How to sharpen your brand: Measuring distinctive assets

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The human brain is a complex and utterly fascinating thing.

For many years, marketers and researchers have tried to understand the mechanism behind consumers’ behavior and thinking. The old thinking assumes that individuals make choices as a rational agent, taking into account all available information, potential costs and benefits when making a decision. As this might be the case for very distinct decisions and purchases, often those that are high in cost or bring a lot of risk and uncertainty, anyone can easily see that we act irrationally in many other situations. Evidence from neuropsychology teaches us that people make decisions based on two different processes (Wason & Evans, 1975) or even referred to as systems (Kahneman, 2011). Type 1 processes are intuitive, fast, unconscious, automatic, effortless and error prone; while type 2 processes are slow, conscious, controlled and require a lot of effort. The majority of our decisions are made using type 1 processes, where we use heuristics or short cuts to lead our behavior.

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Marketing and marketing research still tend to focus on type 2 processes when influencing and analyzing consumer behavior. Just consider the example of measuring brand strength, where we give participants a list of brand benefits and ask them to rate each item rationally and individually to then evaluate the overall brand performance. Not surprisingly, self-reported measures (i.e. explicit measures) represent one of the most important research tools to measure people’s attitudes, perceptions and behavior (Gawronski B. & De Houwer J., 2014). And 04

this makes perfect sense; why not simply ask people what they do and why they do certain things. Yet people are often unwilling or unable to provide accurate details of their own behavior. This is why in the past years implicit research techniques have gained momentum in fields like applied market research. These techniques not only allow to get answers to questions that are difficult (if not impossible) to ask directly, these measures also give another view on consumer’s thoughts and feelings.

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THE POWER OF MEMORY STRUCTURES One particular area where implicit research showed to bring a lot of value is in understanding the associative networks or memory structures around brands as outlined by the associative network theories of marketing. These theories outline the existence and important of the inter-relationship in memory between concepts (e.g. brands) and objects (e.g. aspects of that brand such as benefits, logos, colors, packaging, ‌), where concepts are linked by mental connections to related aspects (Stephenson & Fazio, 2008).

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These connections vary in strength. Understanding which brand aspects are strongly (vs. weakly) associated with the parent brand can help marketers create a coherent, immediately recognized proposition; yet one that is at the same time distinctive from close competitors.

This a key focus amongst brand managers and marketers who follow the Penetration Religion thinking, inspired by gurus like Byron Sharp, to grow their brand. An appropriate use of strong brand elements can help spur consumer behavior. Implicit constructs are thought to be especially predictive of product choice in situations when consumers do not have the time, willingness, or mental resources to carefully evaluate their choices. The explicit measures traditionally used in market research (wrongly) assume that consumers think and make decisions 08

in a careful, rational manner. Yet the amount of time consumers spend thinking about brands is tiny and more than 95% of our decisions is unconscious and driven by emotions (Phil Barden, 2013). And as Byron Sharp outlines, because most of the decisions are made with the emotional brain we should stop focusing on differentiation and segmentation, but rather on growing simple and consistent brand assets that are easy to remember and when seen, trigger instinctive responses and will bring the brand front-of-mind when a consumer is in a buying situation (Byron Sharp, 2010). These assets are often referred to as “distinctive assets�, namely assets that are memorable and attractive and provide sensory and semantic cues and as such become brand identity elements. Thus by understanding and capitalizing on strong brand elements, marketers can build stronger memory structures around their brands which will drive purchase.

MEASURING DISTINCTIVE ASSETS When measuring a brand’s distinctive assets, we should thus avoid over-rationalization and as such use measures that tap into these implicit brain processes; this is where our implicit association tool comes in. The InSites Consulting implicit association tool was developed after extensive readings of the scientific literature on implicit constructs and implicit measurement (e.g.

Nosek & Banaji, 2001). The tool and method was further refined through a series of R&D studies and with the support of Professor Dr. Jan De Houwer from the department of Experimental and Clinical Psychology of Ghent University (Belgium), who is an internationally recognized expert in implicit measures and cognitive psychology.

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Our Implicit measurement tool, which a variant of the GNAT (Go/ NoGo Association Task), works as an association exercise where an asset is introduced at the start of the task after which participants are shown a set of brand names, one after the other for a very limited time, and are asked to press the space bar if they feel the brand can be linked to the asset. Depending on the research goal (e.g. when measuring brand associations) it can also be done the other way around, where a brand is introduced at the start after which different assets and associations are shown for which the participant has to indicate which items they associate with the target brand.

