Business Hours & Convenience

 

One of the drivers of customer brand insistence is accessibility. I recently encountered a local bookstore with these hours. It is a new store and I love books so I wanted to explore it. Despite driving by the store a few days each week, I have not yet gone by at a time when it was open. I have now given up on the store. Unless the brand offers a highly demanded item or items not available anywhere else, inconvenient store hours will completely take it out of the consideration set. People do not have a high tolerance for inaccessibility, especial in the era of Amazon.com and a myriad of other 24/7 online stores that can ship overnight. 

Clearly, this is an extreme example of ridiculous hours of operation, but I have encountered many other places with similarly strange hours. If you don't uniquely offer the next big thing, don't handicap your business with limited or strange hours. And even if you are uniquely offering the next big thing, you would do much better to offer as much accessibility and convenience as possible. 

I suspect the bookstore I am citing will be out of business within six months, if not sooner. 

Customer Brand Insistence Revisited

I have been preaching about the five drivers of customer brand insistence since we first developed and tested this brand equity measurement system in the late 1990s. Since then, we have tested this system with hundreds of brands across almost as many product and service categories. It indicates that five things drive customers from being aware of a brand to insisting upon the brand and then ultimately being loyal to and even being advocates of the brand.

Again, these are the five drivers:

AWARENESS

The first driver is awareness. If you offer the best product in its category backed by the best service offered at the lowest price delivering the best value, and no one has heard of it, you will not achieve any sales. Awareness is the cornerstone of any marketing campaign. Awareness not only puts a brand in a purchase consideration set, it also increases customer preference, quality perceptions and purchase intent. Strong marketing campaigns with both reach and frequency increase awareness as does broader distribution. And PR and proactive publicity, including publicity stunts, can significantly increase brand awareness.

RELEVANT DIFFERENTIATION

The difference between a commodity and a brand is not a name or a logo - it is relevant differentiation, or put another way, a unique value proposition. Give customers a reason to choose your brand over other brands in its product category. The best differentiators are shared values, self-expressive benefits ("brand as a badge"), extraordinary product purchase or usage experiences, superior customer insight that leads to anticipating and addressing latent needs, easy one-stop shopping and offering a superior value based on the perceived benefits received for the amount of time and money required to receive those benefits. Once the relevant differentiation is created, then the marketer needs to make the relevant differentiation very clear at each and every point of customer contact. Focusing on just one differentiating benefit increases a customer's ability to recall that benefit so choose the brand's differentiating benefit wisely. Here is a post on how to position your brand in overcrowded markets. And here is a post on branding in highly competitive categories.

VALUE

I already touched on this. For most people, the two scarce resources are time and money. Give them more time and more money while solving their problems or meeting their needs and you have delivered a good or perhaps even excellent value.

ACCESSIBILITY

All things being equal, the more accessible brand will get the sale every time. Wider distribution not only increases brand awareness, it also increases brand accessibility. 24/7 brand access is better than more limited access. Accepting multiple payment methods and one-click shopping also increases accessibility. There is also a psychological aspect to accessibility. Do people believe your brand to be accessible, or for one reason or another, do they feel that your brand is less accessible to them?

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

Brand personality, brand voice, brand visual style, brand trustworthiness (which includes brand consistency and reliability), brand responsiveness, outstanding customer service and technical support (with includes front-line employee training and empowerment), loyalty programs and purchase and usage frequency can all lead to increased emotional connection. Well thought-out marketing campaigns with highly emotional elements can also add to this. Here are two posts on the related concept of brand tribalism - Tribal Branding, Brands & Tribalism.

I am going to add one other thing to this list. Powerful brand MEMORY TRIGGERS that are consistently used over time and across campaigns will increase the ability of customers to remember the brand and associate it with its most powerful benefits to them. These triggers may include distinctive colors, shapes, icons, sounds, scents and other mnemonic devices. And they might be incorporated into the product itself, its packaging, its merchandising, its signing, its marketing campaigns, its insignia merchandise or other communication vehicles. Often, key elements of a brand's identity system are its primary memory triggers. Here is a related post on brands and memory structures. 

So, to create a winning brand, focus on awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility, emotional connection and memory triggers. 

