brand Properly in the Marketplace.
- Tap into Emotion.
- Build the image.
- Market the image.
Best Approach to manage the above measurable guidelines:
Climatic Change
The climatic change challenges brand managers to figure out how to sustain and place their brands in user development (Lies, 2021). The consumer’s buying behaviour also helps climate change which is influenced by the “brand pull” due to several reasons across product differentiation.
Brand Communication
The three C’s of brand communication are constituency, consistency, and clarity. Strong brands are always clear about what the clients want and don’t want, in addition to being clear about what clients want (Veloutsou and Guzman, 2017). The brand should be consistent about what they say about the product. It needs to be clarified and consistent. Brand should always be visible to target the audience. Prospect and customers’ liking should not be avoided or constrained by any other target market.
Reputation Management
The more the customers value the brand, the buying capacity products and services recommend them to others (Slowik, 2021). It creates a brand image and reputation in the market. It also pays a premium for them and make the lives of the employees easier. Research has shown that the best brands are more resistant to crises of reputation in comparison with the others.
Marketing Objectives
The following can be the various marketing objectives of the brand’s customer relationship. A product Category is a new product or service category which could be associated with the liberalisation of global brands, which may create a higher level of brand consciousness among the users (Shiraev, 2021). This may be because of the ‘perceived premium’ associated traditionally with foreign brand names. Social Value In product categories which are global brand names, may make a heavier impact on the customers.
Branding Management
Brand management determines that the market’s perceptions may differ from what client’s need, while it attempts to shape those perceptions and adjust the branding strategy to ensure the market’s qualities are exactly what it desire (Idrysheva et. al. 2019). A strong brand influences the buying capacity, and decision shapes the ownership experience. Branding creates emotional attachment and trusts in the product or company. This attachment then causes the market to make decisions based, at least in part, upon emotion, not necessarily just for intellectual reasons.
Conclusions
By creating outstanding brand image which stand out is more than just a logo, but a feel of the business which stand out from many of the competitors. an advertising agency helps the market and the business with a wider range of resources and it develops a better equipped business goal to expert ties. These agencies also offer different services such as search engine optimisation, email, marketing, website, designing, digital advertising and social media management. The clients of ad agency includes corporations, business, private agencies and non-profit organisations. These agencies can be hired to produce radio, advertisements, television, advertisements, AR, advertising, mobile marketing, home, advertising and online advertising. Globalisation of such advertising agencies was completely the beginning of the process in overseas offices, to share a sense of purpose with their clients through collaboration. By using both the frame works BCP and VUCA model which helps an individual to maintain the realities of resolving issues in businesses and understand its complexities which can be beneficial for its long-term success in the market for brand’s growth by measuring the guidelines through key points like climate change, communications, reputation, marketing and brand management.
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