Brand Asset Management

AD CONTENT: The greatest leverage of advertising is in its creativity. A great ad can be, and often is, 10 times more effective than a mediocre ad.

It’s possible, for example, to cut a media budget by 25%, and know that you’ll lose roughly 25% of your effectiveness. But if you cut media production costs, e.g., by 25% … you can’t know the possible impact. You might lose up to 90% of your effectiveness. You’ll definitely lose out on quality and proper targeting.

However, we’re not just talking about throwing money around here. It’s true that dazzling production values can’t rescue a non-idea, but it’s also true that looking like a local car dealer can turn off an audience’s receptors to even the strongest ideas. Plus, you can’t just say the same things your competitors are. This is where you MUST know your unique value proposition and driving that point home is of utmost importance.

If we think of media spending as an unleveraged investment, and ad content as highly leveraged, we will be less tempted to steal budget from the creative process to buy a few more spots in, say… Lubbock.

Be honest, and score 0 to 10 points for what your ads say, plus 0 to 10 for how memorably and unexpectedly they say it. Then multiply that total by the “Share of Voice” score you gave yourself, above. (This is the single biggest score you’ll get, because these assets are the biggest equity builders. It stands to reason: more leverage = more importance = more points.)

PROMOTION: Can promotions kill brand equity? Yes.

Can promotions build brand equity? Yes … if one sees to it that the promotional activities enhance and reinforce the basic brand image. In other words, don’t needlessly, blindly switch on “marketing autopilot,” drop millions of high-value coupons and call it a plan.

To put it bluntly, sometimes FSI stands for Failed to Search for Ideas (instead of Free Standing Insert).

Give yourself a score 0 to 5 for a strategically sound promotion policy. A plan that not only reinforces your brand, but differentiates your voice from the competition. Not “ME TOO!” messaging. Then, subtract one point for every coupon promotion in the last 12 months (unless you’re a grocery store!). Range = -5 to +5.

Tomorrow, CONSISTENCY and DISTRIBUTION.

So, according to the legend, the 7 blind Hindus felt different parts of the elephant and came to 7 wildly different conclusions. One feeling the elephant’s side declared that an elephant was “very like a wall.” Another felt a leg and concluded that an elephant was “very like a tree.” A third grasped the elephant’s tail and decided that it was “very like a rope.” And so on.

This ancient “Consulting Task Force” failed to achieve consensus, since they got hung up on seven different Situation Analyses. (The one holding the tail also got elephant manure on his loafers, an occupational hazard for visually impaired pachyderm fondlers.)

Like that legendary beast, a brand performing below expectations is often approached from multiple directions, with marketing experts tugging and probing and prescribing, triggered by whatever portion of elephant anatomy is at hand.

The ad agency detects an advertising problem; the brand manager’s spreadsheet proves that retailers are at fault; the sales promotion agency knows it’s a promotion problem; the packaging experts say a redesign will save the brand; the regional sales managers want an extra 5% for a new trade deal, and the CFO says it’s a brand in decline, so quit spending on it.

You shouldn’t conclude that this is a case of literal blindness … but you should recognize the limitations of strategies based on narrow perspectives. Somebody somewhere will get elephant poop on his Allen Edmonds.

First of all, brand asset management is a new discipline for most brand holders. It’s a perspective that differs sharply from “beancounter-centric” accounting, the conventional viewpoint that values brick-and-mortar more highly than, say, the knowledge and skill of a sales force. We have to move beyond the bias that accounts for a paper clip, but discounts a company’s reputation.

Most brand managers focus on tangible, easily quantified assets. When you combine that with “next-quarter-itis,” the national penchant for focusing on short-term numerical goals regardless of the impact on brand equity, you get systemic long-term problems. While it’s most apparent in publicly-traded companies, it’s contagious. In this mind set, for example, volume will always seem more important than market share, and easy-to-measure quarterly results will matter more than hard-to-measure customer satisfaction.

Add to those institutional biases the short-term perspective of Brand Managers at major companies who know they’ll be on X Brand for 18 months, tops, before moving on to Y Brand (or field sales, or something). They know their career path is paved with short-term fixes. Is it any wonder that budgets for indiscriminate high-value couponing (and other brand demotions) are growing far faster than budgets for brand-building?

Instead, let’s learn to audit together. Over the next couple of days, we’ll pick a brand from your company (or your company as a whole) and keep score. If you have more than one brand to choose from, pick the one that makes you lose sleep at night. Grab a pencil and keep score as we review sixteen of your brand’s vital assets. Use a separate piece of paper if you want someone else to go through this for the sake of comparison.

More to come tomorrow!

Brand Asset Deployment, Part 3

Brand Asset Deployment