What Do People Need Most?

People with plenty of money often do not have a lot of time, while people with a lot of time frequently do not have a lot of money. And many people do not have enough of either. It is the lucky few who have plenty of time and money. 

Time and money are the scarce resources built into our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system. They are built into two of the five drivers of customer brand insistence, value and accessibility. Value has a numerator and a denominator. The numerator is comprised of the bundle of benefits that the customer receives, while the denominator represents how much time and money it takes to receive those benefits. Accessibility also relates to time and money as both of these make anything more accessible. 

But there is a third dimension that I don't often talk about and that is health/energy. You might have ample time and money, but if you do not have good health or adequate energy, the time and money are a moot point. 

In many surveys, when asked what they value most, people will indicate good health. 

So, if one is able to reduce the money, time or energy required to purchase and use the brand, the brand becomes more valuable. Conversely, if that brand itself can give people more time, money or health, it is adding significant value. 

So, when thinking about how you can increase your brand's value, consider how it can increase people's time, money or health/energy or how it can be acquired or used with less time, money or health/energy.  

And, as an interesting note, research suggests that people who value time over money are much happier. 

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. 
  

Brands and Habitual Behavior

Often people purchase a particular brand purely out of habit. Sometimes the function of a familiar brand is to reduce the time and effort associated with choosing a particular product. One can rest assured that his or her needs will be met with the familiar product or brand. 

There are several steps to creating a habit-forming brand. Recent research indicates that it takes two to eight months to form a new habit, depending on the individual, frequency of use and type of habit to be formed.

The first step is to initiate product trial. The next step is to encourage repeat purchase. After that, frequency of use becomes important. 

During wartime, tobacco companies distributed free packs of cigarettes to active duty soldiers. AOL became one of the earliest and best-known for-pay online services primarily because it gave away millions of floppy disks featuring 50 to 120 hours (and even up to three months) of free online services. 

Many brands use frequency programs to encourage ongoing loyal behavior. I have frequency cards for several different coffee houses. And I am a member of several airline and hotel chain loyalty programs. Starbucks used to offer discounts on afternoon coffee drinks for the days on which you purchased your first coffee drink in the morning.

In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg indicates that key to forming a habit is identifying the cue that is associated with the habit and the reward that reinforces the habit. Any of these can be cues: time of day, a particular place, a certain emotion, the presence of particular other people or a kind of ritualized behavior. 

Once the habit has been formed linking the habit to a frequently encountered cue the trick is  to offer some basic reward to reinforce the behavior. 

The following are some books that address this topic in greater detail:

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

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 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

Awareness - The Cornerstone of Branding

I have talked about each of the other four drivers of customer brand insistence - relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. However, I have saved the most important driver of customer brand insistence for last.

Brand building begins with awareness. If you make the best products in the world, support them with exceptional service and offer them at very low prices delivering the best overall value, but no one has ever heard of them, how many sales will you have? That's right, zero.

Consumers first must be aware that there are different brands in the product categories in which your brand operates. Next, they must be aware of your brand. Ideally, your brand should be the first one that comes to their minds within specific product categories and also  associated with key consumer benefits. Consumers should:

• Have heard about your brand
• Know what it stands for
• Be able to identify which products and services your brand offers
• Be able to identify its unique value proposition
• Have some idea of where your brand is sold

Increased brand awareness has been correlated with increased quality perceptions, increased favorability, increased preference, increased sales and increased market share. More than 70 percent of the impact of advertising on market share results from increasing brand awareness (vs. creating or building brand image). 

How can one increase brand awareness? Here are several ways to do that:

• Advertising and other paid marketing communication
• Proactive publicity
• Publicity stunts
• Increased distribution
• Social media campaigns
• Including YouTube videos
• Viral marketing
• Including word-of-mouth marketing
• Referral programs
• Product placement 
• Demonstrations
• Free product trial
• Sponsorships
• Speeches and other presentations
• Blog posts, articles, white papers and other informational pieces
• Flagship stores
• Brand museum
• Submitting your brand to product reviews
• Providing industry analysts with detailed brand information
• Community involvement
• Brand identity and hyperlink in email signature
• Brand signage
• Including vehicle signage
• Insignia merchandise

Common Problems in Brand Equity Measurement

Our brand management equity measurement system is comprehensive, measuring each of the five drivers of customer brand insistence – awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection – along with other factors such as brand vitality, brand loyalty, brand personality and brand associations.

