Branding and Marketing Management: Developing New Brand Positioning for a Struggling Brand

Intellectual/transferrable

You will be able to develop an in-depth knowledge of branding as part of marketing management, and its relationship to the wider organisational objectives including corporate social responsibility.

Intellectual/transferrable:

You will be able to assess the success or otherwise of a brand, identifying problems, offering suggested improvements by utilising a wide range of sources of information to apply appropriate techniques and, demonstrate criticality (independent thinking) in the evaluation and synthesis of information relating to branding. You will be able to present the findings of your analysis in a professional business report.

The summative assessment for this module consists in an individual business report on a self-selected brand. You will need to identify a brand that is currently having some image issues (i.e., not clear what it stands for, or perceived as old-fashioned and out-of-date), analyse its current positioning, develop a new positioning and managerial recommendations to bring this new positioning to life.

Your report should include the following sections:

1.An introduction which explains the reasons behind the choice of your brand. Why did you select this brand? What are the image issues this brand is currently going through? The choice of your brand should be supported by some type of evidence such as facts from the news or data from industry reports. (About 500 words)

2.An analysis of the current positioning of the brand. Who is the target market? Who is the key competition? What are the points of parity (POPs) and the points of difference (PODs) of the brand against key competition?

3.Development of a new brand positioning. How should the current brand positioning be different? What elements of the current positioning should be maintained, if any? What elements should be changed?

4.Development of managerial recommendations about how to bring the new brand positioning to life. For instance, what communication leverages should be used to implement the new brand positioning with the target market? How should these leverages be integrated one another? Although you do not have a budget, you must be realistic and develop feasible managerial recommendations. This means, for example, that if you choose a small, local brand, you cannot include TV advertising in your recommendations.

5.A bibliography which includes all the references that you used to carry out your brand analysis. (Not included in the word count

For students who are offered a resit you are required to improve and resubmit your original work as well as adding a further reflective commentary discussing what you have learned from the process.

You must resubmit your work using the specific resit Turnitin link on Moodle.

You should:

1. Review your previously submitted work and read carefully the feedback given by the marker.

2. Use this feedback to help you revisit and rewrite your work, improving it in the areas identified as weak in the original marking process

3. Include with your resubmission an additional reflective piece (up to 500 words) on what you understand was weak, how you set about addressing this and what you have learned from this that may help you with further assignments. You should address the following specifically:

i) Identify tutor feedback points on your original work and identify where/how the resit work has changed (give page number) in response to feedback

ii) Identify the lessons you have learnt from doing the resit

iii) Reflect on how your feedback and this process will help you improve future assignments

How will we support you with your assessment?

·Assessment briefing Week 1 (lecture).

·Dedicated seminar session on your formative assessment in Week 6.

·In Week 8, feedback session on your formative assessment and tutorial session to support the development of your summative assessment.

·Tutorial session to support the completion of your summative assessment in Week 11.

·FAQs will be posted on the module’s Moodle site.

How will your work be assessed?

Your work will be assessed by a subject expert who will use the marking grid provided in this assessment brief.  When you access your marked work it is important that you reflect on the feedback so that you can use it to improve future assignments.