Positioning your brand is a crucial yet difficult task. To get a true idea of how your brand is perceived by the market, you need to take the time to assess it. Assessing a brand requires us to look at all of the brand’s attributes. These attributes make up the brand equity and are built up over time.
A big problem for many brands is that the outside world may view the brand differently to how they want to be viewed. This is best illustrated by the brand mirror shown below.
People’s views of a brand are based on a range of factors such as:
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As might be expected, the product (or service) has a major influence on people’s views of a brand. Depending on the product, there could be a range of other attributes associated with the product itself that create a “brand view” – these include as packaging, specific features of the product and so on.
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The brand will also be influenced by promotions. Promotions build awareness over time and seek to position the brand with certain values. The degree to which promotions are effective will quite clearly influence the equity of the brand.
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The price of the product (or service) will similarly position the brand as being premium, midmarket, or economy.
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In addition there could be many other factors that influence brands such as the channel through which they are sold, the financial performance of the companies that offer the brands, press reports on the brands and the like.
Over time, brands will take their own shape influenced by factors such as the above. The way a brand looks to the viewing public might not be what the brand intended. This is why we need to hold the mirror up to the brand and see to what extent it reflects or is distorted from what we would like to be the real brand position. The mirror we hold up is market research, using questions which are designed to test the equity of the brand against its desired position.
To learn more about Branding Research, please click the link below.
