What Brand Equity Studies Can Reveal

I have conducted brand equity studies for hundreds of brands over the past twenty years. In doing so, I have identified some patterns that tend to occur throughout the studies, patterns that it would be helpful for brand managers to understand. Here are some of the insights from those studies:

• Brands often have lower unaided awareness than their managers expected.
• There typically are far more competitors than those that the brand manager considers to be in the competitive set. 
• Competitors often come from outside of the organization-stipulated product or service category.
• Defining the competitive frame of reference properly makes a huge difference in positioning and managing the brand to its greatest advantage.
• Often, the brand manager gets the competitive frame of reference wrong compared to customer perceptions.
• For most brands, the brand associations vary widely between customers, indicating that the brand's intended unique value proposition is not consistently experienced.
• Nowadays, most brands (including competitive brands) deliver well against the most important category benefits.
• Often, competitive brands look more alike than they do different to customers. 
• Most brands lack relevant differentiation.
• Sometimes, a brand's personality attribute is its greatest differentiator.
• Emotional benefits are always more powerful than functional benefits.
• People downplay the importance of the brand itself. They are more focused on what the delivers to them.
• I can easily tell the following from brand equity studies: (1) whether the brand is based on deep customer insight, (2) whether the brand is well managed, (3) whether the category is nascent or mature, and (4) whether there are problems with pricing, distribution, product features, package design, brand messaging, marketing spend, continuous innovation or something else.

When a Brand's Problem is Not a Marketing Problem

Occasionally, I have encountered brand problems that are not marketing problems. As we conduct brand equity research for companies, we discover that the problem is not with the brand's promise, nor is it with the marketing communication. In fact, it is not with any of the typical brand equity dimensions (such as awareness and relevant differentiation) but rather it is with operational, service and quality issues. These are often detected through open-ended brand association responses and brand personality assessments among other metrics. 

I have always contended that delivery against the brand's promise is at least as important as the brand's promise itself. If a brand is delivering inferior products or horrible customer service or if other points of interaction with customers are broken, it doesn't matter what the brand promises or how good the marketing communication is, the brand will fail. It is important for a brand manager to know if the brand's products and services (including customer service, technical support and online interaction) are of the highest quality and responsive to customers' needs. A comprehensive brand equity measurement system will uncover these problems. 

Sometimes a brand manager needs to inform his or her organization of other issues that are standing in the way of brand and business success. An effective brand manager will know how to do this without placing blame, damaging egos or creating turf battles. The most important thing is to fix the problems.  Certainly, these are the issues about which a CEO needs to be informed.

Brand SWOT Analysis

Do you fully understand all of your brand's strengths and weaknesses? Do you understand its opportunities and threats including its brand positioning opportunities and threats? Do you know how to optimize its positioning? Have you identified your brand's critical vulnerabilities? Do you know what you need to do to take your brand to the next level? 

Is your brand plan based on these insights? Is your spending designed to leverage your brand's strengths and overcome or compensate for its weaknesses? 

Paraphrasing management guru Tom Peters, you can't manage it if you don't measure it. 

So, what can you do to identify your brand's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? You can start with a comprehensive brand audit. You can also conduct a wide variety of brand research. But, perhaps most importantly, you can conduct brand equity research.

Your brand equity research should be diagnostic and it should be comprehensive. It needs to include the five drivers of customer brand insistence - awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection - at a minimum. It should identify what your brand owns in the minds of its customers - its position. It should result in detailed brand positioning maps. Ideally, it also measures brand vitality and brand loyalty. It is helpful if it identifies all of a brand's associations and the brand's personality. And finally, it is essential that the research measures the same for competitive brands because no brand operates in a vacuum (or is positioned in a vacuum). 

If you would like help in measuring the equity of your brand and discovering its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) including its brand positioning opportunities and threats, our proprietary BrandInsistence(SM) brand equity measurement system does just that. It measures more than 70 different brand equity components for your brand and competitive brands, resulting in detailed findings including a SWOT analysis and specific recommendations.

Here are some other blog posts I have written on brand equity measurement: Brand Equity Measurement 101 and Brand Equity Measurement 101.

To read more about brand equity measurement, refer to the chapter with this title in my Brand Aid book. 
  

Choosing the Right Competitive Frame of Reference

It is more important to choose an appropriate competitive frame of reference for your brand than you might think. The competitive frame of reference has significant implications for competitive strategy, brand strategy and brand positioning. And it has significant implications for brand research, including brand equity research.

