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Brand Identity Strategy
• A brand identity must be distinctive. In other words, it represents only one particular
product within a category, so it needs to be recognizable and therefore memorable.
Recognizing the brand means that the consumer knows the brand’s identification
markers—name, logo, colors, typeface, design, and slogan—and can connect those
marks with a past experience or message.
• To better understand how a brand can become an integrated perception, this textbook
proposes an outline of the communication dimensions of branding using the same six
effects presented in the Facets Model in Chapter 4.
•Brand personality and Liking. Brand personality - the idea that a brand takes on
familiar human characteristics - contributes an affective dimension to the meaning
of a brand. It is important to measure the way these personality traits are
associated with a brand or a competitor’s brand.
•Brand Position and Leadership. What does the brand stand for? A brand must
stand for stand for something and it has to be something that matters to
consumers. Brand essence is also apparent when a brand dominates or defines its
category. Category leadership often comes from being the first brand in the
market—and with that comes an ownership position.
•Brand image.Understanding brand meaning involves understanding the
symbolism and associations that create brand image, the mental impression
consumers construct for a product. The richness of the brand image determines
the quality of the relationship and the strength of the associations and emotional
connections that link a customer to a brand. Advertising researchers call this
brand linkage.
•Brand Promise and Brand Preference. A brand is sometimes defined as a
promise because it establishes an expectation based on familiarity, consistency,
and predictability.
•Brand Loyalty. A personal experience with a brand can develop into a brand
relationship, which is a connection over time that results in customers preferring
the brand--thus brand loyalty—and buying it over and over.People have unique
relationships with the brands they buy and use regularly and this is what makes
them brand loyal. The company’s attitude toward its customers is another factor in
loyalty.
By putting all this together, we see that a brand perception is created by different
fragments of information, feelings, and personal experiences with a brand. One
could say that a brand is an integrated perception—in other words, all of these
different aspects of brand communication work together to create brand meaning.
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Principle: A brand is an integrated perception that includes fragments of
information, feelings, and personal experience, all of which come together to give
the brand meaning.
Brand Positioning Strategy
A position is how consumers define the product or brand in comparison to its
competitors. A position is based upon two things. First, it is based on a particular
feature or attribute. Second, that feature must be important to the consumer.
Principle: The goal of positioning is to locate a product in the consumer’s mind
based on its features and advantages relative to its competition.
A position is based upon some notion of comparison. It is about locking the brand
in the consumers’ mind, based on some quality relevant to them where the brand
stands out. If that point of relevance changes, then the position may need to be
adjusted.
Product Features and Attributes
An initial step in crafting a position is to identify the features of the brand, as
well as those of the competition, in order to determine where the brand has an
advantage over its competitors. That means a marketer carefully evaluates the
product’s tangible features and other intangible attributes in order to identify the
dimensions of the product that are relevant to consumers and make it different
from its competitors.
Principle: Positioning identifies the features that make a brand different from its
competitors and relevant to consumers.
Differentiation and Competitive Advantage
Most markets involve a high level of competition. A company competes in a
crowded market by using product differentiation, a strategy designed to focus
attention on differences that distinguish the company’s product from all others in
the eyes of consumers.Products that really are the same, such as milk and
unleaded gas, are called undifferentiated or parity products. Creation of a
unique brand image is the most obvious way to differentiate one product from
another.
A technique called feature analysis helps structure an assessment of features
relative to competitors’ products in order to identify where a brand has an
advantage. Instructions for conducting such as analysis are provided in the text.
Using the two factors of importance and performance, competitive advantage is
found where 1) the product has a strong feature 2) in an area that is important to
the target and 3) where the competition is weaker.
Locating the Brand Position
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In addition to specific product attributes, a number of other factors can be used to locate a
position for a brand. They include:
•Superiority Position:Jack Trout suggests that positioning is always easy if
something is faster, fancier, safer, or newer.
•Preemptive Position: Being first in the category often creates category
leadership and dominance.
•Value Position: Wal-Mart and Hyundai have both used this very successfully.
•Psychological Position: Often brands are designed around non-product
differences. Volvo, Coke, and Hallmark are examples.
•Benefit Position: How does the product help the consumer?
•Usage Position: How, where, and when is the product used and who is using
it?
•Competitor’s Strategy: How can the product go head-to-head or move
completely away from the competition?
•Category Factors: Is the competition coming from outside the category and,
if so, how does the brand compare to these other categories and how does that
change the analysis of strengths and weaknesses?
Principle:Strong brands are known for one thing. The test is: What do you think
of when you hear the brand’s name?
Many campaigns are designed to establish the brand’s position by giving the right
set of cues about these decision factors to help place the brand in the consumer’s
mind relative to the competition. If a position is a point in a consumer’s mind,
planners can map that. The way planners compare positions is by using a
technique called a perceptual map, which plots all of the competitors on a matrix
based on the two most important consumer decision factors.
Repositioning
Positions are difficult to establish and are created over time. Once established,
they are difficult to change. Category dominance is important. Positioning
experts Al and Laura Reis recommend the difficult challenge of repositioning
when there is a marketplace change or new targeting opportunities arise. In their
view, repositioning can only work if the new position is related to the brand’s core
concept.
The principle in repositioning is to move ahead while at the same time retaining
the brand’s essence.The role of brand communication in a repositioning strategy is
to relate the product’s position to the target market’s life experience and
associations. A classic example of an effective repositioning campaign is 7UP,
which is described in the Matter of Practice feature in this chapter.
