1、 外文翻译 原文 Brand governance: The New Agenda in brand management MaterialSource: Journal of Brand Management Author: Helm,Clive;Jones,Richard It is now almost a clich to say that for many organisations, especially those in mature industries, brands are their most valuable assets, whether at the corpora
2、te or product level. Awareness of the value of brands has grown in recent decades, particularly throughout the 1980s mergers and acquisitions frenzy, which prompted some consumer goods companies to become alert to the equity held in their brands and begin valuing them on balance sheets, a trend that
3、 has been adopted more widely, accounting conventions permitting. As is often pointed out, a strong brand creates superior value and competitive advantage that is sustainable and, if well managed and nurtured, can be a long-term source of future value. Although other key resources may have finite li
4、vesmaterial assets and research and development will be amortised, key people may leave and proprietary technologies become commoditiesa successful brand is a long-term strategic asset. Of course, none of this is new. Although some sectors such as public and non-profit may still be moving up the lea
5、rning curve, others, particularly the fast-moving consumer goods industry, have long been conscious of the importance of brands as key assets and the criticality to corporate well being attached to managing them successfully. As a result, there is now a considerable body of practitioner expertise an
6、d academic theory that can be brought to bear in creating,building and valuing brand equity. However, what is new is a growing realisation that this equity held in brands, which forms an ever-increasing proportion of many companies balance sheets, stockmarket worth and is a prime source of tomorrows
7、 cashflow, increasingly needs to be safeguarded and secured against risk. This special issue of the Journal of Brand Management on Brand Governance is therefore timely. But why has awareness of the whole issue of Brand Governance grown in recent years? We suggest that there are six major, overarchin
8、g reasons that present growing challenges and threats to brand equity for the future: 1. More uncertain and fiercely competitive industry environments: It is no secret that, over the past few decades, many industries have been characterised by overcapacity, dramatically rising market uncertainty and
9、 hyper-competition, a trend that continues. This is largely as a result of factors such as globalisation and new technologies that have lowered barriers to entry, as well as the ongoing deregulation and privatisation of some sectors such as airlines and telecommunications, which may have once enjoye
10、d a degree of protection. In the last 30 years, for example, the global airl ine industry has generally shown such low or negative profitability that, in many other businesses, would be considered unsustainable. 1 Some major legacy operators have failed, others have formed alliances, partnerships or
11、 merged in one way or another. As the status of their brands decline, fi rms in various industries have found out the hard way that, as Peter Drucker 2 once famously put it, their prime purpose has now become to create a customer as many of the consumers they could depend on in less-competitive time
12、s have been tempted elsewhere. In considering how they can compete in fiercely competitive and turbulent markets, some have begun to look to their brands as key to developing relationships with customers; as a result, there has been growing industry and academic attention paid to the quality of cust
