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Stand a chance to win a copy of Brand Management 101: 101 Lessons in Real-World Marketing by Mainak Dhar when you attempt this quiz now!

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THE BRAND MANAGEMENT 101 QUIZ

So you are a marketer? But are you really ready to take on the real world of marketing? Take this simple quiz and find out for yourself, and stand to win a copy of the best-selling Brand Management 101: 101 Lessons in Real World Marketing by Mainak Dhar!

1. What can marketers learn from a gentleman called Vilfredo Pareto?

	a.	Identify the few ideas that are likely to make up the bulk of your growth and focus your energy and resources against them.
	b.	Be careful if you’re planning to marry a penniless immigrant—she may just run away one day.
	c.	The systematic application of econometric tools and principles.

2. Your competition just introduced a costly new product feature. What could you do?

	a.	Use your existing knowledge and data on your consumer and market to quickly see if it makes sense from a consumer point of view. If it doesn’t, ignore it; if it does, see what you could do to counter it fast so you don’t lose out in the marketplace.
	b.	Hope that they’re wasting their money.
	c.	Do detailed evaluation including large-scale quantitative research and wait for the full data to come in before you commit yourself to a point of view.

3. What comes first in small stores in developing markets—distribution or consumer demand?

	a.	A little bit of both, though to be safe, start demand creation efforts very early—together with, if not before, any distribution effort.
	b.	What comes first—the chicken or the egg?
	c.	You would need more robust multiple regression data to really establish a causal relationship.

4. Which of these could you consider in extending a brand across multiple categories?

	a.	Equity fit, the potential to pay back into parent brand equity and your knowledge of what it takes to win in the new category.
	b.	How much added sales will it bring? That’s what matters at the end of the day, right?
	c.	There must be a good model somewhere for looking at such questions; you’d find that first.

5. Which of these would classify as an appropriate use of the concept of Cascading Choices?

	a.	Listing your spending choices by importance and ensuring you’re spending on the most important ones before spending on the others.
	b.	Prioritizing getting a cold beer vs. doing this silly quiz.
	c.	Using quantitative models to estimate the return on investment of alternative media vehicles and then using optimization software to generate an optimum mix.

6. What could you learn from the myth of Icarus in approaching pricing decisions?

	a.	Know how high you can go without getting burnt by crossing a critical price cliff.
	b.	Next time you want to fly, buy an airline ticket.
	c.	The importance of getting accurate data before taking any decision. Icarus should never have set out without properly simulating his flight path.

7. Your agency just presented an idea you don’t think would work. How could you react?

	a.	Say that you can’t buy it in its current form and explain just why it doesn’t meet your specific business needs.
	b.	Say tough luck and offer to buy beer in the evening.
	c.	Lay out a full analysis of all the positives and negatives referencing existing consumer and market data, and identify further research that may be needed to reach a conclusive decision.

8. What do residents of ancient Pompeii and marketers sometimes have in common?

	a.	They try and wish away potential bad news till it blows up in their faces.
	b.	They drink too much.
	c.	They could do with more accurate forecasting models.

9. Why is developing TV advertising like dating?

	a.	It’s all about the importance of making a strong visual impression, having empathy and not being boring.
	b.	Everyone claims to do it well, but only a few are any good at it.
	c.	Both are about inducing the right mix of rational and emotional responses among a desired target audience.

10. When is launching a new item not necessarily a good idea?

	a.	When it means adding more items than you can support through marketing or in stores, or when it comes at the expense of cannibalizing your current items.
	b.	When it means too much work.
	c.	It’s hard to say in the absence of some robust pre-market qualification that measures the potential of the new idea to build your business.

Terms and Conditions:
Scoring: Give yourself 10 points every time you answered (a), 5 points for (b) and 1 point for each (c). Add up your scores and use the key below to see how you did.

70-100 points means that you’re ready to take the world of real life marketing by storm!
40-70 points indicates that you probably need a refresher in some of the lessons, but at least you know the importance of being street-smart in addition to having theoretical knowledge.
0-40 points means that you probably studied pretty hard in college! Theoretical knowledge is an invaluable asset, so never lose it!

* Registered-users & members only

Brand Management 101 by Mainak Dhar is sponsored by the Marketing Institute of Singapore

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