Brand Audit and Equity Concepts

Module 6: Developing Brand Equity Measurement and Management

• Brand equity measurement and management involves creating a system for measuring and managing brand equity.
• Learning objectives include describing new accountability, defining the brand value chain diagram and its components, explaining the brand equity measurement system, and exploring the brand equity management system and its components.

Discussion

• Communication of products is important.
• Various communication channels exist.
• Messages should be tailored appropriately

The New Accountability

• Marketing spending must be justified.
• Effective and efficient return on marketing investment (ROMI) is important.
• Some marketing expenditures may not directly lead to immediate profits, but still contribute to brand equity.
• Up to 70% or more of marketing expenditure may be devoted to various programs and activities that may not immediately translate to increased profits, but still contribute to brand equity

The Brand Value Chain

• A structured approach for assessing brand equity sources and outcomes.
• Goes beyond the basic Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model.
• Outlines the processes of generating brand value through marketing activities.

Value Stages

• Marketing program investment: Any marketing activity impacting brand value development.
• Customer mindset: How consumer views and perspectives have changed due to marketing programs.
• Market performance: How customers respond to marketing programs in the marketplace.
• Shareholder value: Outcomes on shareholder value as a result of the marketing program.

Multipliers

• There are different multipliers, including program quality, customer and market multipliers that have varying impacts on consumer mindsets, market performance etc.
• Program Quality Multiplier: The ability of marketing programs to affect consumer mindset, and ensure messages are clear, relevant, distinct, and consistent.
• Customer Multiplier: The degree to which the value created in consumers' minds affects market performance; depends on competitive superiority, channel support, consumer profile, and size
• Market Multiplier: The extent to which value created through brand market performance is manifested in shareholder value; factors like market dynamics, growth potential, risk profile, and brand contribution influence it.

Brand Equity Measurement System

• A set of research procedures for marketers to make tactical decisions in the short term and strategic decisions in the long term.
• Procedures provide timely, accurate, and actionable information to marketers to assist in decision making.
• Key elements include brand audits, tracking procedures, and brand equity management system design

Brand Audit

• Comprehensive examination of a brand to assess health.
• Involves understanding brand vision, mission, promise, values, position, personality, and performance.
• Has consumer focus and importance because it helps understand sources of brand equity, suggesting ways to enhance it.
• Steps include two components: Brand inventory (supply-side) and Brand exploratory (demand-side.)

Brand Inventory (Supply Side)

• A comprehensive, current profile of all branded products/services.
• Covers brand elements, marketing programs, competitive brands profiles, POPs and PODs, and brand mantra.
• Provides insight for positioning, better management, and assessing consistency in branding messages.

Brand Exploratory (Demand Side)

• Provides detailed account on how customers perceive brands.
• Key elements in the information include awareness, favorability, uniqueness of associations, understanding sources of customer-based brand equity, and knowledge structures of both competitors and the core brands.

Suggested Brand Audit Outline

• The outline contains objectives, scope, approach, background on industries, brand (self-analysis), consumer analysis, brand inventory, elements, current marketing programs, branding approaches (e.g. brand extensions, sub-brands), and analysis of competitors, competitors' brand inventory, identifying strengths and weaknesses, aspects involved with brand exploratory including brand associations, brand positioning analysis etc.

Designing Brand Tracking Studies

• Information is collected from consumers regularly over time.
• The studies are useful for both describing and analyzing situations of a brand over time .
• Customizable questionnaires capture brand-specific or global issues.

Brand Equity Management System

• Consists of organizational processes for better understanding and using brand equity.
• Key components include the brand equity charter, brand equity report, and brand equity responsibilities

Brand Equity Charter

• Provides guidelines to internal and external marketing managers involved with the brand.
• Needs to be updated yearly.
• Contains components like defining firm's view of brand equity, outlines scope of key brands, details actual and desired equity, how brand equity is measured, how marketing programs should be developed, and expected treatments of the brand (e.g., trademarks, packaging, communications.

Brand Equity Report

• A compilation of results from various tracking surveys and performance measures.
• Reports are produced monthly, quarterly, or annually.
• Report provides descriptive details of brand performance, and diagnostic explanations for observed performance.
• Report also assesses reasons behind performance trends.

Brand Equity Responsibilities

• Organizational responsibilities and processes aimed at long-term brand equity maximization.
• Establishes roles of VP or Director of Equity, overseeing Brand charter and reports implementation.
• Ensures marketing activity aligns with charter's spirit and report's substance.