13、omer brand experience as a source of value. 2. Ever more empowered consumers: At the same time, consumers are becoming increasingly intolerant of any gap between what a brand promises and the experience it delivers when they actually encounter and engage with it. New distribution and communications
14、channels, particularly the Internet, have given buyers, influencers and other stakeholders more information and choice of products and brand experiences than ever before. Consumers are also generally better informed, educated, sceptical, more self-directed and increasingly seeking value in the form
15、of self-realisation from the brands that they feel are right for them. One threat to brand equity is that they are also generally less loyal; if dissatisfi ed with a brand experience, they can often switch and go elsewhere easily and at little or no cost and there is much evidence to show that they
16、do. These postmodern consumers of the experiential, digital, price-transparent economy are difficult to reach, let alone engage with, and capturing long-term value from them is getting harder. Unless brands consistently deliver what they promise, they will find these consumers loyalty harder to achi
17、eve. 3. Line and brand extension proliferation: In a simpler age, a brand often represented a single product line in a single category. Today, a proliferation of line and brand extensions as firms exploit their brand assets means that many brands now act as an umbrella for an ever growing number of
18、extensions and variants, often in several different and possibly unrelated areas. 60 or 70 or so years ago, in the United Kingdom, Unilevers Persil was a white washing powder offered in a few different sized cardboard box packs and sold primarily in small corner shops: now, the brand is applied acro
19、ss several scores of home cleaning products in a large number of different categories, all bound by its proposition of cleaning and caring Coordinating and delivering consistent promised quality of brand experience across so many brand variants is clearly increasingly diffi cult to manageeven more s
20、o for service-based products that are more subject to variability. 4. A growing number of distribution and communication touchpoints: Not only is the experience a brand promises being attached to a wider variety of product lines and categories, but it is also being offered through an ever-widening a
21、nd more intricate network of distribution and communication channels, especially with the advent of digital media. Consumers expect consistency of brand expe rience at every touchpoint throughout their journey from first brand awareness, through trial and to repeat purchase. Again, in this rapidly d
22、eveloping context, coherent brand experience is becoming harder to deliver. 5. Increased use of strategic partnerships in delivering brands to consumers: Another factor contributing to the growing difficulty of managing delivery of promised experience is the increasing use by brand owners of various
23、 forms of strategic partnerships such as subcontracting, licensing, franchising or joint ownership in all the stages of creating and delivering the experience to final consumersin manufacturing, service delivery, distribution and marketing communications. These arrangements bring the major dangers o
24、f complexity, lack of control and conflict inherent in all joint ventures to the brand delivery process, thus posing another risk to equity. 6. The risks of using social media: Brand marketers have sought to exploit the opportunities offered by the growth of social media. But, although they can spre
25、ad the good news about a brand like never before, the reverse is also true; social media have also amplifi ed the perils to brand equity of experience delivery failure. Bad news can now spread like wildfi re and severely damage a brand s reputation and equity more widely and rapidly than ever. Brand