In the process of measuring brand equity, one should avoid making the following mistakes:

• Not specifying up front the purpose of the brand equity study, how you will use the results and what actions you might take based on the results.
• Defining the product/service category too narrowly, too broadly or otherwise incorrectly. Doing so will create the wrong competitive frame of reference in the respondents’ minds.
• Getting feedback on the wrong competitive set. Failing to include key competitors or including ones that don’t matter.
• If your brand has multiple levels of branding (parent brand, sub-brand, etc.), testing the wrong level that has less meaning to category customers.
• Asking questions in the wrong order so that there is order biasing. One should always begin with the most general open-ended questions and conclude with the most detailed brand-specific questions.
• Not randomizing the response choices so that there is response choice order biasing.
• Not crafting a compelling enough survey invitation letter so that the response rate is very low.
• Biasing the respondents’ responses by sending the survey invitation from a specific brand. In particular, it will skew the open-ended top-of-mind brand awareness responses but it will skew other responses as well.
• Making the survey too long so that the complete rate is very low. People become fatigued and drop out of the survey before they have answered all of the questions.
• Asking leading questions, ones that beg certain responses.
• Not being consistent in how one presents response choices. For instance, modifying some with superlatives while not doing so for others. Or, presenting some in an active voice and others in a passive voice.
• Not planning for or achieving a large enough ending response rate so that the results are not projectable. Generally, for most populations, 383 or 384 ending responses will result in a confidence level of 95% +/- 5%. If you want to perform analysis on subsets of the data, you will need this many responses for the subsets too.
• In closed-ended questions, not giving the respondents all of the possible (or at least probable) response choices. I have seen some situations in which more than 50% of the respondents chose “other” for a particular question. This provides little insight unless you allow the respondents to specify “other” in an open-ended response.
• Not providing an “other” option as an answer to close-ended questions.
• Not providing a “don’t know” choice for most close-ended questions.
• Not having carefully thought through and vetted the category’s and brand’s top attributes, benefits and values before populating them as response choices for a close-ended question.
• Asking how important “brand” is in selecting a product within the category. Brand will always be rated as less important than more tangible attributes, benefits and values.
• Not including emotional, experiential and self-expressive benefits and shared values with functional benefits in a close-ended brand benefit importance or brand benefit delivery question.
• Not carefully thinking through how you intend to analyze the results before you design the survey.
• Not setting the questions up in a way that allows for easy filtering or reporting of responses.
• Mixing responses from different populations – such a national consumer panel and a customer list and Facebook fans.
• Asking people who have little awareness of a particular brand to assess the brand in great detail. They will only be guessing at best. Only ask people to rate the brand with which they are the most familiar.
• Not including mandatory brand personality attributes (such as trustworthy, innovative and responsive) in the brand personality question choices.
• Conducting in-depth analysis on a brand that has little to no awareness. How can people react to a brand of which they are not aware and with which they have no experience?
• Not including the following critical brand equity components:

Unaided brand awareness – first recall and other recall

Relevant differentiation

Emotional connection to the brand

Attitudinal loyalty to the brand

• If you ask an open-ended top-of-mind brand association question, asking it in such a way that most of the responses will just be a mention of the product category with which the brand is most associated. For instance, here are four different ways to ask this question:

Thinking about the XYZ brand, what comes to mind?

What makes the XYZ brand superior to or different from the other brands in its category?

What is distinctive about the XYZ brand?

What would you miss most if the XYZ brand ceased to exist?

• Not using the most powerful type of chart or graph to make the key points for the responses to each question.
• Not using the proper/optimal scale for each chart or graph.
• Presenting results that have so few responses that the responses are meaningless and could even be misleading.

I hope this has helped you think about how to create and implement a more robust brand equity study.

