Rating Qualities

7
Applicable

Building Strong Brands

David A. Aaker | Free Press © 1995

In this book, David A. Aaker discusses how a brand can be managed as a strategic asset and
a source of competitive advantage. The companies whose work is described at length include
Saturn, General Electric, Kodak, Healthy Choice, McDonald’s, and many others. Aaker shows
how a brand should be considered as a product, a person, an organization, and a symbol. The
book is an excellent in-depth approach to the many facets of brand development. However, it
sometimes tends to go into extensive detail about slight differences in concepts and definitions,
and it is written in a generally dry, academic style. But, the book offers excellent basic principles
you can apply to improve your brand. getAbstract recommends this book to everyone involved in
marketing.

Take-Aways
• Brands possess assets and liabilities linked to their names or symbols.
• A brand has four assets: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty and brand
association.
• Brand awareness reflects how strongly a brand is present in the consumer’s mind.
• Recognition occurs when a consumer becomes familiar with the brand through past exposure.
• A core identity is a brands central, timeless essence.
• Quality brands are backed by quality products.
• Describe the functional and emotional benefits of the brand to the consumer.
• Expand the brand’s identity by building emotional and self-expressive benefits.
• Consider your brand from four perspectives: as a product, as an organization, as a personality,
and as a symbol.
• Build a strong brand through positive associations with your organization.

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 Summary

The Elements of a Strong Brand

To build a strong brand, build on the concept of brand equity. View your brand as having a
series of assets or liabilities linked to its name or symbol. These qualities add to the value of your
product or service. Managed effectively, the brand makes your product even more valuable. Badly
managed, the brand’s assets can decline. For example, this can happen when a brand becomes
associated with old-fashioned products. A brand offers four major categories of assets:

1. The name awareness associated with the brand.

2. The quality of the brand as perceived by customers.
3. The loyalty customers have to the brand.
4. The associations customers have with the brand.

“Brand equity is a set of assets (and liabilities) linked to a brand’s name and symbol that
adds to (or subtracts from) the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or
that firm’s customers.”

To build a strong brand, invest in increasing the value of these four assets. By doing so, you
create a number of benefits, including reducing marketing costs, attracting new customers, giving
customers more reasons to buy, and associating additional positive attitudes and feelings with
your brand.

Awareness, Quality, Loyalty, and Associations

Brand awareness reflects how strongly a brand is present in the consumer’s mind. Recognition
occurs when a consumer becomes familiar with the brand through past exposure and remembers
it. This gives the customer a positive feeling about the brand, since recognition contributes to
a more positive feeling about anything, from people to music. Familiarity contributes to the
customer’s belief that your company is supporting the brand and that it denotes a good product.
The best position to achieve is brand name dominance, where customers associate a single brand
with a type of product. However, be careful that your brand doesn’t become a common label,
which could cost you legal protection.

“Achieving perceptions of quality is usually impossible unless the quality claim has
substance.”

The brand association that most strongly influences financial performance is perceived quality.
Higher perceived quality makes customers willing to pay a higher price and to buy a greater
quantity, which will improve your market share. However, if you want consumers to perceive
quality, you need to back it up with substance. You have to deliver a quality product.

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 “The strongest brands are managed not for general awareness, but for strategic
awareness. It is one thing to be remembered: it is quite another to be remembered for the
right reasons (and to avoid being remembered for the wrong reasons).”

Brand loyalty can reduce marketing costs. Loyal customers generate predictable sales and profits.
It costs less to keep your current customers than seek new ones. Therefore, don’t promote
brand growth to new customers in ways that neglect your current customers. Do not offer price
savings exclusively to new customers because loyal customers might feel cheated. Frequent-buyer
programs and customer clubs are good loyalty promotions.

“The core identity represents the timeless essence of the brand. It is the center that
remains after you peel away the layers of an onion.”

You can promote powerful, favorable brand associations with a brand identity program. Don’t
focus only on product attributes and the brand’s tangible functional benefits. Expand the brand’s
identity by building in emotional and self-expressive benefits. Use strategic brand analysis and
brand positioning to select the best approach.

Avoiding the Brand Identity Traps

When you build a brand identity, you want to avoid the four major brand identity traps:

1. The brand image trap - Don’t let your customer’s perception of your brand determine your
identity. Instead, consider brand image as just one source of input in deciding what your brand
identity should be.
2. The brand position trap - Don’t focus too narrowly on what the brand is, in terms of
product attributes. You should also consider its other qualities, such as brand personality,
organizational associations, or brand symbols.
3. The external perspective trap - Don’t limit yourself to an external point of view. Develop
an internal perspective as well. Recognize that your brand can help your own employees
understand your company’s basic values and purpose.
4. The product-attribution fixation trap - Don’t focus your brand development efforts solely on a
few product attributes.

Building Your Brand With Four Brand Identity Perspectives

To add texture and depth to your brand, consider it from four perspectives:

1. Thinking of your brand as a product - Consider the scope of the product, product attributes, the
quality or value of the product, the product’s uses, the major users, and the country of origin.
2. Thinking of your brand as an organization - Look at the attributes that define your
organization, such as innovation and trustworthiness, and whether you want to promote your
brand as local, national, or global.

