Understanding brand ratings

[florianmeier89]

Hi all,

I'm having difficulties understanding the brand rating system in Cap Lab (think it is similar with cap 2 but the AI is much smarter so i'm depending more on brand rating).

In the situation of the highest difficulty level, I've tried to get a technological advantage with the bed product. This has put me in the situation where I've had better production quality and better timber quality (by my own timber facility), selling beds through the furniture retailer. Still, when the competition enters the bed market with only 1/10 of the amount of advertising money i'm spending (highest rating) and lower product/production quality, they outrun my rating in a split second ( both use unique branding) leaving me with empty hands and bankruptcy.

So my question is, how can I at least keep up with the brand rating of the competition?

thnx!

[WilliamMGary]

I know the AI at least in Cap 2 used to rotate the advertising a lot to build their brand.

[Grashopa]

I haven't played in quite awhile, but the trick to building the brand was that continuously spending money stops giving you any returns. You have to set up 3 different media outlets and set your spend to the max for a short period of time. You'll see the brand rating go up 9 pts every month or so but after several months it will stop. So cut your spending down really low like 10k per media outlet and wait. After 6 months or a year you can try maxing the advertising across the 3 outlets again and you should again be able increase your brand rating another 40 pts or so.

If you instead put max into one media outlet and leave it there you will increase at 3 pts increments up to 15 or so then stall out. Your money at that point is wasted so you need to lower your spending. So you never want to just leave your spending at some fixed high number because once it stalls out you are throwing away money. And you need to use at least 3 different media outlets. Or just rotate through one at a time until they stall and move to another.

It may have changed, but at the time I played you had to micromanage it - just think of blitzing the ads then people ignore the ads so stop then media blitz again later.

I'll say as a suggestion that what should only matter is your level of spending and your level of spending in relation to the competitors at the same brand / product level. Less micro managing and more like a cost that goes up with competition as it should.

[azxcvbnm321]

It seems that you CMO will change media outlets automatically if you hire one. That makes it much easier on the human player. I had a habit of spending enough for 1-1.5 views per day, but after looking at my competitors, that was about 1/5th of what they were spending.