As I am in the midst of conducting a brand equity study for a health care brand, I am reminded again how important it is to frame the category properly and to choose a category label that the brand's customers understand. For instance, people get confused about "health care" brands, "medical provider" brands, "health care system" brands, "health care network" brands and "medical center" brands. When asked about one or more of these brands in open-ended brand awareness questions, people list medical insurance companies, medical insurance exchanges, individual doctors, local medical practices, hospitals, outpatient clinics, dentists and other categories of brands. For instance, people might answer with all of these options for the same competitive frame of reference question: Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Obamacare, Medicaid, Medicare, Dr. Schwartz, Memorial Hospital, Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Springfield Medical Practice, Feldman Chiropractic, Rochester Medical Center and Gemini Medical Office Park. However, this list of brands is akin to comparing apples to oranges to bananas to cherries. 

To arrive at the right competitive frame of reference wording, you need to consider each of the following:

• The set of competitors you are most interested in for your brand
• The set of competitors against which you are positioning your brand
• The most appropriate label for this set of competitors
• Whether your customers will understand this label or whether you need to modify it for them to better understand it

I wish you great success in choosing the most appropriate competitive frame of reference for your brand.

To read more about this topic, my previous posts on the topic are here and here.

Brand Research

On occasion, I run into people who are confused about the different types of research that can be conducted on behalf of brands. Frequently, people confuse brand tracking studies with brand equity research and sometimes they confuse brand valuation methodologies with brand equity research. Here is a brief description of each type of research:

• Brand tracking studies: These are repeatable studies that are conducted annually or even more frequently. Some companies run them on a continuous basis. Their purpose is to measure the brand's health against key metrics over time to see if the brand is improving, remaining stable or in decline. Typical measures include awareness, preference or favorability, market share, share of requirements and the brand's net promoter score (an attitudinal loyalty measure). Sometimes the studies include other measures such as brand personalty attributes. These studies tend to be high level and not very diagnostic. 
• Brand equity research: This research is designed to measure all aspects of a brand's equity. Our BrandInsistence(SM) brand equity measurement system measures more than ninety different components of a brand's equity. Its primary focus is on the five drivers of customer brand insistence - awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. These systems indicate overall brand health, but also should be diagnostic in that they should be able to pinpoint the components that are helping the brand and those that are working against the brand. This allows the brand manager to take the appropriate corrective action. Our brand equity measurement system also maps the brand's positioning against that of its competitors to identify brand positioning opportunities and vulnerabilities. Brand equity research can be repeated every year or every other year to measure progress against key goals and actions.
• Brand positioning research: This research indicates how the brand is perceived in the customer's mind. It consists of scaled questions that can be mapped (benefit importance versus brand delivery) and open-ended questions (What makes this brand different from or superior to other brands in this category?) While this is often conducted as a separate study, we include this research in our BrandInsistence(SM) brand equity research. 
• Brand valuation methodologies: Some brand managers feel the need to measure the value of their brands as assets. A handful of firms conduct this type of valuation. It is mostly conducted as a "black box" exercise. The outcome is a number - the value of the brand as a financial asset. These numbers can be quite large, especially for top brands whose values can be in the tens of billions of dollars.
• Brand asset mapping: In this research, brand associations are identified along with the relative strength of their link to the brand. Product, usage, personality and a variety of other associations are explored. This is primarily used to identify brand extension opportunities. 
• Brand emotional response mapping: Brands tend to evoke specific emotions. In this research,  a brand is tested against hundreds of different emotions and feelings to provide a map of the brand's emotional signature. 
• Brand positioning statement research: In this research, we explore customer feedback regarding the brand positioning statement created by the marketer. Usually, several brand positioning statements are explored simultaneously. Each statement is tested against appeal/purchase intent, uniqueness and believability. We also ask for feedback on what people like and don't like about the brand positioning statement. This research is used to choose, refine and validate brand positioning statements. 
• Brand identity research: There are several different types of brand identity research. Each one tests one or more of the following: congruence with brand positioning and promise, key brand associations, reinforcement of specific personality attributes and other qualities, preference/ranking, recognition, recall and emotional response. 
• Brand name research: This research tests different brand names against the following criteria: preference/favorability, ranking (among other options), associations (especially to identify unintended associations), clarity and congruence with the brand's promise.
• Brand tagline research: This research tests different brand taglines against the following criteria: preference/favorability, associations (especially to identify unintended associations), clarity, congruence with the brand's promise and likes and dislikes. 

I will stop here. I haven't begun to explain brand advertising research, which I will reserve for another blog post. 

For more information on brand research, read Brand Aid, second edition available here. 

PS - For you non-biology majors, the image is of a dissection kit. These research approaches are used to dissect and study brands.

Brand Equity Measurement 101

What is brand equity measurement and how can it help your brand? First, let me start by saying that marketing professionals still have different definitions of brand equity and therefore brand equity measurement. If one defines brand equity as the value that a brand adds to the branded product, service or organization itself, then we have a broad understanding of brand equity. Common brand equity measures include brand awareness and a brand’s perceived relevant differentiation. Most models include these two metrics. Other common metrics include a brand’s market share, the price premium that the brand can command over unbranded products in the same category and customer loyalty to the brand.

