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Chapter 4
Choosing Elements to Build Brand Equity
Chapter Objectives
1. Identify the dierent types of brand elements.
2. List the general criteria for choosing brand elements.
3. Describe key tactics in choosing dierent brand elements.
4. Explain the rationale for “mixing and matching” brand elements.
5. Highlight some of the legal issues surrounding brand elements.
Overview
Chapter 4 examines the elements that marketers can use to identify
and dierentiate a brand. Names, logos, symbols, characters, slogans,
URLs, jingles, and packages all in+uence a company’s ability to build
awareness and image for a brand and, consequently, have a direct
impact on the degree of positive brand equity that can be established.
Brand elements can be judged on the merits of their brand-building
ability by isolating the element in a consumer survey and measuring
consumers’ response to the brand based solely on the isolated
element. If the consumers infer or assume a certain valued association
or response, the element is said to contribute positively to brand
equity.
Six general criteria should govern a 3rm’s choice of brand elements.
First, an element should be memorable, or easy to recognize and
recall. Second, an element should be meaningful, or descriptive,
persuasive, inherently fun and interesting, and rich in visual and verbal
imagery. Third, an element should be likeable to consumers, in an
aesthetic sense and in an emotional sense. Fourth, an element should
be transferable within and across product categories, and across
geographical and cultural boundaries. Fifth, an element should be
adaptable, or +exible, and capable of being updated over time. Sixth,
an element should be protectable, both legally and competitively.
Next, the chapter discusses the bene3ts and drawbacks inherent in the
choice of each type of brand element. For example, selecting a
familiar-sounding name for a brand would likely lead to high
recallability, but recognition often requires brand names to be
dierent, distinct, or unusual. Fictitious or coined names are often used
to satisfy these criteria. Brand characters are bene3cial because they
typically aid awareness, reinforce key brand strengths, add elements of
fun, excitement, humor, etc., and can be transferred across product
categories. Consumer associations with a brand character can be so
strong, however, that they actually dampen awareness by dominating
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
other brand elements. Also, brand characters must be updated over
time.
The chapter ends by discussing how brand elements can be “mixed
and matched” for maximum equity building. For instance, brand
elements must be mixed to achieve dierent positioning objectives.. It
is also important to match brand elements by ensuring that they
harbor similarities that reinforce some shared meaning. Taken
together, the entire set of brand elements makes up the brand identity,
which re+ects the contribution of all the elements to awareness and
image.
Brand Focus 4.0 discusses legal issues for branding. These include
trademark protection from counterfeit and imitator brands, historical
and legal precedence, trademark issues with generic names, and
trademark issues with packaging.
Science of Branding
THE SCIENCE OF BRANDING 4-1
COUNTERFEIT BUSINESS IS BOOMING
The current size of the counterfeit market is estimated to be $600
billion, representing costs of $200 to $250 billion annually to U.S.
businesses. The fakes are soaking up pro3ts faster than multinationals
can squash counterfeiting operations, and they’re getting tougher and
tougher to distinguish from the real thing. The dierence can be as
subtle as lesser-quality leather in a purse or fake batteries inside a cell
phone. And counterfeiters can produce fakes cheaply by cutting
corners on safety and quality, as well as by avoiding paying for
marketing, R&D, or advertising.
The World Health Organization says up to 10 percent of medicines
worldwide are counterfeited besides luxury items and consumer
electronics. Counterfeiting has become increasingly sophisticated and
pervasive. To avoid being detected, counterfeiters are knocking o
smaller brands that don’t have the resources to 3ght back, focusing on
fewer high-end brands given the recent economic downturn, and
increasing prices on fake goods sold over the web to counter consumer
suspicions.
These days, 81 percent of counterfeit goods in the United States come
from China. Other sources are Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, India, Mexico,
and several countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America. The
operations are 3nanced by such varied sources as Middle East
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businessmen who invest in facilities in Asian countries for export, local
Chinese entrepreneurs, and criminal networks. The replication process
has also speeded up as counterfeiters have honed their engineering
skills and increased their speed.
Producing counterfeit goods is as pro3table as trading in illegal drugs
but does not carry the same risk. Some companies have decided to
target the end users of knocko products, hoping manufacturers will
eventually be forced to get a license and pay royalties. And some
patent holders are beginning to get creative and target anyone on the
supply chain who knowingly ignores counterfeit businesses.