When measuring a brand’s distinctive assets, we will measure all asso12

ciations towards the target brand and one or more competitor brands.

For each brand under study we will work with a number of stimuli (logo’s, colors, packaging…). Apart from the brand stimuli (target and competitor brands), an equal number of noise or distracter stimuli are chosen. The noise or distracter stimuli are usually chosen from all other non-target (e.g. competitor) brands relevant for the research. By including non-target brands as distracters, the test more closely matches the “real world” scenario in which consumers are exposed to a brand (e.g. on a shelf), alongside a set of close and often similar competitors.

Because participants must differentiate stimuli from the client brand from stimuli of close competitors, the implicit task can measure how distinctive each client image is, as well as how distinctive the entire set of client brand stimuli is, compared to relevant competitors.

The basic methodology consists of the participant going through a series of association tasks in which brands are judged as to whether or not they belong to an asset (e.g. shape, color, logo, jingle). In distinctive assets research, the implicit test consists of different blocks (or groups) of exercises. In each block, one asset serves as the ’target‘ asset. The participant’s task is to hit the space bar every time they see a brand related to the target asset. If the brand presented is not related to the asset, the participant must do nothing (e.g. not hit the space bar). The image is displayed on the screen for 750 - 1000 milliseconds, during which time the participants can react whether the brand matches the asset.

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This task gives three primary output measures. The first output measure is the percentage of responses or association level for each item.

This score gives an indication of the level of association for each brand with an asset. The second output provides a measure for uniqueness, namely the extent people correctly attribute an asset to the right brand and not to any other brand. The last output measure is the average reaction time with which participants identify each image. This score indicates how quickly participants were able to identify each asset with a brand. Returning to the above part on associative networks, items that are consistently identified relatively quickly are thought to have strong connections in the mind to their parent brand.

These output measures can be organized in a mapping; crossing the 14

association level and the uniqueness (distinctiveness) of the assets results in four different quadrants: •

Acceleration: these are truly distinctive assets; the item or asset immediately triggers the target brand when seen and as such can even be used in isolation (without mention of the target brand) in advertising. Examples are McDonald’s ’M’ logo, which showed to be a distinctive asset even amongst toddlers (McAlister & Cornwell, 2010) .

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Consideration or Invest: these items or assets are highly associated with the brand, but there is some level of confusion amongst consumers as some mutually attribute it to competitive brands. As such, communication focusing on increasing the link with the target brand can be beneficial.

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Confusion: for these items the association level is high, yet at the same time not unique for the target brand and resulting in confusion. This is a dangerous position as these assets likely evoke competitors and might thus boost their sales instead of yours.

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Absence: these assets are not known (sufficiently) on the market and as such require considerable efforts to develop any value.

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The goal is for your key brand assets to be located in the upper right corner. This analysis does not only show what a brand’s identity elements are, but provides a framework for benchmarking your brand against key competitors. For brands following penetration thinking, the tracking of distinctive assets is a core part of their brand performance measurement. This is also what we do for brands like Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Mastercard, where we track the performance of their key identity elements against competing brands.

It is clear that, contrary to what was assumed in the past, we are not 16

rational thinkers. Shortcuts and heuristics form a major part of our decision-making process. Memory structures are one of these shortcuts; brands can leverage these by repeating the same message, asset or association in everything they do (packaging, advertising executions, communication efforts…). The stronger the memory structure or the more distinctive a brand’s asset, the greater the probability for consumers to buy this brand in a certain buying situation. As these associations are typical ‘type 1’ processes and done unconsciously, it is desirable to use a measurement approach that taps into these processes such as our implicit association task.

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From the start of InSites Consulting in 1997 until today, there has been only one constant: we are continuously pushing the boundaries of marketing research. With a team of academics, we empower people to create the future of brands. Innovation is our lifeblood; it keeps us ahead of the innovation curve. We are proud to work for more than a third of the world’s Best Global Brands and have been cheered by the industry with more than 25 international awards.

As one of the top 3 most innovative market research agencies in the world (GRIT), we help our clients connect with consumers all over the world.

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Marketing@insites-consulting.com @insites

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