Models can be super-simplistic, such as the popular Net Promoter Score, which only measures one thing – attitudinal loyalty to the brand – with one question, the likelihood of recommending the brand to a friend or colleague. Or they can be comprehensive, such as our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system, which measures over 90 brand equity components (including two different attitudinal brand loyalty questions). Most brand equity measurement systems are somewhere in between these two extremes.

Our BrandInsistence system has as its underpinning the five drivers of customer brand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. But it also measures the importance of and brand delivery against up to 24 brand or category benefits or shared values. The benefits can be functional, experiential, emotional or self-expressive. It also measures top-of-mind brand associations (the brand is owned in the mind of the customer) and top-of-mind brand differentiators. And brand loyalty and brand vitality and up to 30 different brand personality attributes. We have four standard emotional connection measures, which move from mild emotional connection to deep emotional connection. But we can go much deeper with an ancillary product that can map your brand against hundreds of personality attributes and emotions.

Brand equity systems should be used to achieve the following on behalf of your brand:

• Create a baseline brand equity measurement for your brand so that you can measure the impact of your brand management activities on the brand over time
• Provide the information that populates the brand scorecard
• Identify the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and threats, including brand positioning vulnerabilities and threats
• Identify competitive brands’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• Identify advantageous brand (re)positioning opportunities (for your brand and competitive brands)
• Measure the impact of specific brand enhancing programs or campaigns
• Measure progress made by the brand over time
• Validate the value of your brand to the leadership team of your organization

Here are some examples of how people have used our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system to strengthen their brands:

• One client discovered that they had a value and price perception problem. They took corrective action and then remeasured the brand equity, which increased substantially after the corrective action.
• Another client discovered that they were doing everything very well and that the people familiar with their brand loved the brand and were very loyal but that their major problem was extremely low brand awareness based on very low market penetration. After taking corrective action, sales of their brand skyrocketed.
• Another brand discovered that a recent extension of their brand into a new market to increase sales turned their traditional customers off and that their loyalty was decreasing substantially. Based on this, we recommended a new business model to the client.
• Another client whose brand was in rapid decline discovered new product and service areas through which their brand could become relevant and compelling to its target audience again. When it implemented these changes, it saved the brand and its organization. Based this project’s outcome, key members of the organization’s leadership team were promoted.
• Another brand discovered that its brand perceptions were incongruent with the perceptions of its primary distribution channels. By changing distribution channels, its sales began to soar.
• Another brand discovered that the consumer was completely confused about the brand and the benefits that it delivers because of some very confusing brand cues from product packaging. Based on this insight, it is revising its brand’s promise, redesigning the brand’s product packaging and identifying the customer segments that are most likely to highly value this repositioned brand.
• One client discovered a competitor’s brand positioning vulnerability and was able to successfully reposition the competitor in a negative light, creating a share shift to their brand.
• Finally, one client discovered that it was inferior in almost all aspects of its brand equity and especially in the delivery of its products and services vis-a-vis its competitors. Based on this, it re-engineered its business model and is preparing to be acquired. 

You might also want to read this post on brand equity measurement. And if you are interested in learning more about how we can help you measure and manage your brand's equity, please contact us at vanauken@brandforward.com. 

Measuring Brand Insistence

What can strong brands accomplish? They can lead to increased distribution and sales. They can command price premiums. They can create emotional connections with customers. They can lead to greater customer loyalty. They can inspire customer advocacy. They can help attract and retain desirable employees. They can make it easier to enter new product and service categories. They can increase bargaining power in business negotiations. They can make it easier to transcend business crises. And they can increase stock prices and add to shareholder value.

So, if brands are such valuable assets, it makes sense that they must be managed. And you can’t manage something without metrics. Which leads us brand equity measurement.

First, let’s define brand equity. Brand equity is the value that a brand brings to its branded entity and that entity’s products and services. I outlined the elements of that value in the first paragraph of this article. 

So, what then should we measure? I have spent years refining and validating a brand equity measurement system that measures the five drivers of customer brand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection.

© Brad VanAuken 1999-2016

Awareness

Awareness is the cornerstone of strong brands. Awareness must be present for all of the other factors to come into play. Awareness is strongly correlated with brand preference and brand quality perceptions. We have found that open-ended questions measuring first recall and other recall top-of-mind brand awareness within specific categories are the most predictive measures of awareness. We can also measure brand awareness associated with delivery against specific customer benefits. We also ask the close-ended brand familiarity question.

Relevant Differentiation

Most brand equity measurement models measure relevant differentiation and ours does too. We measure relevance within particular product categories and we can measure relevance against specific customer needs. We also measure the importance of up to 24 customer benefits and shared values. The benefits can be functional, emotional, experiential or self-expressive.  We also measure the brand’s perceived delivery against these 24 benefits and shared values.  We then plot benefit importance versus delivery on a radial coordinate chart creating a brand positioning map. We overlay the same information for up to three of the brand's most important competitors to identify brand positioning opportunities and threats. Further, because brands are owned in the minds of customers, we ask an open-ended question or two about top-of-mind brand associations and differentiators. We hand code and quantify the responses for highest accuracy.