Some provocative academic research shows that fake products are not
uniformly bad for companies. While some who cannot aord to buy
genuine luxury items may always buy fakes, other consumers will 3nd
that buying a counterfeit motivates them to later buy the real thing.
THE SCIENCE OF BRANDING 4-2
BALANCE CREATIVE AND STRATEGIC THINKING TO CREATE
GREAT CHARACTERS
Great characters can embody a brand’s story and spark enthusiasm for
it. But bringing a character to life through advertising requires
navigating a host of pitfalls. Character, a company based in Portland,
Oregon, helps create new corporate brand characters and revitalize old
ones. During three-day “Character” camps, a team from a client
company learns to +esh out a new or current brand character through
improvisational acting, discussion, and re+ection. Some tips for brand
characters presented at Character Camps:
Don’t be a shill—Human traits are appealing.
Create a life—Create a full backstory to 3ll out the character. This
ensures that the character can evolve over time and continue to
connect with consumers.
Make characters vulnerable—Even superheroes have +aws.
Imagine the long run—Don’t get rid of older characters just to
make room for new ones. Consumers can get very attached to
longtime characters.
Don’t ask too much—Characters with a simple task or purpose
work best. Using characters for new lines or other purposes can
dilute their eectiveness.
To be truly eective, brand characters have to be engaging in their
own right while staying true to the brand. Most characters though, are
conceived as short-term solutions to solve speci3c problems. If the
audience likes a character, companies face the challenge of turning it
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
into an asset. At this point some companies try to freeze all the
character’s attributes and preserve them.
Characters that are mass-marketed too heavily can also crash and
burn, but static characters can lose their appeal and fail to emotionally
connect with consumers. Viewers connect with characters whose
struggles are familiar.
THE SCIENCE OF BRANDING 4-3
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PACKAGING
Cornell University’s Brian Wansink has conducted a series of research
studies into the consumer psychology of packaging. Four of his
fascinating 3ndings:
Packaging Can In+uence Taste—Our sense of taste and touch is
very suggestible, and what we see on a package can lead us to
taste what we think we are going to taste. The right words and
image on a package can have a big in+uence on our
expectations.
Packaging Can In+uence Value—Most people believe the bigger
the package, the better the price per ounce. Yet even the shape
of a package can in+uence what we think.
Packaging Can In+uence Consumption—Studies of 48 dierent
types of foods and personal care products have shown that
people pour and consume 18–32 percent more of a product as
the size of the container doubles. A big part of the reason is that
larger sizes subtly suggest a higher “consumption norm.”
Packaging Can In+uence How a Person Uses a Product—One
strategy to increase the use of mature products has been to
encourage people to use the brand in new situations, like soup
for breakfast, or for new uses, like baking soda as a refrigerator
deodorizer. Part of the reason such on-package suggestions are
eective is that they are guaranteed to reach a person who is
already favorable to the brand.
Branding Briefs
BRANDING BRIEF 4-1
UPDATING BETTY CROCKER
In 1921, Washburn Crosby Company, makers of Gold Medal +our,
launched a picture puzzle contest. The contest was a huge success—
the company received 30,000 entries—and several hundred
contestants sent along requests for recipes and advice about baking.
To handle those requests, the company decided to create a
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
spokesperson. Managers chose the name Betty Crocker because
“Betty” was a popular, friendly sounding name and “Crocker” was a
reference to William G. Crocker, a well-liked, recently retired executive.
The company merged with General Mills and introduced the Betty
Crocker Cooking School of the Air as a national radio program. During
this time, Betty was given a voice and her signature began to appear
on nearly every product the company produced. Prim and proper, Betty
was shown with pursed lips, a hard stare, and graying hair. Her
appearance has been updated a number of times over the years and
has become more friendly, although she has never lost her reserved
look.
