Foreign aid, an exercise in personal branding?

Today most developed and some developing countries give foreign aid. Why? Is this simply a branding exercise? An attempt by government's to increase their prestige as the 'good guys'?

The UK (and many other countries) give a substantial amount of their foreign aid to India, a country with its own space programme and more billionaires than the UK. This leads me to wonder whether foreign aid is simply being used as an attempt to increase the recipient country's 'recall' of its donors when making economic and political decisions. The significance of this is given weight by the fact that increasing a country's economic and political status, will subsequently increase its effective demand of a donor country's 'brand' for economic and political purposes.

Top 10 social media luxury marketers of Q3

http://www.luxurydaily.com/top-10-luxury-branded-social-media-marketers-of-q3/ 


Link to article on the best social media luxury marketers of the third quarter. These brands successfully appeal to a new younger audience, without antagonising their original audience and losing their 'luxury luster'

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA


Link to Jobs 2005 speech giving insight into his getting fired from Apple in 1985, life & death.

Keller's CCBE model - a great way to develop a personal brand!

Keller creates a Customer Based Equity (CBBE) model to explain what makes a strong brand based on the premise of ensuring customers have strong, favourable, unique associations linked to the brand. This model provides a very useful basis for you developing your own brand!

This model should be implemented in building blocks, so don’t take any short cuts! This is because: we cannot establish meaning unless we have created identity; there cannot be responses unless we have developed the meaning; and we cannot forge a relationship unless we have the proper responses.

Identity:  It is vital to establish salient cues so that the brand can be easily recalled and recognised under different conditions. Brand salience measures awareness of the brand.

Brand awareness gives the product an identity by linking brand elements to a product category and associated purchase and usage situations.
  - Depth (how likely it is for a brand element to come to mind)
  - Breadth (range of purchase and usage sits in which the brand element comes to mind depends largely on the organisation of brand and product knowledge in memory)

Meaning: established by linking tangible and intangible brand associations with certain properties

Performance  -  The product itself is at the heart of brand equity because it is the primary influence on what consumers experience with a brand. To create brand loyalty and resonance marketers must ensure consumer’s experiences with the product at least match expectations

How well the product meets consumer’s functional needs.
   - Primary ingredients, and supplementary features
   - Product reliability, durability, and serviceabilit
   - Service effectiveness, efficiency and empathy
  - Style and design

-         - Price

How do customers view performance?

-          - Reliability (consistency of performance over time from purchase)
            - Durability (expected economic life of the product)
            - Serviceability (ease of repairing product if needed)
            - Service

o   Effectiveness (how well the brand satisfies consumer’s service requirements)

o   Efficiency (speed and responsiveness of service)

o   Empathy (extent to which service providers are seen as having the customer’s best interests in mind)

-          - Aesthetic considerations

-         - Pricing (customers may organise their product category knowledge in terms of the price tiers of diff brands).

Image - Intangible aspects of the brand inc ways brand attempts to meet customers’ psychological or social needs
   -  User profiles
   -  Purchase and usage situations
  - Personality (eg lively and exotic) of brand
   - Values (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness) of brand
   -  History, heritage and experience of the brand

Responses

Judgements - customers’ personal opinions and evaluations of the brand (put together from brand performance and imagery)

Quality – overall evaluations of the brand
  - Credibility – in perceived expertise, trustworthiness, and likability
  - Consideration – depends on how personally relevant customers find the brand
  - Superiority – extent to which customers view the brand as unique  and better than other brands

Feelings - strongly evoked by transformational advertising (emotional branding)

Experiential:
   - Warmth
   - Fun
   - Excitement

Enduring:
     - Security
   - Social approval

            - Self-respect

Relationship – brand resonance

Intensity:
   - Attitudinal attachment (view brand as something special in broader context eg customers say they ‘love the brand’)
   -  Sense of community (may give brand broader meaning to the customer)

      Activity:
      - Behavioural loyalty (how often do customers purchase the brand and how much do they purchase) – this is necessary but not sufficient for brand resonance
       - Active engagement (customers are willing to invest time, energy, money etc in the brand beyond those expended during purchase or consumption of the brand eg join a club centred on a brand)

Bibliography 

Keller, K (2005) Strategic Brand Management (3ed), Ch 2: 'Customer Based Brand Euqity', Pearson International Ed. New Jersey.

Why blog?

After procrastinating for several months about starting my blog I have been forced to ask myself ‘Why’…..

1.    Why have I found it so difficult to start my blog?

2.    Why write a blog?

These are questions a great deal of you would be bloggers probably ask yourselves. Although, I have answered these questions in reference to myself the answers will probably hold true for most of you.

1.               1.

• Placing personal information on the internet goes against everything I have previously drummed into me (aka by my parents) that I should not have pictures and personal information on the internet because you never know who might see them.
• It’s scary having an open forum to rant and ramble on. I find myself asking why anybody should care what I have to say when there are sooo many experts out there, who know far more than I do
• The idea of creating a site dedicated to myself appears self-centred and egocentric, and this is a culture I have been fighting against.

2.

• We should take advantage of how lucky we are to live in an open culture where we have the freedom to share our opinions, and the opinions of others. It is our pro-activity in doing this that ensures we can never live in a repressed society.
• You don’t need to be an expert to have an opinion.
• It is an intrinsic part to developing a strong personal brand. This is particularly important in today’s world where employers often Google names of future employees.
• A blog is a way for us to connect to others. Just because your blog is on what may seem a trivial matter, does not mean it is unimportant to others.
• Gives you the opportunity of an audience, anybody can read if they want to.

These pros, ‘why to start a blog’ definitely outweigh reasons against blogs. Sooooo…….time to start blogging!

I am going to dedicate my blog to personal branding: how to do it and why it is so important. 

Helloooo

Hello there dear Followers,

I am doing a Combined Honours degree (History, Politics and Psychology) at Newcastle University, England, and am currently completing a semester abroad in South Australia. Exciting! 

For some unknown reason I have decided to try my hand at a marketing module. I've never done any marketing before, and this is my third year at uni, so this possibly was not the wisest choice I could have made. Hopefully, it will be a bit of fun though. Anyways, as part of this marketing module its recommended I start a blog.....so here we are!

To be honest, I’m still a little vague as to what I’ll post about on here…any suggestions?????

I’ll get back to you all as soon as a blogging topic is decided

Love,

Armorel xx