Brands and Emotional Connection

Emotional connection is one of the five drivers of customer brand insistence as outlined in my BrandInsistence brand equity system. (The other four drivers are awareness, relevant differentiation, value and accessibility.) The consumer must first know your brand, then like your brand, and finally trust your brand and feel an emotional connection to it.

People become emotionally connected to a brand for a number of reasons:

• The brand stands for something important to them. It shares values with them.
• The brand is intense and vibrant. It connects with people on multiple levels across several senses.
• The brand is unique.
• The brand is admirable.
• The brand consistently interacts with them. It never disappoints them.
• The brand makes them feel good.

There are many innovative ways to achieve this emotional connection— from advertising and the quality of frontline consumer contact, to consumer membership organizations and company-sponsored consumer events.

Emotional connection can take your customers beyond brand loyalty to the ultimate measure of a compelling brand: brand advocacy.

It is especially important to ensure that all of your employees with frontline customer contact are like Boy Scouts—that is, that they are trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and cheerful. Add to that list empathetic, good listeners, and reassuring. To have a quality workforce you need to establish

the appropriate hiring criteria, training, and organization culture. Remember, good service is all about creating positive feelings, treating people well, and solving people’s problems. Ultimately, emotional connection will come from positive shared experiences with the brand over time. While this trust is built over time, offering an unconditional guarantee is a quick way to reduce the risk posed by a new,

unknown brand and to generate some minimum level of trust immediately.

PEDIGREE DOG FOOD: MOVING FROM FUNCTIONAL TO EMOTIONAL MESSAGING

In 2004, Pedigree was the share leader in its category; however, it was losing share to the competition at both the high and low ends of the market. At the time, Pedigree focused its messaging on product attributes. In 2005, Pedigree’s advertising agency (TBWA) recommended changing the emphasis from functional attributes to the “love of dogs,” appealing to the customer’s hearts instead of their heads. TBWA’s chairman and chief creative officer, Lee Clow,

asked Pedigree to embrace this statement as its new brand mantra: “If you convince me you love dogs, I’ll let you feed mine.”

Today, Pedigree offers its customers a breed gallery, dog age calculator, breed match questionnaire, “adopt a dog” search, free puppy guide, “Dogs Rule” apparel, and an opportunity to donate to the PEDIGREE Foundation, which is dedicated to helping dogs find loving homes.

There are other loyalty-inducing approaches, too. For instance:

• The brand encourages frequent, habit-forming interaction (as long as the interaction is pleasant or beneficial and not against people’s wills).
• The brand finds ways to build cumulative value for customers over time, especially if the value is not transferable to the use of competitive products and services.

In his book The Dream Society, Rolf Jensen makes the case for a shift from an information society to a dream society in which imagination and storytelling become the primary drivers of value. He identifies six emerging emotion-based markets:

1. Adventure
2. Community (togetherness, friendship, and love)
3. Providing and receiving care
4. Self-expression (“Who am I?”)
5. Peace of mind
6. Standing for something (convictions)

Any brand that seeks to create emotional connection should find ways to tap into these and other underlying human motives.

© 2015 by Brad VanAuken; excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

Brand Equity Measurement 101

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Peter Drucker

People are often confused about what brand equity actually is. Is it the asset value of the brand? Is it the price premium that the brand is able to command? Is it the reduced price sensitivity that it can create? Is it the emotional connection that the brand makes with people? Is it the loyalty that customers demonstrate toward the brand? Is it the brand’s personality? Is it the brand’s positive associations? Is it the unique identity that it brings to its products and services? Is it the degree to which the brand personifies those products and services? Is it the way the brand is able to share values with its customers and serve as a self-expression vehicle for them? Is it the goodwill that the brand generates? Is it the memory triggers that the brand creates in people’s minds? Is it the ability of the brand to create meaning that extends beyond one product category allowing for brand extension? Is it the brand’s promise? Is it the brand’s unique value proposition? Yes, it is all of these.

If a brand has equity it implies that the brand is an asset that has value. In fact, many studies over time have demonstrated that brand equity is a significant contributor to stock price, company valuation and shareholder value.

So what should the purpose of brand equity measurement be?