26、 managers also increasingly risk ceding control and even a degree of possession of the brand to consumers and other interested stakeholders, promoting recent debate about where and with whom ownership of the brand actually lies. If brand equity is a prime source of a firms value, then these issues a
27、re the concern of senior managers as well as brand marketers as they lie at the heart of an organisations capability to create and sustain long-term value. However, although brand equity is increasingly being seen as critical to an organisations future value creation capability, at the same time, it
28、 is becoming more fragile. The risks to brand equity of being damaged or dissipated are rising as the potential hazards inherent in managing brands and brand experience multiply. All this has prompted the attention now being paid to the role of Brand Governance. The papers submitted for this Special
29、 Issue refl ect the growing interest in this important area by both practitioners and scholars alike, and those selected for publication here offer a variety of fascinating and relevant perspectives on this new strategic imperative in brand management. 译文 品牌管理：品牌管理的新议程 资料来源：品 牌管理的杂志 作者：克莱夫，琼斯，理查德 这是
30、一个老生常谈的问题，现在几乎可以说，对于许多组织，尤其是那些成熟的产业，品牌是他们最宝贵的资产，无论是对于企业还是产品的水平。近几十年来对品牌的价值观念的普及，特别是整个 80年代兼并和收购狂潮，这促使一些消费品公司对他们的品牌持有的股权高度警觉，并开始重视他们的资产负债表，一个已经得到广泛应用，会计惯例允许的趋势。正如人们经常指出的，一个强大的品牌创造更高的价值和竞争优势，这是可持续的，如果管理得当，可以长久的为以后创造更多的价值。 尽管其他的重要资源是有限的 ,物质资产以及研究和发展将会摊销 , 核心人物可能会离开，专有技术成为商品 -一个成功的品牌是一项长期的战略资产。 当然，这一切都不
31、是最新的。尽管如公共和非财务管理信息系统等某些行业可能仍然是呈经验曲线向上移动，其他的，特别是快速消费品行业，长期以来作为主要资产和企业的福利，具有对他们成功地连接到临界品牌管理的重要性。因此，现在有一定专业知识的执业机构 ,应重视品牌资产。然而 ,人们日益认识到品牌所具有和带来的权益。使许多公司的资产负债表比例不断增长，股市的价值，成为日后的现金流量的主要来 源，越来越需要得到保障以及对风险的防范。这种对品牌的品牌管理以及品牌治理是十分及时的。为什么近年来会对整个品牌管理问题的认识在深化呢 ?我们认为 ,有六个方面。主要原因是目前越来越多的挑战以及在未来品牌权益将受到的威胁。 1.更多的不确
32、定性和激烈竞争的行业环境： 众所周知 ,在过去几十年里，许多行业的特点是产能过剩，大幅上升的市场不确定性和宣传竞争，这一趋势还将延续。这主要是由于诸如全球化和新技术而降低了门槛 ,以及正在进行的放松管制诸如一些航空公司和电信部门私有化，这可能曾享有一定程度的保护。在过去的 30年里，例如 ，全球航空业普遍表现出如此低或负利润，在许多其他业务，这些将被视为不可持续的。一些主要的传统运营商均告失败，其他的结成联盟，合伙经营或合并，或其他方式。面对自己的品牌地位下降的状态 , 各行各业已经发现了这是一条艰难的道路。正如彼得德鲁克曾经说的那样。他们的主要目的 ,现在已成为“创建一个客户作为消费者” ，
33、并通过竞争为自己赢得更多的消费者，并思考如何才能在竞争激烈的市场立足。一些人开始寻求重点发展自己的品牌以及与客户的关系，因此 ,不断增长的行业以及学术界的关注为优质客户提供有价值的品牌体验。 2.日益增长的消费者的权力：同时 ,消费者变的更加挑剔 ,注重品牌的承诺。新的分销渠道和通讯，尤其是互联网 ,提供给买家 , 其他利益相关者更多的信息和经验的产品以及对品牌的选择比以往任何时候都具有影响力。消费者也能更好地了解，更多自我导向和愈加地以自我实现的形式去寻求价值从他们感觉到的品牌是对他们的权利。品牌资产的一个威胁是，目前他们普遍都不是忠实客户。如果对某个品牌的体验不满意，他们往往很容易就转到其
34、他的品牌，并且不需要花钱 - 有大量证据表明，他们确实是这么做的。这些后现代消费者的体验， 价格透明的经济是很难 实现的 ， 更不用说让他们参与讨论 ，以及长期从他们身上获取利润是越来越难了。除非他们承诺新品牌会不断推出，否则他们会发现提高这些消费者的忠诚度是难以实现的。 3.线和 品牌延伸扩散 ：在一个简单的时代，一个品牌往往代表一个类别的单一产品线。 现如今 ，品牌延伸的线，利用其作为连接均方根品牌资产的增殖意味着，现在许多品牌伞的行为作为一个变种不断的扩展和越来越多 ，经常在几个不同的，也可能是没有关系的地区。六七十年前，在英国，联合利华的碧浪洗衣粉是白色的 ,还提供了几种不同尺寸的纸箱
35、包装和销售，主要在小商店的角落。而现在，该品牌被应 用在清洗了数十家大量不同类别的产品。所有受其命题的 “ 清洁和关怀 ” ，协调和提供如此众多型号一致的品牌体验的质量承诺，显然是越来越难管理。 4.一个接触点的分布和传播越来越多 ：不仅是体验品牌的作出的承诺被重视，产品线和类别也更多元化。但它通过提供分销和沟通渠道在不断的拓宽，以及更复杂的网络分布和沟通渠道，特别是随着数字媒体的出现。消费者希望从第一品牌的品牌意识在每一个接触点体验的一致性整个过程，通过试验和重复购买。同样，在这个高速发展的大背景下，连贯的品牌体验也是越来越难实现的。 5.更多地利用战略伙伴关系，为 消费者提供品牌：另一个因
36、素，促使了管理经验的承诺在兑现中日益增长的困难是由于各种形式的战略伙伴关系的品牌拥有者越来越多，如分包使用，许可，特许经营或创造和提供丰富的经验，共同拥有最终消费者阶段 - 生产，提供服务， 分销和营销传播 。这些措施带来的复杂性的危险，在所有的控制和合资企业的内在冲突缺少品牌传递的程序，从而造成另一种风险与权益。 6.利用社会媒体的风险：品牌营销者试图利用由社会媒体的发展所带来的机会。但是，尽管他们可以传递关于一个品牌的前所未有的好消息，反过来也是如此，社会媒体也可能放大了危险，以品牌 资产传递失败的经验。现在坏消息不胫而走，并严重损害了品牌的声誉和权益，比以往任何时候都更加广泛和迅速。品牌
37、经理也越来越多地控制风险，甚至削减的品牌占有程度，消费者及其他利益相关者，并且就他们的品牌拥有权展开辩论。 如果品牌资产是一个企业利润的主要来源，那么这些问题是针对高级管理人员，以及品牌营销的关注，因为他们在一个组织的能力是核心所在，创造并维持长期价值。然而，尽管品牌权益对于一个组织的未来价值创造能力被看作是至关重要的，同时 ,它正变得更加脆弱。被损坏或消耗的品牌资产的风险正在上升的潜在危害影响着管理品牌 固有的品牌体验。这一切都促使我们注意投入到品牌管理中所起到的作用。 对于这个特殊问题所提交的论文都反映了从业者和学者都在这一重要领域的兴趣与日俱增，以及那些选择在这里出版并提供这种新的品牌管理战略需要一个吸引人的和相关的各种观点。
