The University of Pretoria is an international institution that has seen many of its alumni carry its good reputation and high standards into the global community. A well rounded student is one who has not only achieved academically, but also has learnt life skills through exposure to different people from all walks of life. The Core Student Centre is the heart of the University's campus that belongs to the students. It is a place where students will feel like they belong, and be unconsciouslyb encouraged to interact with fellow students. Branding in architecture is the vehicle through which centralised management,student ownership and consistency in high standards of service will keep the Core Student Centre as the hub of student activity on the University's campuses. The main campus in Hatfield is the pilot project, then the rest of the University's campuses will have their student centres adapted to have the Core brand be a campus-wide initiative. The students will then know to expect nothing but high quality standards associated with the brand. Copyright 2008, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bhebhe, T 2008, Rejuvenation of the campus core, MInt(Prof) dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11272008-154959 / > C169/eo / Dissertation (MInt(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Architecture / unrestricted

Background: Recent years, M&amp;As have increased sharply. Brand as one of the most precious assets has unavoidably been taken into consideration in these deals. Company can gain great benefit when handle acquired brand properly. Responding to rebranding issue, a clear designed rebranding strategy is considered a solution to deal with it, and brand architecture can be a useful tool to help adjusting the relationship between acquiring and acquired brand.  Aim: The purpose of this research is to explore how firms can strengthen its corporate brand after acquired a strong product brand through proper rebranding strategy and well designed brand architecture. Definitions: Brand: a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition. Rebranding: the creation of a new name, term, symbol, design or a combination of them for an established brand with the intention of developing a differentiated (new) position in the mind of stake holders and competitors. Brand architecture: the relationship among and between corporate, company (subsidiary), and product brands. Such relationships embrace products and services, or a mixture of the two across the hierarchy of brands. Results: There are possible options that companies can strength its corporate brand by acquired product brand, when company take brand integration strategy. Moreover, choosing suitable brand architecture during brand integration process is very important for a company

During the last decades, the tourism industry has become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world. The growth has in turn led to traditional marketing techniques such as branding being applied to places and destinations. The concept of destination branding is concerned with creating an image which positively can influence consumer’s choice of destinations. Conditions surrounding organizations working with destination branding, so called destination marketing organizations is very complex. This highlights a need for effective management, leading to managerial activities such as stakeholder management, partnership creation and brand architecture being key factors in destination branding success. The purpose of this study is consequently to investigate the antecedents of successful destination marketing focusing on stakeholder management, partnerships and brand architecture. Based on a literature review, three research questions were created. A case study has been carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with destination marketing organization from three Swedish regions. This study reveals that stakeholders are vital for the destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and their businesses. Therefore they have a clear understanding of which groups and individuals are stakeholders to their brand. The focus lies on the primary stakeholders and the DMOs are taking a motivating and caring role of the stakeholders, treating them with respect and appreciation. Collaborating within partnerships constitutes a large part of the daily work of the regional DMO's activities, and is often based on a need or possibility of creating an activity or product to improve the destination brand. Important factors to consider when creating partnerships have been identified, as well as ingredients for a successful partnership and what DMOs are expecting from their partnerships in terms of outcomes. Finally this study concludes that the regional destination marketing organizations are not fully applying any classic brand architecture strategies. Instead they are adopting a mix of umbrella brand and endorsed brand with selective communication of the brands in the region where they choose which brand should be communicated depending on which customer group is being targeted.

Multi-brand portfolios are characterized by comprising many brands in the same product category. Companies that have chosen to organize their products according to this strategy are facing both possibilities, such as expanding the accessible market size, and challenges such as how to organize the brands, their individual roles and their relation and position to the other brands in the category to maximize revenues. To address these aspects of multi-brand portfolios, I have investigated four product categories where multiple brands are represented at Mölnlycke Health Care, Unilever, Fagerhult and L’Oréal; how the multi-brand portfolios are organized, how the segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are done and what advantages and disadvantages that are associated with this strategy. My conclusions are that multi-brand portfolios can be organized in many different ways and to become successful, they have to be set in relation to the company’s whole brand architecture. Segmentation, positioning and product differentiation are important tools to differentiate the brands and to match them against distinct and specific customer needs. However, the importance and the function of each of them may depend on the overall brand and product organization. The main benefits of having many brands in the same product category are the opportunity to offer a complete solution for the customer and to reach a larger market by meeting diverse customer needs and preferences. The drawbacks are the risks for cannibalization, high marketing and administration costs and confusion among customers if they cannot distinguish between the multiple brands.

Branding strategies in the context of startup companies has been vaguely investigated. This is surprising since companies in the early startup phase recognize a need to quickly create brand equity in order to differentiate themselves from competitors to rise above the clutter in the market space. The objective of this study is therefore to investigate what branding strategies Swedish technology startup companies employ to create brand equity. Founders of four Swedish startup companies within the technology industry has been interviewed in order to gain insight in the context of startup companies and what branding strategies they employ. The authors present some common denominators between the branding strategies that are used. It is concluded that it is crucial for startups to create brand awareness. It is also recognized that startups rarely communicate company values. Instead, functional benefits and product characteristics are often communicated. Lastly, it appears that the overarching branding strategy of the studied startup companies is their emphasis on the importance of being perceived as different compared to competitors.