CONSUMER INSIGHT AND ACCOUNT PLANNING
The concept of consumer insight is the last of our key strategic decisions. It may also be the hardest
decision that planners make because it calls for solid research and thoughtful analyses that leads to,
in many cases, unexpected conclusions about the direction the brand communication should take.
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Consumer insights and the account planning function responsible for identifying them has
transformed marketing research as well as communication planning. It calls for “deep insight into
consumer minds and hearts,” according to Regina Lewis, a member of this textbook’s advisory
board. “It’s not just about how people think but it’s what is in their minds and hearts – their mental
and emotional mind-sets,” according to Ms. Lewis.
Account Planning
Account planning analyzes the research to uncover consumer insights. Insights are what happens
when the light bulb goes off and the planner sees something in a new way. From this insight clues
come concerning how and when to best reach the target audience and what to say.
Account planningis the research and analysis process used to gain knowledge of
the consumer that is expressed as a key consumer insight.An account planner,
then, is a person in an agency who uses a disciplined system to research a brand and
its customer relationships in order to devise advertising (and other marketing
communication) message strategies that are effective in addressing consumer needs
and wants. Account planning agencies are based in research but focus on deriving
meanings about consumers.
Principle:The account manager is seen as the voice of the client, and the account
planner is seen as the voice of the consumer.
Account planners do not design the creative strategy for an ad, as this is usually a
team process that requires the participation of the creative department. Rather, the
planner evaluates the consumer’s relationships with the brand and with media to
determine the kind of message to which they might respond. The objective is to
help the creative team come up with a better idea – making their creative process
easier and faster.
Susan Mendelsohn, a leader in the U.S. account planning industry explains the
account manager’s task as follows: 1) understand the meaning of the brand, 2)
understand the target audience’s relationship to the brand, 3) articulate
communication strategies, 4) prepare creative briefs based on an understanding of
the consumer and brand, and 5) evaluate effectiveness of the communication in
terms of how the target reacts to it.
The Consumer Insight Process
Through the process of strategic and critical thinking, the planner interprets the
consumer research to find a key consumer insight that will help move the target
audience to respond to the message. Consumer insights reveal the inner nature of
consumer’s thinking, including such things as mindsets, moods, motivations,
desires, aspirations, and motives that trigger their attitudes and actions.
Research: Brand Intelligence
Insight begins with research. The objective is to puzzle out a key insight that will
help move the target audience to respond to the message. Insight research, in other
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words, is about asking and listening and then asking more questions to probe
deeper into thoughts, opinions, attitudes, desires, and motivations.
Planners use a wide variety of research toolsto arrive at insights that lead to an
intelligent strategic decision. In a sense they are social anthropologists who are in
touch with cultural and social trends and understand how they take on relevance
in people’s lives. To accomplish this, the planner must be an integrator, who
brings all of the information together, and a synthesizer, who expresses what it all
means in one startlingly simple statement.
Insights: The Fuel of Big Ideas
Account planners look at advertising as an insight factory.Insight mining—finding
the “aha” in a stack of research reports, data, and transcripts—is the greatest
challenge for the account planner. The Account Planning Group Association
describes this process as “peering into nooks and crannies without losing sight of
the big picture in order to identify a key insight that can transform a client’s
business.”
Understanding the brand/consumer relationship is important because account
planners are taking the position of the agency’s brand steward. The account
planning toolkit is made up of questions that lead to useful insights that are culled
from research. Kelley and Jugenheimer recommend seven topics or questions you
might ask to begin in your search. They can be found in the text.
Here is a set of questions that can lead to useful insights:
What is a realistic response objective (perception, knowledge, feelings,
attitudes, symbolic meanings, behavior) for this target group?
What are the causes of their lack of response?
What are the barriers to the desired response?
What could motivate them to respond in the desired way?
What is the role of each element in the communication mix to motivate them
or remove a barrier?
The important dimensions that account planners seek to understand in planning brand
strategies are the relationship, the perceptions, the promise, and the point of
differentiation. Most importantly, planners are looking for clues about the brand’s
meaning, which is usually phrased in terms of the brand essence (core, soul),
personality, or image.
The Communication Brief
The outcome of strategic research usually reaches the agency’s creative department in
the form of a strategy document called a communication brief or creative brief,
which explains the consumer insight and summarizes the basic strategy decisions.
The brief is an outline of the message strategy that guides the agency’s work and
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helps keep their creative ideas strategically sound. As the planner’s main product,it
should be clear, logical, and focused.
Here is an outline of a typical communication brief:
Problem: What’s the problem that communication can solve?
Target audience: To whom do we want to speak?
Consumer insights: What motivates the target? What are the “major truths”
about the target’s relationships to the product category or brand?
Brand imperatives: What are the important features? What’s the point of
competitive advantage? What’s the brand’s position relative to the competition?
Also, what is the brand essence, brand personality and/or image?
Communication objectives: What do we want customers to do in response to our
messages?
The Proposition or Selling Idea: What is the single thought that the
communication will bring to life in a provocative way?
Support: What is the reason to believe the proposition?
Creative direction: How can you best stimulate the desired response? How can
we best say it?
Media imperatives: Where and when should we say it?
The brief is strategic but it should also be inspirational. It is designed to ignite the
creative team and give a spark to their idea process. A good brief does not set up
limitations and boundaries but rather serves as a springboard.
END-OF-CHAPTER SUPPORT
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