Brand Personlities:IBM and Apple

Question attempted:

Identify two brands within the same product category that project different images to the consumer. Discuss the different projected images by comparing and contrasting the two different brands. What techniques did the marketer use to create these images? How would you explain this deliberate attempt in the light of the self- concept of the buyer?

Executive Summary

“Products are created in factories but brands are created in the mind of the prospect.”

These immortal words symbolize the power of branding and the criticality of brand management. Every brand has a personality and is thus able to position itself in the mind of the prospect. Products in the same category may solve the same problem but, all consumers don’t buy the same product. Some base their decisions on price while some may decide on the basis of the benefit they derive from that product. The decision making process is sometimes long and arduous but sometimes, low involvement and easy. The personality of the brand and how it is communicated is one of the key factors on which decisions are made. Through this paper one would identify products in the same category and analyze their promotional strategies and how the brands have evolved over the years. Marketers use diverse techniques to project various images to the prospect, once these projection techniques are identified the marketing techniques would also be explored. After the brands are identified, the promotional strategies employed by them would be explored. Thus, the evolution of the brand can be traced. The evolution of the brand would give us key insights in the different images projected by them.

The self concept of the buyer, gives us reasons as to why the prospect buys our product, and to what parts of his/her self, our product targets.

THE BRANDS

IBM computers, one of the largest computer hardware firms in the world and probably one of the oldest. International Business Machines was established in 1924, when they made the Electronic Accounting Machine. In 1969, IBM changed the way it sold technology. Rather than offer hardware, services and software exclusively in packages, marketers "unbundled" the components and offered them for sale individually. Unbundling gave birth to the multibillion-dollar software and services industries, of which IBM is today a world leader. In early 1980s IBM got into t...

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...s conventional media like television and Newspapers. Another medium it uses to increase its brand recall is sponsorship of major events like The US Open Tennis Championships.

Through IBM’s promotions one can decipher the brand personality they’re trying to project. Its image is-

• Efficient

• Hardworking

• Reliable

• Technology

• Success

Consistent with the idea of self images, IBM also caters to a particular self-image. All technological products usually target the worker inside oneself; IBM is no different .It also targets the Ideal Self; it tries to project what the consumers would like to see themselves as. The slogan for IBM is ‘On demand Business’, which represents efficiency and technological brilliance.

The target market for IBM computers is the office going male/female or even college students.Peoeple in this segment aspire to be all what IBM stands for. Even though IBM is not a fantasy product, IBM promotes it to be a panacea for all office and home troubles. This further enhances its aim to target the Ideal Self concept.