Value

Few other brand equity measurement models measure this. Value has a numerator and a denominator. The numerator consists of the bundle of benefits the brand delivers. The denominator recognizes that there are financial, time and other costs to receiving those benefits. Value can be understood as the ratio of these two. We measure perceived value of the brand. We also measure perceived quality of the brand.

Accessibility

Accessibility is most important for location-based brands (retail, restaurants, etc.) but is important to some degree in every category. Accessibility comes into play when a customer has to decide between a preferred brand that is less accessible and another brand that is more accessible. When the difference in accessibility between brands is significant, people often choose the more accessible brand.

Emotional Connection

Many academic disciplines have demonstrated that, even though we might consider ourselves to be highly rational, we are still largely driven in our decisions by our emotions. This is true not just for consumer brands but also for business-to-business brands as well. We have four distinct measures of brand emotional connection. Each one measures a more intense emotional connection. 

These five brand insistence drivers work in the following way. Brand awareness and relevance may lead to the brand’s inclusion in the consideration set. Brand differentiation and value may lead the brand being preferred. And brand accessibility may lead to brand purchase. Emotional connection to the brand may lead to brand loyalty and advocacy.

© Brad VanAuken 1999-2016

Other Measures

Our brand equity system also measures customer loyalty (two common and well-validated measures of attitudinal loyalty: (1) Would you recommend this brand to a friend? and (2) Knowing what you know now about the brand, would you use this brand again? The system also measures brand personality (against a large battery of personality attributes), other brand associations and brand vitality (two measures).

Competitor Brand Equity

Understanding that brands do exist in a vacuum but rather in a competitive environment, our brand equity measurement system measures each of these components not only for our clients’ brands, but for their competitors’ brands as well.

Other Possible Brand Equity Measures

• The price premium that the brand commands over other more generic products in its relevant categories
• The amount the brand decreases price sensitivity
• Distribution and market share relative to competitors
• Brand preference
• Brand purchase intent
• The portion of the stock price that is attributable to brand equity

Note: BrandInsistence(SM) is a proprietary brand equity measurement system developed by Brad VanAuken and offered exclusively by BrandForward, Inc. 

You can read more about this in Brand Aid, second edition.

Measuring A College or University's Brand Equity

Someone recently asked me how one should approach measuring a college or university's brand equity. Here is what I told her.

We would use the same approach outlined in the article I wrote whose link you attached to your question. However, here are some additional considerations for universities:

1. I would target the following audiences: high school students who applied to the school in question (whether they were admitted or not and whether they decided to attend or not), parents of those students, high school guidance counselors, admissions directors at peer institutions, faculty, staff, current students at the school in question, alumni and board members.
2. We would keep track of which students were accepted and which of those had decided to attend to determine how the answers varied by each of these groups.
3. I would ask the students to which other colleges and universities they applied for admission.
4. I might have students rank order the list of colleges and universities to which they applied in order of preference.
5. I would customize the list of brand benefits to the college or university in question and to colleges and universities in general.
6. This list would include these benefits at a minimum:
• Overall reputation or prestige of the school
• Value of a degree from this school after graduation
• Quality of the student experience
• Campus amenities
• Campus aesthetics
• Food quality
• Campus housing quality
• How leading-edge the labs and equipment are
• Caliber of the student body
• Educational quality/effectiveness
• Quality of campus social life
• Desirability of the neighborhood and municipality in which the school is located
• Region of the country in which the school is located
• Weather
• Quality of the sports programs
• Variety and quality of extracurricular activities
7. I would also customize the selection of brand personality attributes to those most appropriate to colleges and universities.
8. I would have people rank program quality for each major division – liberal arts, engineering, science, medicine, law, business, architecture, etc. This could be done at a more detailed level – sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.
9. We would identify correlations between answers to a variety of the questions and the overall reputation of and preference for the school.
10. We might ask an open-ended response question regarding why they chose this school (if they did).
11. As in all brand equity studies that we conduct, we would ask them what makes this school unique or better than the other schools that they considered (another open-ended response question).
12. If the college or university had the resources to do this, we would conduct focus groups prior to the quantitative brand equity study to build a more robust study based on qualitative insights regarding the factors that most influenced people’s perceptions and decisions. We would conduct these groups separately for each different target audience.

While all of our brand equity studies are based on our BrandInsistence system of brand equity measurement, each study is tailored to the brand in question. I hope this helps you think about how one might develop a brand equity measurement system for a college or university.

I wish you the best.

Brad VanAuken