In this study the relationship between three companies brand strategies and business strategies were investigated based on Aaker’s view on brand architecture. The concept and its strategies are characterized by the driving roles brands possess. At the top of the spectrum, “House of Brands” allows the brands to have the entire driver role which decreases moving downwards on the spectrum, first comes “Endorsed Brands” where the master brand has a little driver role, followed by “Subbrands” where the master brand and the subbrand share the driver roles. At the bottom “Branded House” strategy can be found, it is characterized by allowing the master brand to have the entire driver role. Considering (Porter, 1998) and his three generic strategies, three companies: Colgate-Palmolive Company, Kellogg’s, BMW Group and their relationship between brand and business strategy was investigated. All of these three companies are characterized by possessing leading roles within their industries where they operate. All three companies, BMW Group, Kellogg’s and Colgate-Palmolive Company differentiate themselves with help of the brand strategies. In the Kellogg’s case, except the “House of Brands” strategy, they also use “Endorsed Brands” and “Subbrands”. The BMW Group applies “House of Brands” and “Branded House” to achieve differentiation. When it comes to Colgate-Palmolive Company, the main difference is that, both BMW Group and Kellogg’s achieve differentiation through applying several brand strategies. Colgate-Palmolive Company’s differentiation efforts is limited to the “House of Brands” strategy. Despite their different choices of brand strategies the study shows that each company achieves differentiation. Furthermore, the study shows that one differentiation can also be achieved by implementing a single brand strategy, as in the case with Colgate-Palmolive Company. However, the study shows that each of the investigated companies succeeds to target the desired segments and position their offerings on specific attributes.

In business, acquisitioning is a tool that can be used to prosper growth. With all acquisitions comes a responsibility to fit the brand(s) into the existing organization. The purpose of this thesis has been to conduct a market research of the dehumidifier industry in Sweden and to develop a marketing plan for Telcho, a declining brand that recently was acquired by the Baffin Delker group. An explanatory case study was conducted and revealed that the Swedish market is attractive to enter. The entry should be focused on the construction segment and the products distributed foremost through rental companies. The aftermarket network should be expanded and outsourced to repair shops throughout the country. The goal for the future will be to meet the two core needs of the customers which is product quality and minimum downtime. If managed properly this time, Telcho has all the potential to increase its market share and be a strong player on the market again.

Brand portfolios of multinational firm are a complex organism which is managed by headquarter of organization, in particular by the brands architecture and rebranding. The distributors create a direct feedback relationship from the market and they significantly influence any success of brands. The specific work of marketing personnel with brands is thus influenced by many stakeholders on the market and, in consequence, the specific work becomes a complex marketing activity. This master thesis is concerned with the architecture of the specific portfolio of 3M and the work with its brands. The aim is (i) to map architecture of the specific portfolio of 3M House of Brands and (ii) to assess rebranding form 2015 and (iii) to analyze the work with 3M brands and to formulate recommendation for improvements of the work with 3M. The first part is considers the architecture of brands from a theoretical viewpoint which provides a basis for the mapping of 3M House of Brands. There is also specified marketing research methodology which is applied in the practical part of the thesis concerned with specific secondary data, questionnaire survey and deep interviews. In the practical part of the master thesis there is analyzed 3M Case Study, in which there is described and assessed the empirical research of 3M brands. The research consists of two parts: (1) questionnaire survey orientated on B2B distributors, and (2) deep interviews carried out with 3M marketing and special personnel. The comparison and synthesis of more qualitative data appears that the most important result. The 3M perspectives of the marketing personnel and the distributors on the selection of brand activities differ in spite the fact that their aims are similar. The key recommendation of this thesis is, therefore, to give more importance to preferences of the market and create upon this empirical basis more effective branding activities.

This bachelor thesis is conducted as a Minor Field Study (MFS) in Sri Lanka, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The tourism industry have become a key factor for economic growth in several developing countries. A section of branding which refers to branding of a whole country is place branding. Place branding is seen as a complex process which involves multiple parts of the country. In order to ease for brand managers and to develop the theory of place branding, Hanna and Rowley (2011) have developed a new model of place branding. The model is named the Strategic place brand management model (SPBM- model) and consists of components which are argued to be essential parts in the process of branding a place. Developing countries have a need for place branding practices in order to create economic growth. The SPBM-model could therefore be a useful contribution to the research field of place branding in developing countries. The research questions of this research was therefore firstly to see how Sri Lanka work with the components in the SPBM-model, and second to find out which components in the SPBM-model that can be seen as important based on Sri Lankan conditions. This to answer the purpose of this thesis: explore how the SPBM-model can be applied on the process of branding Sri Lanka. The study was made through a case study of the developing country of Sri Lanka. In order to gain data, seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with officials working with branding Sri Lanka as a tourism destination. By putting the SPBM-model on the Sri Lankan place branding process it can be interpreted that all components are tightly connected to each other, and some parts seems to be more important for Sri Lanka then others. If Sri Lanka put more time and effort in the three components of infrastructure, stakeholders and evaluation, also the other six components of the SPBM-model (identity, brand experience, WOM, architecture, communication andarticulation) indirect will be affected in a positive way.