Prior to a makeover in 1986, Betty Crocker was seen as honest and
dependable, friendly and concerned about customers, and a specialist
in baked goods, but also out-of-date, old and traditional, a
manufacturer of “old standby products,” and not particularly
contemporary or innovative. The challenge was to give Betty a look
that would attract younger consumers, but not alienate older ones who
remembered her as the stern homemaker of the past. Finally, Betty
Crocker’s look was also designed to appeal to men. A few years later,
Betty Crocker received another update as an ultramodern model,—the
current one. Betty Crocker now appears on cookbooks, advertising, and
online, where she has over 1.5 million Facebook friends, a Twitter
account, and a mobile app downloaded by millions.
BRANDING BRIEF 4-2
BENETTON’S BRAND EQUITY MANAGEMENT
Benetton built a powerful brand by creating a broad range of basic and
colorful clothes that appealed to a wide range of consumers. Their
corporate slogan, “United Colors of Benetton” embraces both product
considerations and user considerations, providing a strong platform for
the brand. Benetton’s ad campaigns reinforced this positioning by
showing people from a variety of dierent racial backgrounds wearing
a range of dierent-colored clothes and products.
In the 1980s, Benetton print ads and posters featured such unusual
and sometimes disturbing images as a white child wearing angel’s
wings alongside a black child sporting devil’s horns; a priest kissing a
nun; an AIDS patient and his family in the hospital moments before his
death; and 56 close-up photos of male and female genitalia.
Critics labeled these various campaigns gimmicky as “shock”
advertising and accused Benetton of exploiting sensitive social issues
to sell sweaters. Although the campaigns may have succeeded with a
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
certain market segment, they were certainly more “exclusive” in
nature by distancing the brand from many other consumers. U.S. sales
of Benetton products shrank by 50 percent to $52 million between
1993 and 2000. By 2001, the number of Benetton stores in the United
States dropped to 150 from 600 in 1987.
Since 2001, Benetton’s advertisements have featured more
conventional images—teenagers in colorful Benetton clothing.
Benetton maintained that the company would maintain its “socially
responsible” status by focusing on noncontroversial themes like racial
discrimination, poverty, child labor, AIDS awareness, and so forth.
BRANDING BRIEF 4-3
DO-OVERS WITH BRAND MAKEOVERS
Logos, symbols, packaging, and even brand names are being updated
to create greater meaning, relevance, and dierentiation. Some
high-pro3le examples and the challenges and diJculties their brand
makeovers encountered:
Tropicana
In February 2009, Pepsi introduced a dramatic overhaul to its
category-leading orange juice. Gone was the visual image of an
orange with a straw protruding from it; in its place was a close-up
image of a glass of orange juice and the phrase “100% Orange.”
Consumer reaction was swift and largely negative. Customers
complained about being unable to dierentiate between the
company’s pulp-free, traditional, and other juice varieties. Even
worse, customers also felt the look was too generic.
The Gap
After unexpectedly unveiling a new logo, the company asked
consumers on its Facebook page for comments and further logo
ideas. Feedback was far from kind, and after enduring a long
week of criticism, Gap management reverted to its iconic white
text logo and unique brand font.
Gatorade & Pepsi
Pepsi completely overhauled its Gatorade brand as well as its
classic Pepsi-cola product lineup. The new brand goal was to
reach athletes in a wide range of sports and experience levels
while positioning itself as the one-stop source for hydration and
other needs before, during, and after their workouts. Pepsi’s
makeover included a new logo—a white band in the middle of the
Pepsi circle that appeared to loosely form a smile. Both brand
makeovers received some negative feedback and the products
experienced sluggish sales afterwards.
Lessons
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When changing a well received or even iconic brand element—a
character, logo, or packaging—two issues are key. One, the new
brand element must be inherently highly regarded. Two,
regardless of the inherent appeal of a new brand element,
changes are hard for consumers and should be handled carefully
and patiently.
Brand Focus
BRAND FOCUS 4.0
LEGAL BRANDING CONSIDERATIONS
According to Dorothy Cohen, under common law, “a ‘technical’
trademark is de3ned as any fanciful arbitrary, distinctive, and
nondescriptive mark, word, letter, number, design, or picture that
denominates and is aJxed to goods; it is an inherently distinctive
trade symbol that identi3es a product.” Trademark strategy involves
proper trademark planning, implementation, and control. A few key
legal branding considerations:
Counterfeit and Imitator Brands
Some products attempt to gain market share by imitating
successful brands. These copycat brands may mimic any one of
the possible brand elements, such as brand names or packaging.
