Nivea Brand Audit

Nivea Brand Audit

Sheng-Fu Yang 5492521

Nivea Brand Audit

Table of Contents
Executive summary:..............................................................................................3 Nivea brand category & strategic group:...............................................................4 Skin care:............................................................................................................4 Personal care:.....................................................................................................4 Competitors:..........................................................................................................4 Strategic group of Nivea:.......................................................................................4 Brand Inventory:....................................................................................................5 NIVEA Crme Brand Profiling..............................................................................5 The Umbrella Brand...............................................................................................6 Communications, pricing, and Distribution............................................................7 Qualitative Research Process:...............................................................................8 Brand exploratory:.................................................................................................8 Customer Knowledge:.........................................................................................8 Source of brand Equity:......................................................................................9 Product endorser:...............................................................................................9 Sports & Culture:................................................................................................9 Global partnership for social involvement:.........................................................9 Technology:........................................................................................................9 The customer based Brand Equity Pyramid (CBBE)..........................................10 Points of Parity & Point of Difference...................................................................10 Conclusion:..........................................................................................................10 Dynamic Growth...............................................................................................10 Worldwide Presence.........................................................................................10 Strong Brands...................................................................................................10 Success through Closeness..............................................................................10 Compelling Innovations....................................................................................11 Dedicated Employees.......................................................................................11 Attractive Employer..........................................................................................11 Recommendation:...............................................................................................11 Increase Male target audience.........................................................................11 Counterfeiting...................................................................................................11 Reference............................................................................................................12

Nivea Brand Audit

Reference

Nivea Brand Audit

Executive summary:
The main purpose of this research study is to identify the challenge in achieving the ideal positioning for the Nivea Company being able to achieve congruence among: i. What the customers currently believe about the brand ( and thus find credible) ii. What customer will value in the brand iii. What the firm is currently saying about the brand iv. Where the firm would like to take the brand (Brand Dynamic Unit outline, 2010) Therefore by performing this Brand Audit on the company brand Nivea, we will be able to uncover the current health of the Nivea brand. Brand audits are qualitative miniature of the current position of the brand in terms of the current perceptions of the target customer and it is important to perform the Brand audit on a regular basis as customer behaviour are changing all the time. With conducting a brand audit, the marketers of the brand in question will gain a better understanding of the current problems, desires and needs of the target audience in question. The information gathered from such audit is critical for the brand as it allows them to determine whether a costly and time-consuming process such as a brand re-positioning is necessary, as well as providing valuable market research which can lead to a viable and sustainable brand strategy. In this report, it will be adopting cross referencing method, by gathering the Brand inventory information and a pile of brand portfolio will also be attached with the report, further, brand exploratory will be conducted in order to obtain the qualitative data from target customer. Finally, all of the information gathered will be utilised for the analysis of the brand positioning and the supporting marketing program in order to answer the question mentioned above.

Nivea Brand Audit

Nivea brand category & strategic group:
By 2009 the Nivea brand category had grown from 6 product groups in 1993 to 15, including:

Skin care:
NIVEA Body, NIVEA Visage, NIVEA for Men, NIVEA Sun, NIVEA Baby, NIVEA Crme, NIVEA Vital, NIVEA Soft, NIVEA Hand, and NIVEA Lip.

Personal care:
NIVEA Deo, NIVEA Beauty, NIVEA Hair Care, NIVEA Bath Care, and NIVEA Intimate Care. Refer to appendix. 1&2.

Competitors:
With the broad range of the product type that Nivea Company has, it has also brought a wide range of strategic competitors along with the product diversification. Refer to appendix. 3

Strategic group of Nivea:

By the beginning of the 1990s, Nivea was already a global brand with a wide range of products catering to the full spectrum of customer segments; Nivea nurtured its existing sub-brands and moved into additional market segments by adding new sub-brands. The companys sub-brand strategy yielded remarkable results: between 1990 and 2000, every NIVEA Brand sub-brand experienced sales growth and gained market share. By 2005, NIVEA was a leading international skin care company and voted the most trusted brand in Germany by Readers Digest from 20012004. (Nivea, 2010) Nivea management decided that the sub-brand strategy was effective, and the company did continue, however, only focused on the Blue Harmony campaign for its flagship product Nivea Crme, which is still running today, it adapts to the current spirit of the times with emotionality, and based on the concept of the Blue Harmony campaign the Nivea strategic brand management are illustrated below:

Nivea Brand Audit

(Keller, 2005)

Brand Inventory:
NIVEA Crme Brand Profiling
Over these years, NIVEA has primarily adverted through NIVEA Crme its major product and that acquired a unique, widely-understood brand identity as a caretaker of skin. Throughout Europe, most users were first introduced to Nivea crme during their childhood, and learnt that Nivea was a product that could be used by the entire family to satisfy all kinds of needs, because of consumers own personal history with the brand and the companys advertising, NIVEA had become strongly associated with shared family experiences and had a rich set of brand attributes such as: Care Mildness Reliability

