The BrandView^TM Model

BrandView is a rigorous process for assessing the overall health of a brand and making sensible adjustments. It begins with the assumption that to be healthy a brand has to perform well in four areas: awareness, preference, distinction, and utility.  This suggests that a brand could be deficient in any one of these areas.  For example, a brand can have a high level of awareness but still have trouble — for various reasons — persuading consumers to prefer it over competing brands.  Or a brand can can be sufficiently distinct from competitive products to be marketable…but lack the compelling attributes or associated company values to be preferred by a significant subset of consumers.

We begin a comprehensive BrandView inquiry by working to discover where the brand is in its life: is it an established brand needing to diagnose a problem?  is it an immature product trying to gain a toehold in market share?  is it a mid-term brand whose condition has changed dramatically because of cultural trends or the appearance of new competitors?
Once we have identified where the brand is in its life, we seek honest answers to a number of tough questions (working up from the bottom of the BrandView diagram):

• Is your product truly needed?
• Is your product genuinely distinct from competitive products and alternative ways to do the same thing?
• Are your product and company reputation compelling enough to create strong preference among category purchasers?
• Can you create and maintain sufficiently high awareness of your product and company reputation to sustain a community of users?

Utility

But…as you might suspect…there are more detailed pieces of information we need to gather in order to provide honest answers to these four broad questions. Some of this detail falls under the heading of Utility, some under Distinction, etc. For example, in the area of Utility, we need to know:

• What is it..really?
• What does it do?
• How do people accomplish that same purpose now…without your product?
• Why do people need it?  What part of people’s lives is deficient without it?
• Whom does it serve?  How would you describe these people?
  • Their attitudes
  • Their demography
  • Their behavior
  • Their lifestyles
  • Their values
• How receptive is the target audience to your product?
• If they are receptive, how much will they buy?
  • How often?  At what price?
• Is that enough to support a credible business plan?

Distinction

Under the heading of Distinction, we need to know:

• Who are the competitors?
• What do they currently say is so great about their product?
• How have they communicated this to consumers?
• What people, described in what way, really buy this line?
• Which product attributes are most compelling to category purchasers?
• Which competitors dominate which attributes?
• What attributes can we potentially dominate?
• Do purchasers in the category really see a difference between your product and the competitor’s?
• Is that difference meaningful to  them — would it make a difference in their lives?

Preference

Under the heading of Preference, we need to know:

• What company values do we bring to the marketplace?
• Do those values enhance the chances that consumers will prefer to work
• with us?
• Do live tests in the marketplace support our hypotheses?
• What types of people, described in what way, are most likely to become our best customers?
• In what markets do we find great numbers of these people?
• How do we identify these people by name and address?
• How do people go about making purchase decisions in this category?
• What product name is likely to best comprehend the attributes and values we deliver?

Awareness

Under the heading of Awareness, we need to know:

• What is the best way of expressing how our company and product affect consumers’ lives?
• What are the best media to use to express that?
• What portion of the consumer’s busy mind can we expect to get?
• When we publicize our message, are people listening and responding?
• What can the press ideally say about us?
• What’s the best logo, package design, and collateral to express how we affect consumers’ lives?
• Does our website express both product values and company values?
• What’s the best way to track comings and goings in our community of users?
• What’s the best way to share results and make adjustments?

For more information on how to apply the BrandView^TM Model to the wise development of your brand, please call Jerry Johnson at (425) 677-7430.  Or e-mail him at jerry@mktgdatascience.org.