Quick answer
Kevin Lane Keller defines it this way: “Strategic brand management involves the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to build, measure, and manage brand equity” (Strategic Brand Management). Philip Kotler and Keller’s version in Marketing Management says strategic brand management “combines the design and implementation of marketing activities and programs to build, measure, and manage brands to maximize their value.” The job itself goes back to a three-page memo written at Procter & Gamble on 13 May 1931.
Brand management started as a staffing request.
On 13 May 1931, Neil McElroy, who later became Procter & Gamble’s chief executive, wrote a three-page memo asking for “brand men”. Each one would look after a single brand: its shipments, its advertising and promotion history, and how it was selling territory by territory. Assistant brand men would help with the detail.
That memo is still a decent job description. What changed since is the definition built around it. Here are the ones worth knowing, quoted from the original books, with what each adds.
Neil McElroy’s 1931 memo
Two details get lost in the retelling. It was an internal memo, not a letter. And it asked for a role, the “brand man”. The phrase “brand management” came into use later, once the role existed.
David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler open the brand management chapter of Brand Leadership (2000) with this same memo, which tells you how much of the discipline still traces back to it.
Kevin Lane Keller: Strategic Brand Management
“Strategic brand management involves the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to build, measure, and manage brand equity.”
Kevin Lane Keller, Strategic Brand Management (4th global edition, 2013; the same sentence appears in the 5th edition with Vanitha Swaminathan, 2019)
Keller then lays out the process in four steps:
- Identifying and developing brand plans
- Designing and implementing brand marketing programs
- Measuring and interpreting brand performance
- Growing and sustaining brand equity
Measuring sits in the middle of the definition and gets a full step of its own. Brand is the part of marketing people most often call hard to measure, and Keller doesn’t let anyone off: by his definition, a brand that nobody measures is a brand that nobody is managing.
Kotler and Keller: Marketing Management
“Strategic brand management combines the design and implementation of marketing activities and programs to build, measure, and manage brands to maximize their value.”
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management (14th edition, 2012, page 241)
This is the sentence most likely to be credited to the wrong book. It’s almost identical to Keller’s, but it comes from Marketing Management, written with Kotler, and it ends differently: “to maximize their value” instead of “brand equity”. Their four steps differ in the same small ways:
| Step | Keller, Strategic Brand Management | Kotler and Keller, Marketing Management |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identifying and developing brand plans | Identifying and establishing brand positioning |
| 2 | Designing and implementing brand marketing programs | Planning and implementing brand marketing |
| 3 | Measuring and interpreting brand performance | Measuring and interpreting brand performance |
| 4 | Growing and sustaining brand equity | Growing and sustaining brand value |
The first step is where they really differ. Kotler and Keller start with positioning, which I think is the better place to start. I’ve put the positioning definitions in a separate post on brand positioning.
Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2000): from brand management to brand leadership
“As a result, a new model is gradually replacing the classic brand management system at P&G and many other firms. The emerging paradigm, which we term the brand leadership model, is very different.”
David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler, Brand Leadership (2000)
The classic model they describe is McElroy’s: one brand, one manager. Their argument is that this no longer fits firms like P&G, and they set out the brand leadership model as its replacement. You’ll often see this book credited to Aaker alone. It was co-written.
Jean-Noël Kapferer: the business comes first
Kapferer’s The New Strategic Brand Management has a line, usually quoted from its first page (check the edition you’re citing), that I find more useful than most definitions: “You can’t build the brand without building the business.”
It’s the sentence I’d show a founder who thinks brand management means a new logo. Keep his books apart when you cite him, though. Strategic Brand Management (1994) and The New Strategic Brand Management (later editions) are different books, and quotes get swapped between them.
Does the AMA define brand management?
Not formally. The American Marketing Association’s dictionary defines “brand”, but it has no entry for “brand management”. The closest AMA text is an informal line in an article comparing marketing and advertising: “Brand management attempts to create a bond between customer and a particular company’s brand.”
If you see a confident “the AMA defines brand management as…” on another site, check it. The wording usually doesn’t exist on any AMA page.
Brand management definitions compared
| Author | Year | Source | Brand management is… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neil McElroy (P&G) | 1931 | Internal memo | one “brand man” responsible for each brand |
| Aaker and Joachimsthaler | 2000 | Brand Leadership | a classic model being replaced by brand leadership |
| Kotler and Keller | 2012 (14th edition) | Marketing Management | designing and implementing activities to build, measure and manage brands to maximise their value |
| Kevin Lane Keller | 2013 (4th edition) | Strategic Brand Management | designing and implementing programmes to build, measure and manage brand equity |
| Jean-Noël Kapferer | Later editions | The New Strategic Brand Management | “You can’t build the brand without building the business.” |
| AMA | Undated article | ama.org | an attempt “to create a bond between customer and a particular company’s brand” (informal) |
What this means if you don’t have a brand manager
Most startups and small marketing teams don’t have anyone with “brand” in their title. McElroy’s memo assumed a dedicated person per brand. The textbook definitions assume a process. In a small company, it usually ends up as a few tasks spread across people who are busy with something else.
The definitions still help, because their verbs give you a short list. Who builds the brand here? Who measures it, and how often? Who decides when to change it? If one of those has no name next to it, that’s the gap. My bet is that it’s the measuring.
Common misquotes to avoid
- The “build, measure, and manage brand equity” sentence is Keller’s Strategic Brand Management. The “to maximize their value” version is Kotler and Keller’s Marketing Management.
- McElroy’s 1931 document was a memo, and it proposed the “brand man” role. It didn’t coin “brand management”.
- Brand Leadership is by Aaker and Joachimsthaler, not Aaker alone.
- There is no formal AMA dictionary definition of brand management.
Frequently asked questions
What is brand management according to Keller?
“Strategic brand management involves the design and implementation of marketing programs and activities to build, measure, and manage brand equity” (Kevin Lane Keller, Strategic Brand Management).
What is brand management according to Philip Kotler?
In Marketing Management, Kotler and Keller write that strategic brand management “combines the design and implementation of marketing activities and programs to build, measure, and manage brands to maximize their value.”
Who started brand management?
It is usually traced to Neil McElroy’s memo at Procter & Gamble dated 13 May 1931, which proposed a “brand man” responsible for each brand.
What are the four steps of strategic brand management?
In Keller’s Strategic Brand Management: identifying and developing brand plans; designing and implementing brand marketing programs; measuring and interpreting brand performance; and growing and sustaining brand equity.
Does the AMA have a definition of brand management?
Not a formal one. Its dictionary defines “brand”. An informal ama.org article says brand management “attempts to create a bond between customer and a particular company’s brand.”
McElroy wanted one person who knew everything about one brand. Ninety-five years later that’s still a good test: ask who in your company could explain, today, how your brand is doing and why.
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