MB959 Brand Strategy & Plan (For Aisha | Typhoo Tea)

This individual assignment – to provide a Brand Strategy & Plan for a brand to compete effectively in its respective market is worth 100% of the final grade.

This assignment allows you, as the Brand Manager, to assess, evaluate and recommend a Brand Strategy and provide a subsequent Brand Plan for a brand of your choice from the list provided below. You will (and should) apply what you have learned from the class to make your chosen brand a success.

You can choose ONE of the following brands to evaluate and provide a sound and viable Brand Plan for the year July 2025 – June 2026. The brand you can choose from are as follows:

Option One: For Aisha

A brand that is recognised as one of, if not THE UK’s leading halal baby food brand and a brand that has experienced consistent year on year growth since its inception in 2015. However, For Aisha operates in an incredibly challenging market – Baby Food & Drink with competitors such as the market leader Ella’s Kitchen, retailer own label as well as emerging challengers such as Little Freddies amongst others.
Your task is to create a brand strategy and plan and advise how ‘For Aisha’ should compete within its respective market. Please refer to ‘UK Baby Food and Drink Market Report 2025’ Mintel Report (https://store.mintel.com/report/uk-baby-food-and-drink-market-report) that will help you understand the market and may provide some initial information to help get you started.

Option Two: Typhoo Tea

Founded in 1903, Typhoo Tea is one of Britain’s oldest and most recognised tea brands, known for its rich heritage and traditional product offerings. Typhoo Tea was also the first pre-packaged tea brand in the UK. However, in recent years, the brand has struggled to maintain relevance in a fast-evolving beverage market characterised by changing consumer preferences, rising interest in health & wellness, and the emergence of boutique, own label and premium tea brands. Despite its legacy, Typhoo has lost market share and consumer mindshare and unfortunately entered administration in November 2024 amid falling sales and spiralling debts. In December 2024, Typhoo Tea was acquired out of administration by Manchester-based vape manufacturer Supreme for £10.2m.

Your task is to create a brand strategy and plan for the new owners advising as to how Typhoo Tea should compete within its respective market and revitalise its brand. Please refer to ‘Tea & Other Hot Drinks – UK – 2025’ Mintel Report (https://store.mintel.com/report/uk-tea-and-other-hot-drinks- market-report) that will help you understand the market and may provide some initial information to help get you started.
The above brands have been chosen due to the availability of secondary data both online as well as via the Universities list of databases that you have access to. As you will learn, getting access to information on a brand that you do not work on can be somewhat difficult hence the restrictions in

place and this is to help you with tackling the assignment and learning how to create the ultimate document – the Brand Plan.

MB959 Task

Your role is to act as the Brand Manager for your chosen brand from above and advise how the brand should compete within its respective market.

In this respect, you need to:

• Undertake a Brand Audit and evaluate the brand including brand identity, positioning, and equity etc.
• Understand the market in which it operates (ie trends, competitors, customers etc) ensuring you draw upon secondary data and use this data to inform decision making.
• Provide a sound and viable Brand strategy and plan and use of the Marketing Mix which will enable your brand to succeed which could include elements such as Visual identity updates etc. It all depends upon your analysis and evaluation undertaken as part of the Brand Diagnosis.

Your role is to propose whatever brand strategy and plan you deem suitable, but you must ensure it is sufficiently justified from analysis, evidence, reasoning and the use of wider reading / theories to help underpin decision making.

This exercise requires you to collect your own secondary data from multiple online and offline sources in order to understand the environment, the brand as well as the consumer but you are free to do your own secondary research and data gathering. As advised above, you MUST read and use the Mintel Report at a minimum. This is more than sufficient for the purposes of this assignment. You MUST NOT contact the brand owner / company in question or any associated staff/employees of the business or undertake any Primary Research of any kind.

The key to doing well is as follows:

-Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of Branding principles and theories
-Be informative, engaging and visual in your presentation
-Show analysis and reasoning behind thinking
-Ensure you present the Brand Diagnosis; Brand Strategy & Tactical Execution
-Persuade the examiner (i.e. Me) that your plan is the best course of action for the brand.

Your assignment will be graded against the marking criteria (see below).