BRAND REPORT –OUTLINE

\Brand Report Guideline

Brand Sense

Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, & Sound.

Why Brand Sense?

Brand Sense is one of Martin Lindstrom’s popular and very insightful books on brands. While teaching
brand management, I have come to realize that the best way to understand brands is the practical
way. Discussing concepts in class is one small part of understanding brands. Putting the concepts to the
experiential test is the best way to learn. Thus, the best way to share the idea (or the contents) of this
book with you was in the form of a term report.

I lay a lot of importance on the term report. I believe it to be one of the tools in this course which
enable me to judge how well most of you have understood the concepts discussed in class. Note that I
wrote ‘most of you’ in the previous line. There are two reasons for this. The first reason - modesty; I
don’t claim to make ALL of you understand (and agree) with everything. The second reason – every
group has a few free riders. If you aren’t working on the report, you don’t know much about what we
discussed about in this course!

At the end of it all, my aim is to make you enjoy doing the report and to view it as a learning tool. A
lot of branding might be very abstract, but it is both an art and a science. You learn best when you put
the two together!

Report – Basic Format:

1. The report should not exceed 30 pages. This page limit includes any appendices. Be concise but
not at the cost of the quality of the report.
2. Please email your report to me at imranali787@gmail.com No physical copies of the report are
required.
3. You are required to submit the report seven days from the day of the final. All reports should
be mailed before midnight of the seventh day. Reports that come on Day 8 will not be
accepted.
4. Do not plagiarize. You do that, you fail.

How the report works:

Various parts of the book, deemed relevant with your course, have been selected. Your report is
divided into five different parts. The details of the five parts are mentioned in this document. Marks
will be deducted if any example is provided in the report that is from the book.

What is Brand sense all about?

Before you move onto the actual work required from you in this report, it is important and necessary to
understand what brand sense talks about. This book is not just some whimsical idea of a brand

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strategist/consultant, but a result of an idea and a brand study (conducted by Milward Brown). The
study included both quantitative and qualitative tests in thirteen countries. The aim of brand sense is
to make marketers realize that to gain consumer loyalty, it is not enough to engage only two senses of
the consumers. The world has changed very much and brands must embrace this change and involve
consumers. Involving consumers and developing an everlasting bond with them requires engaging all
five senses.

Part I: The five-dimensional brand

Refer to Chapter 2, ‘Some Companies are doing it Right’. Read the chapter from page 18 to better
understand how you can answer the following questions.

1. In the handout, the author talks about the ‘Visual Brand’.

You have to select a local brand and examine it visually. Explain how the brand has visually
established itself (with the use of colors, fonts etc). Is the visual identity of the brand stronger
and better than its competitors (compare with one competitor brand)?

How do consumers (both users and non-users) relate with this visual identity? Do consumers
feel that there is a considerable difference between the identities of the brand and its
competitor?

[For this purpose you must talk with at least five users and five non-users of the brand. Provide
details of the interviews in the appendix].

2. What role does sound play in a brand’s identity?

List three brands which have a distinct sound. What is the philosophy behind this sound?

Play the sound of the brand to consumers. Were they able to identify the sound? What were
their feelings about the sound and the brand? Explain briefly.

[Do not give examples from the book. If you give example of foreign brands, ensure they are
available in Pakistan. This applies to all the questions asked in this document].

3. Does smell constitute an important part of brand identity? Not all brands can have a particular
smell. Do you agree or disagree? Explain with relevant examples and support your answer with
quality arguments.

Identify three brands which have a particular ‘brand smell’. What role does the ‘smell’ play in
the brand’s message?

4. The handout talks about the brand touch – which is defined as the ‘texture of a brand’. What
do you understand from that?

For what kind of brands will texture be important to a consumer? Feeling the product is an
important part of usage but does the consumer really think about it?

To answer the above, you are required to:

- Select four brands
- Talk to consumers (both users and non-users) about the texture of the brands.

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[Note: You may choose whichever brand you want to but please make sure that two
competitor brands are selected. Thus, in total you are selecting four brands from two, not
four, different industries].

5. Taste, like the other senses, plays a very important role in our lives. Few brands pay attention
towards creating a distinct taste that can become a part of their identity.

You are required to select two brands (and their respective competitors) and explain briefly
what, if any, is the distinctive taste of each brand. Is the consumer able to differentiate
between the brand and its competitor on the basis of taste? Explain.

[Note: For consumer insight, you will have to conduct a consumer study. Details of how the
survey was conducted must be provided in the appendix. For e.g., whether a focus group was
done or a questionnaire was filled out. Also, the questions asked must be provided. The survey
must not be of less than ten people and must include users and non-users].

Good Luck!