• To measure the brand’s health and vitality
• To understand how well the brand is positioned against its competitors
• To serve as a diagnostic tool
• To uncover any underlying weaknesses that require intervention
• To identify opportunities to further strengthen the brand
• To provide the information from which a brand scorecard can be built

That is, a brand equity measurement system’s output should be diagnostic and actionable.

Sometimes people equate brand tracking studies with brand equity measurement. Brand tracking studies tend to be fairly simplistic, often measuring just a couple of things and they are usually not very actionable. Sometimes people equate customer satisfaction scores with brand equity measurement.  And sometimes people equate attitudinal loyalty scores (such as a brand’s Net Promoter Score) with brand equity measurement. All of these are helpful to some extent but they are not very comprehensive or robust. One needs to look at the whole picture.

Here is what we include in our BrandInsistence brand equity measurement system:

• Unaided brand awareness (including first recall) associated with a particular product category. Related to this, unaided brand awareness associated with specific customer benefits.
• Brand relevance.
• Top-of-mind brand associations. Related to this, a map of brand memory triggers.
• The brand’s top-of-mind points of difference.
• The brand’s personality attributes.
• Importance of up to 24 customer benefits and values and the brand’s delivery against the same (allowing for the creation of brand positioning maps).
• Brand value.
• Brand accessibility.
• Emotional connection to the brand (four separate measures).
• Attitudinal brand loyalty (two separate measures).
• Brand vitality (two measures).

We measure all of these brand equity components by customer segment for the brand in question and up to three competitive brands. This provides a comprehensive picture of the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats together with recommended actions to strengthen the brand.

In a related brand asset mapping study, we map out all of a brand’s associations (purchase, usage, customer segment, product, service, function, feature, lifestyle, occasion, etc.) to identify opportunities for brand extension.  In another related study, we map all of the emotions with which the brand is associated for each customer segment, helping the brand manager establish a stronger emotional connection between the brand and its customers.

I hope this has shed some light on the nuances of brand equity measurement. For more information on this, please refer to chapter 18 (Brand Equity Measurement) in Brand Aid,second edition.

Donald Trump's Brand Equity

Donald Trump contends that his net worth is in excess of $10 billion. Forbes estimates it to be $4 billion, while Wealth-X estimates it to be $4.5 billion. The Wall Street Journal indicates that he has assets of $1.5 billion. So what accounts for the difference between what Donald Trump says he is worth and other estimates of his worth?

His name. He loves his name and uses it on most everything. Many equate his name with quality. When asked, he has indicated that the brand value of his name alone is $3 billion. Previously, he had indicated that the brand value of his name was as high as $6 billion.

What value does brand equity provide? The ability to win business deals, charge a price premium and license the name for royalties among other advantages.

Forbes estimates the value of his licensing deals to be $60 million not counting his real estate licensing deals which could be as high as $120 million, putting his brand licensing income at something less than $200 million.

So, does running for president help or hurt his brand equity? If a key driver of brand equity is brand awareness (and it is), then his presidential bid is significantly improving his brand equity. Consider the fact that there are now dozens of articles highlighting the debate on his net worth, articles in Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, The New Yorker and New York Times to name just a few periodicals.

But what if the publicity is bad publicity? There is an oft repeated saying that "There is no such thing as bad publicity." But after the first set of GOP debates, several business partners (Macy's, NBC and PGA) announced that they intend to severe ties with Donald Trump, potentially costing him millions of dollars.

According to our proven BrandInsistence(SM) brand equity measurement model, the five things that drive customers to insist on particular brand are awareness, relevant differentiation, value, accessibility and emotional connection. 

Let's take one at a time for the Donald Trump brand:

• Awareness - already high but still up significantly
• Relevant differentiation - differentiation for sure; relevant differentiation (for some, yes - he is still the #1 GOP presidential candidate per the most recent polls)
• Value - licensing value based on name recognition - yes; value to any particular person including women and Mexicans - questionable at best
• Accessibility - it may have increased
• Emotional connection - its seems to have decreased for many people while others applaud his independence and outspokenness

So, while awareness, a prime driver of brand equity, is up significantly, emotional connection is likely to be down for many but up for others. Value and relevant differentiation may also have mixed results.

What is his brand's equity? At least $180 million but likely much more than that. $3 to $6 billion? So says Donald Trump.