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 3. Thinking of your brand as a person - Think of the brand’s personality, that is, whether it has a
rugged, energetic, or genuine personality. Ponder the relationship between the brand and the
customer. For example, would the customer think of your brand as a friend or adviser?
4. Thinking of your brand as a symbol - Think of the visual imagery and metaphors associated
with your brand and the brand’s heritage or history. For example, would images from the past
evoke a favorable nostalgia?

“The core identity, which is central to both the meaning and success of the brand,
contains the associations that are most likely to remain constant as the brand travels to
new markets and new products.”

You don’t have to use all these perspectives for every brand, but consider each one as you develop
a brand. Use the ones that help you decide what you want the brand to mean to your customers.

Expanding Your Brand’s Identity

The key to building brand identity is to create a unique set of brand associations which represent
what the brand stands for to customers. These associations include an implicit promise to
customers to fulfill the expectations you created. Brand identity includes core identity and
extended identity. Core identity is the central, timeless essence of the brand which typically
stays constant, even when you expand into new markets and products. By contrast, the extended
identity builds on this core with additional meanings that provide texture and completeness.

“The strongest brand identities have both functional and emotional benefits.”

Define your brand’s core identity. Michelin’s core identity is advanced-technology tires for the
knowledgeable driver. The core identity of Johnson & Johnson’s medical products is trust and
quality in over-the-counter medicines. To determine your core identity, define the fundamental
beliefs and values behind the brand.

“Viewing the brand as an organization generates organizational associations that can be

attached to the brand as part of the brand identity.”

For an extended identity, include additional brand elements such as personality factors, a slogan,
a logo, endorsers, sub-brands, user images, and information on the brand’s heritage. For example,
Nike’s core identity includes products for sports and fitness, such as performance shoes based
on technological superiority. But Nike’s extended identity includes a brand personality that is
exciting, provocative, spirited, cool, innovative, and aggressive. Nike expresses this with sports
star endorsements, the Swoosh logo, and the "Just do it" slogan.

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 The Brand as a Product

To support your brand’s identity, you need a value proposition that defines the brand’s functional,
emotional, and self-expressive benefits for the customer. These benefits should help the customer
feel a close relationship to your brand.

1. The functional benefits - These product attributes are useful to the customer. For example,
Volvo promotes itself as a safe, strong car because of its design and weight.
2. The emotional benefits - These product characteristics leave the customer feeling good about
your brand. They touch the feelings or emotions. For instance, being "safe" in a Volvo taps the
customer’s desire for security and safety when he drives, while a customer is enticed to feel
excited in a BMW.
3. The self-expressive benefits - These product qualities tap into a customer’s self-concept of
who he is or wants to be. For example, a customer buying clothes from the Gap can feel hip. A
woman using Ralph Lauren perfume can see herself as sophisticated.

The Brand as an Organization

A good way to build a strong brand is through positive associations with your organization
and what it represents. This helps customers feel good about your company and its products.
For instance, the Body Shop uses its corporate concern with social and environmental change
to gain the loyalty of a growing number of customers who feel the same way. Sometimes this
organizational association can be used to market a corporate umbrella brand, as accomplished
by Sony and GE. Then, the corporate brand can be used to gain economies of scale in creating
awareness about a number of related brands. However, you don’t want to use a corporate brand
inappropriately. For example, Clorox is so associated with laundry bleach that it would not be a
good name to attach to a line of food products.

The Brand as a Personality

A brand’s personality consists of the human characteristics customers associate with it. For
instance, a brand’s personality can infer such characteristics as gender, age, and socio-economic
class, as well as personal traits, like friendliness and excitement. For example, Harley-Davidson
developed a strong personality image. The brand evokes a macho rider who seeks freedom, is
patriotic, and wants to break out of conventional social behaviors and dress codes. At the same
time, Harley-Davidson was able to tone down this image and extend it to more middle class riders,
drawn by the implied trait of being free and independent.

“The visibility and presence of the organization behind a brand can create an image of
size, substance, and competence.”

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 A brand personality scale can measure your brand’s personality by assessing five major personality
factors that are important to consumers: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and
ruggedness. Certain major brands emphasize certain traits. For instance, Campbell’s is associated
with sincerity, Absolut with excitement, Amex with competence, Lexus with sophistication,
and Marlboro with ruggedness. When you create a brand’s personality, consider its imagery,
sponsorships, age, and representative symbols.

Implementing Your Brand Strategy

Strategic brand analysis can help you decide what brand identity to employ and how to implement
it. This includes:

1. A customer analysis - Look at trends, motivations, unmet needs, and segmentation.

2. A competitor analysis - Evaluate the brand images and identities your competitors use.
Examine their strengths and strategies; understand their vulnerabilities.
3. A self-analysis - Look closely at your existing brand image, the heritage behind your brand, and
the strengths of your brand’s image and positioning. Analyze how well they mesh with your
organization’s values.

“A corporate brand that is applied to many products also provides economies of scale
and scope in creating visibility and awareness, since the cost involved is spread over
multiple products and categories.”

You need to be ready to change your brand image and positioning over time, as conditions
change. Sometimes this can mean you need to change the name or the image associations, or even
create sub-brands. For instance, Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC, in response
to consumers’ growing negative perception about fried foods. The company’s new name also
positioned its restaurants more favorably for expansion into other types of foods.

About the Author

David A. Aaker is a professor of marketing strategy at the Haas School of Business at the
University of California at Berkeley. He has written ten books and more than eighty articles on
branding, advertising, and business strategy. He lectures widely and consults for companies in the
United States, Europe, and Japan.

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