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Recommended: Creating brand equity
Creative Advertising: Sunday Communications Limited
Business Situation of Sunday
When Sunday was launched, the market was not favorable to it at all. Hong Kong was a very mature market. There were already six mobile phone operators who competed very fiercely in the small market. They provided different tariffs and services to customers. When the mobile number portability was introduced in March 1999, competition for subscribers became open to every player. Under this circumstance, Sunday entered the market successfully with an innovative approach to branding and promotion. It was positioned as a lifestyle brand and focused on brand building rather than pursuing to increase market share. Sunday became a standout brand with a high level of brand awareness, which led to its high ARPU and the high portion of locked-up subscribers.
With regards to customers, 86% of the population owns one or more mobile phone in Hong Kong. They were willing to spend money on their next mobile phone and pioneers or early adopters of the latest hi-tech gadgets. They are very open to new brands and technology. Also, they place more emphasis on handset appearance than customers in other Asian countries. In addition, more and more young people have become mobile phone owners. More than one fourth (29%) children between six to fifteen have a cellular phone, which is higher than the regional average of 12%. Consumers in Hong Kong are very informed decision makers, so brand and image become very important to them.
Sunday’s Communication Objectives
Despite its success, Sunday claimed a mere 9.8% of the market in 2000 and 8.3% in 2005. Although total number of subscribers continued to increase year to year, average revenue per user had been declining since 2001. Their aggressive branding strategies including eye-catching advertisements, alliance marketing and joint promotions were very effective in the first place, but they became stale and trite as many copycats followed. Therefore, Sunday should find the ways to keep their innovative, independent brand image as well as to increase market share and the number of subscribers, and to maintain lock-up subscribers.
Sources of Sunday’s brand equity and their importance
Brand equity is the added value a given brand name gives to a product beyond the functional benefits provided. For Sunday, several factors contributed to building its strong brand equity, such as the creativity and originality of the ads, the ability to break the taboos and make noises. Innovative, independent, and unconventional images helped to build Sunday as well.
In every given business, the name itself portrays different meanings. This serves as the reference point and sometimes the basis of customers on what to expect within the company. Since personality affects product image (Langmeyer & Shank, 1994), the presence of brand helps in the realization of this concept. Traditionally, brand is a symbolic manifestation of all the information connected with a company, product, or service (Nilson, 2003; Olin, 2003). A brand is typically composed of a name, logo, and other visual elements such as images, colors, and icons (Gillooley & Varley, 2001; Laforet & Saunders, 1994)). It is believed that a brand puts an impression to the consumer on what to expect to the product or service being offered (Mere, 1995). In other application, brand may be referred as trademark, which is legally appropriate term. The brand is the most powerful weapon in the market (LePla & Parker, 1999). Brands possess personality in which people associate their experience. Oftentimes, they are related to the core values the company executes.
Imagine yourself sitting in front of the television during the super bowl and you see a commercial. This commercial starts off with an American soldier coming home to his wife and kids after a long day on the job. He says that "my job is at home protecting his family and that no one can tell me how to do that". At the end it shows what the commercial is for and it is for a gun company for Daniel defense (defense). This is a commercial for pro gun laws that has been banned from the super bowl this year. This is just one of the ads that are being banned from the commercials of the super bowl this year, yet there will be other more offensive ads being played. Why is this ad being denied and an ad for beer with half naked ladies being permitted?
In a competitive environment where market is changing instantly, organizations are in a fix to design a strategy that could market their products enticing the consumers to buy their products and services. Market is the arena for business gladiators who fight out for maximum share and profitability and this is possible only through effective marketing strategy. Competing in present economy means finding ways to break out of commodity status to meet customers’ needs better than competing firms (Ferrell and Hartline, 2010). The intensity of competition has increased after the introduction of media and internet where the companies present their product in the best way through advertisements, product reviews, blog entries, etc. With the advancement in technological innovations, companies have found various ways of providing services to the consumers in a cheaper and effective way and this has resulted in communication revolution in late 1990’s as the cellular technology was unfold in most of the regions. Singtel Optus Pty Limited (Optus) is one such company that has evolved during this period as a leader in integrated communications and this paper is assumed to make an analysis of the company’s marketing strategy and its financial position in the market industry.