Nivea Brand Audit

Gentleness Protection High quality Feeling good Reasonably priced

Over time, the NIVEA name became synonymous with protection and care for the skin. Nivea company viewed advertising as a approach of strengthening target audiences perceptions of a quality product therefore Nivea advertising promoted the basic themes of skin care and protection. Ads were always simple, plain, and informative. Please refer to Appendix. 4 & 5 for histories of advertisement style evolution:

The Umbrella Brand

In the 1980s Beiersdorf recognized the growth potential offered by the NIVEA brand. European studies had revealed that NIVEA enjoyed a high level of trust and that consumers would accept new products under the umbrella of the NIVEA brand. In line with these consumer expectations, NIVEA introduced a large number of products offering its customary high level of quality. This expansion strategy in the 1980s was systematically continued in the 1990s with the launch of sub-brands such as NIVEA Hair Care, NIVEA Beaut, and NIVEA Bath Care. As globalization increased, NIVEA's focused brand management allowed it to develop into the largest skin care brand in the world. Today, NIVEA Creme is a large brand family with more than 500 different products. In Germany, NIVEA enjoys brand awareness of almost 100 percent. And at European level it enjoys a level of trust in the "skin care" product category that is unmatched by any other brand. Consumers in more than 170 countries worldwide use the NIVEA brand.

Umbrella Brand (Beiersdorf, 2008)

Nivea Brand Audit

Communications, pricing, and Distribution
Niveas brand image has been maintained though communication focused on the products high quality and its association with caretaker of skin and via its intensively distribution channel and reasonable pricing, and that has resulting in the Niveas strong and well-known brand image. The Blue Harmony Communication Campaign, it has formed Niveas cream rather a mere product, but one of the first acts of love and protection that a mother performs for a baby, and after all, every one remembered the typical scent, feel, softness and sensuality of this white cream, reinforced by the Nivea Blue. Blue is the favourite colour of more than half of the population of the western world, including the United States and Canada. It is the colour of dreams (the sky), calm (the night), faithful, pure love (the Virgin Mary has been depicted in blue since the 12th century), peace (UN peace seekers) and the simple, universal appeal of blue jeans (Pastouteau, 1992). And the creams whiteness is the white of purity, health, discretion, simplicity and peace (a white flag). As for the moisturising cream itself, it adds water to the skin, an essential injection of a human aspect to ones natural environment. The core brand value of Nivea containing strong moral values such as: - Confidence - Generosity - Responsibility - Honesty - Harmony and Love And in terms of competence, it stands for: - Safety - Natural - Softness - Innovation Lastly Nivea sell itself as a timeless, simple and accessible, at a reasonable price, and that is also how the Nivea brand itself identified worldwide; Nivea uses a central distribution point all over the world, that is also support its commitment to reducing impact on the environment. Distribution of Nivea product is mainly through retailers. 65% of sales come from pharmaceutical stores, such as Priceline, or My-

Nivea Brand Audit

chemist. The other 35% comes from larger grocery chains, such Woolworth and Coles.

Qualitative Research Process:

Qualitative research process involves three levels of progressive process, First, the exploration of the existing or prior research studies has to be conducted in order to indentify the previous studies and can avoid repetitive research. Second internal interview with company personnel to gain an understanding of their beliefs about consumer perceptions for the brand and competitive brand Lastly implementing qualitative research based on the information gathered on previous two processes, in order to achieve consistency of qualitative date required. Summary of qualitative research techniques refer to appendix. 6. (Keller figure 3.6, 2008)

One of the qualitative research methods has been conducted with one Swinburne student Elva, method is based on the adjective rating and checklist integrated with Fig 2.3, 3.5a, and 3.5b from Keller, 2008. Refer to appendix. 7&8.

Brand exploratory:
Customer Knowledge:
Base on the qualitative research that have been conducted, it can be determined, the Nivea Has successfully leveraged its History and tradition of excellence along with innovation to become the most powerful and recognized Personal Care brand worldwide. Typical consumer brand associations for Nivea might be: attachment Community Credibility Superiority Warmth Fun Quality Mild & Gentle Caring &Protective Pure

Nivea Brand Audit

Heritage For Family Universal Application Multi-Form and Purposes

Source of brand Equity:

Nivea is one of the most recognized personal care product brands in the world, which is also undoubtedly the companys most important source of Brand equity. Its snow-white logo and blue harmony tin package is also a key source of the brand equity. The equity is also contributed by the functional benefits that the Nivea provided to its customer, that is to say the quality of Nivea, credibility and innovation that go into making of Niveas product. Apart from the product generated brand equity, there are other three key source of the brand equity.