Many copycat brands are put forth by retailers as store brands,
putting national brands in the dilemma of protecting their trade
dress by cracking down on some of their best customers. Many
national brand manufacturers are responding through legal
action. For national brands, the key is proving that brand clones
are misleading consumers, who may think that they are buying
national brands. The burden of proof is to establish that an
appreciable number of reasonably acting consumers are
confused and mistaken in their purchases.
Historical and Legal Precedence
Legally, a brand name is a “conditional-type property”—
protected only after it has been used in commerce to identify
products (goods or services) and only in relation to those
products or to closely related oerings. To preserve a brand
name’s role in identifying products, and the authors’ note,
federal law protects brands from actions of others that may tend
to cause confusion concerning proper source identi3cation.
Trademark appropriation is identi3ed as a developing area of
state law that can severely curtail even those brand strategies
that do not “confuse” consumers. Appropriation resembles theft
of an intangible property right. Trademark dilution is the
protection from dilution—a weakening or reduction in the ability
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
of a mark to clearly and unmistakably distinguish the source.
Dilution can occur in three ways: blurring, tarnishment, and
cybersquatting.
Trademark Issues Concerning Names
Without adequate trademark protection, brand names can
become legally declared generic, as was the case with vaseline,
victrola, cellophane, escalator, and thermos. Legally, the courts
have created a hierarchy for determining eligibility for
registration. In descending order of protection, these categories
are fanciful, arbitrary, suggestive, descriptive, and generic.
Secondary meaning refers to a mark gaining a meaning other
than the older (primary) meaning. The secondary meaning must
be the meaning the public usually attaches to the mark and that
indicates the association between the mark and goods from a
single source.
Trademark Issues Concerning Packaging
In general, names and graphic designs are more legally
defensible than shapes and colors. The issue of legal protection
of the color of packaging for a brand is a complicated one.
Discussion questions
1. Pick a brand. Identify all of its brand elements and assess their
ability to contribute to brand equity according to the choice criteria
identi ed in the chapter.
2. What are your favorite brand characters? Do you think they
contribute to brand equity in any way? How? Can you relate their
e&ects to the customer-based brand equity model?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
3. What are some other examples of slogans not listed in the chapter
that make strong contributions to brand equity? Why? Can you
think of any “bad” slogans? Why do you consider them to be so?
4. Choose a package for any supermarket product. Assess its
contribution to brand equity. Justify your decisions.
5. Can you think of some general guidelines to help marketers “mix
and match” brand elements? Can you ever have “too many” brand
elements? Which brand do you think does the best job of “mixing
and matching” brand elements?
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
Exercises and assignments
1. Have students make a list of brand slogans, analyze what each
communicates, and explain why the parent 3rm would select it.
2. Ask students to develop a brand name, logo and symbol, slogan,
package and, if appropriate, character for a new product. Discuss
how the elements would change if the target market changed.
Candidates might include a men’s fragrance, a laundry detergent, a
battery-free wind-up +ashlight, and a sparkling fruit drink. (Can be
related to Branding Brief 4-1: Branding a New Soft Drink.)
3. Tell students to pick two brands from the same product category
and compare their brand elements in terms of their memorability,
likability, protectability, adaptability, meaningfulness, and
transferability. Haagen-Dazs vs. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, Aqua3na
vs. Dasani water, Michelin vs. Goodyear tires, Holiday Inn vs.
Comfort Inn motels, Heineken vs. Michelob beer, and Budweiser vs.
Miller beer could be used.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
4. Bring in or have students bring in competing brands so that their
packages can be compared. Discuss the reasons for the similarities
and dierences between them, as well as the pros and cons of each.
Key take-away points
1. Criteria for choosing brand elements include memorability,
meaningfulness, likability, transferability, adaptability, and
protectability.
2. All the brand elements for a particular brand create the brand
identity, which conveys the contribution of these elements to image
and awareness.
3. A brand’s identity is created through the choice of a name, URL,
logo, symbol, slogan, package, jingle, and character.
4. The brand-building potential of brand elements can be gauged by
asking consumers what they would think about the product if they
knew only its name, logo, and other identity characteristics.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall.