Cellular phones carry a diverse group of users. In June 1985, there were about 203,000 cellular phone service subscribers. By June 1989, the number had exploded to 2.7 million subscribers, and by June 1995 there were mire than 26 million subscribers. When cell phones were first introduce, only people with a lot of money had them and the service was very expensive. It was a lot cheaper to stop and use the pay phone than it was to use a cell phone. Now, it is almost as cheap to use a cell phone to make a long distance call as it is to make a long distance call using AT&T.
Telecommunications gained mainstream attention in the early 90’s; however the initial key market was business men and women, who used their phones whilst being on the move and so allowing them to communicate with their companies with ease. Though in the modern era, telecommunication went through segmentation in the market trends, and now in this day and age it would be difficult to find someone who does not own some form of mobile technology. Many phone providers battle to provide the best service for their customers (Figure 1).
In conclusion, current trends and significant events concerning T-Mobile were examined. A hard look was given to the economy, demographics, technology, political and legal issues, and social characteristics. T-Mobile is strong across the board, with surprising statistics backing up a variety of topics. The economy is strong, the demographics are not far-fetched, technology is improving, there’s no huge political or legal scandal, and T-Mobile is socially strong.
Companies use a collection of brand equities to represent their products in the market (Voolnes, 2012). Brand equity refers to the commercial value that is derived from the perception of consumers on any given brand name of particular products in the market as opposed to the product itself. Ataman (2003) notes that the effect to the consumer is in the brand name and not the product itself. Companies use logos, trademarks and a collection of other symbols to present this information to the customers. The use of these symbols is meant to try and capture the customer mindset so that they can be thinking about the company products at all times through the items they possess at home (Estes, Gibbert, Guest, & Mazursk, 2012). This can well be explained by use of the customer-based brand equity model that brings together the requirements for a publicly renowned brand in the market.
There is a slowdown in sales of mobile handsets, in some markets like the UK, as the mature part of the product lifecycle is reached. Customers are exposed to a barrage of different images and messages by mobile phone companies, as the competition gets tougher. Vodafone appeals to new customers and aims to keep its existing ones by emphasising the uniqueness of the brand.
We intend to exploit our leadership role by continuing to target and enter segments of the communications market that we believe will experience rapid growth or grow faster than the industry as a whole....
Definition; - “brand equity is the added value endowed on products and services. It may be reflected in the way consumer think, feel, and act with respect to the brand, as well as in the price, market share and profitability the brand commands.”(Kolter and Keller.2012, p265) according to the case study of Holland and Barrett, brand equity refers to high brand value, brand with high value equity means, H&B has the ability to create some sort of positiv...
A company’s brand is one of its most valuable assets (Green and Smith 2002). Brands owners invest millions of dollars every year in advertising and promotion to raise awareness and create demand for their brands.
‘Creative without strategy is called “art”. Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising’. Creativity grabs attention. People are flooded with millions of ads each day, but screens most of them out. Creativity allows advertisements to get past the filtering process and appeal to the intended audience. (Altstiel & Grow 2012) Advertising agencies nowadays are forced to think outside the box, by looking at the bigger picture and constantly discovering new ideas and ways to grab people’s attention. A successful creative advertisement results from the ability to incorporate strategic concepts in order to draw the line between plain art and advertising. There are no rules, no patterns to creating highly creative advertising. (Lee 2000)
Nowadays, advertising is a very big business. Very often is the major means of competing among firms. Furthermore, supporters of advertising claim that it brings specific benefits for consumers.
The year is 2014, the markets are changing constantly, and they always have to meet the needs of new consumers as well as old consumers. Mobile telephones have been in the retail and wholesale business for quite some time, and are only evolving from here on out. There are things that these cell phones can bring us that are major benefits in our everyday lives. Cell phones bring us maps, radios, address books, and even flashlights now. Cell phones have taken shape from a huge portable device to a more convenient thin device that can fit in your pocket. With time in any consumer market, the consumer adapts to the technology that makes their life easier. The constant innovation of cell phones has led us to smart phones, and these smart phones are capable of putting certain businesses out of the market. Businesses that engineered PDAs in the past were met with challenges because smart phones are able to match their productivity. Land lines have become useless since everyone can afford a mobile device now. Listening to music has also switched from a traditional CD Player/MP3 Player to an everyday smart phone.
Television advertisement takes an important part of everyday human's life. Everyday millions of people in America and the world watches Television and advertisements. Television advertisements are very common these days. They appear in public where a lot of people can hear and watch. For example, commercials tend to appear on the radio, foot ball game where a lot of people are watching, and in on television. Advertisement is seen many times especially on television. Television is the most efficient way for business industries to use to take advantage of showing advertisement.