Product endorser:
Nivea has launch the celebrity endorsement advertising campaign base on the locality of product launched with the spokes model promoting Niveas product, it made the Niveas product become easily to penetrate into different market segments. Refer to appendix.9.

Sports & Culture:

The sport and culture event of football match of pupils from south Africa and Rwanda in Pretoria with the support of Jogi Low, was sponsored and organized by Nivea group with the goal to support deprived children and young people, with a public relation campaign like this it will help Nivea to increase its public reputation, obtained brand awareness, and the most important helped people in need. Refer to appendix.10

Global partnership for social involvement:

In May 11 2010, Nivea and global children's aid organization Plan International have announced their immediate cooperation under the motto "We care & connect." as part of a global, long-term partnership. The collaboration, the goal of which is to give socially disadvantaged children and youth a better future through education Refer to Appendix. 10

Technology:
With the new I-phone application NIVEA FOR MEN comes very close to the main target group, explained Konstantin Stremme, International Brand Manager NIVEA FOR MEN. They are highly involved and technophile men, between 21 and 45 years old who always need the newest gadget and have a significant interest on the digital world and online games.

Nivea Brand Audit

Refer to appendix 10

The customer based Brand Equity Pyramid (CBBE)

Nivea Customer-Based Brand Equity pyramid ( refer to page 3) has distributed evenly on all of the segments, the high salience and high resonance has evidently proven by the 100% awareness and most trusted brand in Europe, refer to appendix.

Points of Parity & Point of Difference

Nivea became a leader in the skin cream category by creating strong points of difference on the benefits of "gentle," "protective," and "caring." As they leveraged their brand equity into categories such as deodorants, shampoos, and cosmetics Nivea noticed that it is important to create points of parity before they could introduce their brands' points of difference. Nivea's points of difference of gentle, protective, and caring were sort of valueless unless consumers believed that its product will perform well. Once points of parity were established, Niveas heritage and other associations could be introduced as compelling points of difference. (Keller, 1998)

Conclusion:
Over the years, Nivea Brand has primarily grew through Nivea Crme, and it had acquired a unique and widely-understood brand identity as a caretaker of the skin, throughout the world, most user were first introduced to Nivea crme during their childhood, and learning that it was a product that could be used by the entire family to satisfy all kinds of need. Currently Nivea has been honourably nominated again as the most trusted Brand in Europe, and for that it implicated the customers perception towards Nivea brand, as trustworthy, and for a brand to gain the trust from its customer, it takes a lot of effort to achieve that goal. Nivea company as one of the internationally leading companies for skin and personal care, they want to be close to consumer, offering them compelling and innovative products, Nivea Company enjoy its brand universal trust, and according to the company it aimed to achieve the goal below in the future:

Dynamic Growth - aiming to continuously increase our world market share. Worldwide Presence - focus on markets with above-average growth potential.
Our key focus countries include Western Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, and India.

Strong Brands - Nivea brands are internationally successful. They aim to

realizing state-of-the-art skin care, combining systematic consumer orientation, reliable quality, and a tangible brand personality.

Success through Closeness - know what appeals to consumers. At the

same time, think ahead and anticipate consumer wishes with innovations.

Nivea Brand Audit

Compelling Innovations - develop effective cosmetic solutions for
consumers, drawing on more than 125 years of experience and state-of-the-art biological methods.

Dedicated Employees - Hard work development shape unique corporate

culture.

Attractive Employer - employees' high degree of identification with the

Company combined with a high level of commitment. Reinforce this by offering comprehensive professional development and training programs (Beiersdorf, 2008)

Recommendation:
Increase Male target audience
As we can see from Niveas product hierarchy, 7 out of 10 products were developed to suit female customers, and all of the advertisements prior 1986 were only targeted to female market, that has caused Nivea lost of its chance to occupied more market share. And even through after the Nivea product diversification strategy in 1980s they started to focus on the male target market, but until nowadays, we still can see the product that Nivea produced to targeted female market are way much more than males.

Counterfeiting
According to the article: Plagiarism on the internet by Business solution Gmbh The rate of counterfeit branded goods on the internet is currently Approximately 37 percent, depending on the brand (see table). For the German eBay Web site www.ebay.de alone that constitutes a countervalue of 11 million a year. On behalf of 10 manufacturers of consumer goods like Gillette, Lancaster and Beiersdorf (Manufacturer of brands such as Nivea) (Business solution Gmbh, 2007) Refer to appendix.11 The counterfeiting brand that intimidate the Niveas brand image, and equity, with the unknown ingredient of the counterfeits, not only it damage customer confidence towards the brand but also is destroying other extended brand of Nivea. Therefore action needs to be taken, to avoid the counterfeits damage the brand image, things like unique corporate laser sticker, or production line serial number etc.

Nivea Brand Audit

Reference