Qualitative Research Techniques

• Free association, including inquiries on brand likes, positive aspects, dislikes and disadvantages, unique attributes, and similarities/differences to other brands.

Qualitative Research Techniques: Projective Techniques

• Used to unveil true consumer opinions and sentiments, especially when they are unable or unwilling to express themselves directly(e.g., Completion and interpretation tasks, Comparison tasks.)

New Approach: ZMET

• Guided conversations, comprised of a series of steps involving story-telling, missed images, sorting tasks, construct elicitation, and image identification to understanding and influence consumer attitudes/behaviors

Identifying Key Brand Personality Associations

• Identifies correlations between brands and personality traits across various industries/categories (e.g. coffee, technology, automobiles, retail.)

Experiential Methods

• Observing in consumer's homes, workplaces, or shopping behaviors to get a better and more realistic idea on consumer attitude and behaviors.
• Examples include sending researchers to consumers' houses or giving them cameras and diaries to gain better insight into how they conduct their daily lives.
• This helps in getting more meaningful and more realistic responses from consumers.

Quantitative Research

• Techniques involving consumer awareness, brand image, responses, and relationships.
• Useful in evaluating consumer's understanding of brands

Awareness

• Recognition, including abilities for consumers to recognize the brand.
• Recall , including consumers retrieving information about the brand from memory (aided vs. unaided recall)
• Corrections for guessing are important aspects to consider in conducting research measurements that determine consumer awareness.

Image

• Open-ended questions are asked about the brand's strength, favorability, and uniqueness, and these attributes are rated on scales for quantitative analysis to gain insights.

Brand Responses

• Purchase intentions help predict actual purchase behavior when there is a correspondence between the two in terms of action, target, context, time.

Brand Relationships

• Includes different aspects of brand relationships involving behavioral loyalty, brand substitutability, and other brand resonance dimensions.

Comprehensive Models of Customer-Based Brand Equity

• Model incorporates brand dynamics and equity engines.
• Also includes Young & Rubicam’s Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) to evaluate and understand brand dynamics.

Brand Dynamics

• A hierarchical approach for determining the strength of consumer-brand relationships.
• Consists of Presence, Relevance, Performance, Advantage, and Bonding as levels of relationship strength.

Equity Engines

• Model outlining three key dimensions of brand affinity: Authority (reputation), Identification (match to personal needs), and Approval (social standing.)

Young & Rubicam's Brand Asset Valuator (BAV)

• Five key components in evaluating brand health: Differentiation, Energy, Relevance, Esteem, and Knowledge.
• Developed from various measures of consumer perceptions linking different facets of brand perception in a way that monitors progress of brand development.

Brand Asset Valuator (BAV)

• Uses a multitude of metrics gathered from 240,000+ consumers across 181+ categories, 137 studies, 40 countries/regions, 8 years, and 56 different brand metrics and is based on common methodology.

How Brands Are Built

• Four main aspects of brand-building: Knowledge, Esteem, Relevance, and Differentiation that culminates into brand experience.

Healthy Brands

• Brands are healthier when differentiation is greater than relevance.
• This suggests brand's uniqueness.

Brands With Greater Relevance

• Brands focusing on relevance instead of differentiation run the risk of becoming commoditized.
• Uniqueness fades and price becomes a dominant deciding factor.

More Esteem

• Brands with higher esteem have better likeability than recognition.

Too Much Knowledge

• Brand recognition can be detrimental to brand likeability
• Too much knowledge means less recognition from the consumer's point view.

Two-Dimensional Framework (Power Grid)

• A model that links Brand Strength (Differentiation, Relevance) and Brand Stature (Esteem, Knowledge).
• Helps understand the position of brands, highlighting whether a brand is leading or lagging based on their perception of a consumer.

Commonalty Between the BAV Model and the CBBE Framework

• BAV model parallels CBBE by associating brand knowledge with awareness, esteem with favorability, relevance with brand strength, energy with favorability of associations, and differentiation with uniqueness.

Assignment: Definitions of Marketing Terms

• Definitions are requested for marketing concepts/terms like Marketing Communications, Current brand knowledge, Integrated Marketing Communications, Advertising, Event Marketing, Ideal Ad Campaign, Personal selling, Public relations and publicity, Promotions, and Place.

Test your knowledge on brand audits and brand equity with this quiz. Explore key components such as brand inventories, the Brand Equity Charter, and the emotional connections established by brands like the Knicks. This quiz will enhance your understanding of essential marketing concepts and strategies.