Week 3 of our course starts today! For Project 2, you will provide a brand analy

Week 3 of our course starts today! For Project 2, you will provide a brand analysis report on two competing brands to inform a company’s decisions on the direction of its branding strategy. The voice-over presentation, Branding-Concepts.mp4 (12:10), helps provide a foundation for branding concepts by introducing you to brand value, equity, strategies, and industry brand valuation approaches. The slides and script, Branding Concepts Slides & Script.pdf, are attached.
– The main Week 3 activities are:
Project 2: Conducting a Brand Audit
After reviewing the Slate Inc. case file and the branding elements, do the following:
A. Research Slate Inc.’s biggest two competitors:
Visit the websites of Slate’s two biggest competitors and review both scholarly and reliable nonscholarly sources to explore their branding decisions. Your research of the two companies should focus on the branding elements discussed in the previous step.
Deliverable: By the end of Week 3, provide a reference list derived from your research that has a minimum of four scholarly and 16 reliable, nonscholarly sources (20 in all; at least!). Company-based sources do not count!
The sources should be scholarly and reliable nonscholarly sources, such as Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, Barrons.com, Morningstar.com, Money, Forbes, Fortune, Statista, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review, as well as the UMGC Library databases, such as Ibis World, Hoover’s and ABI/INFORM. All sources need to be cited using APA formatting. In addition, explore the following branding websites for relevant content:
www.adage.com
www.adweek.com
www.brandchannel.com
www.ama.org
www.cmo.com
www.marketingprofs.com
B. Discuss the Competitors’ Branding Strategies:
Go to the discussion area and begin by posting your main response by Saturday midnight (latest!). Support argument with at least one source from the course reading, and three reliable nonscholarly sources derived from our own research. Then respond to at least two postings in the discussion group. Complete all discussion posts and responses by the end of Week 3 at midnight (latest!).
Students cannot see their classmates’ main posts until they post their own main posts. Also, once the week is over, the discussion will be locked, and no further posts (main posts or responses) will be possible. Accordingly, make sure that you post on time.