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Brad VanAuken Brand Accessibility

by Brad VanAuken, BrandForward, Inc.

October 2005

Recommend this article

BrandForward has tested its Brand Insistence ™ brand equity management system across numerous industries and organizations over the past eight years. We have found that the following five components drive customers from brand awareness to brand insistence regardless of the product or service category:

  • Awareness
  • Relevant differentiation
  • Value
  • Accessibility
  • Emotional connection

Over the years, I have focused on the ‘awareness’ and ‘relevant differentiation’ components quite a bit given their relative importance. But today, I will focus on accessibility. While it is clear that accessibility is important for retail brands, it is also important for every other type of brand. Accessibility is defined as how easy it is (or seems to be) for customers to interact with and purchase the brand. Certainly distribution channels and ‘location’ are important to brand accessibility, but so are hours of operation, wait times, product availability and process simplicity. Accessibility is driven by both spatial and time dimensions. A brand must be at the right place at the right time for a sale to occur. But accessibility is dependent upon even more than that.

I worked with a museum that was not ‘accessible’ to the general public in its geographic area because its gates, grounds and imposing buildings screamed ‘private – do not enter’ to the average person. So accessibility has an approachability aspect to it as well. Think of the personalities that have ‘turned you off’ over time. Perhaps they were too loud or too aggressive or too egotistical or prematurely intimate. Brands can suffer from the same problems. Accessibility has the most pronounced impact on converting brand awareness and preference to brand purchase (as illustrated in the diagram above). For this reason, accessibility is something you should seriously consider as you manage your brand and its equity.

Cynical Consumers

It is always instructive to work with business executives from different countries and regions of the world. For the past several months I have been working with a number of Russian marketing executives. I gained two interesting insights from my last interaction with them. Given the Soviet Union’s long history of propaganda infused communication (prior to Perestroika), most Russians today are very skeptical and jaded about what they see, read and hear in the media. This makes the marketer’s job even more difficult as message believability is always an issue, making proof points and ‘reasons to believe’ especially important in Russian marketing communication. This also argues for the importance of ‘customer touch point design’ (reinforcing the brand essence and promise at each customer touch point) in brand building efforts. Finally, it argues for carefully monitored congruence between what a brand promises and how it actually behaves.

The degree to which this applies to citizens of other countries is the degree to which their governments, businesses and religious and other institutions are perceived to control the issues and information to which people are exposed and how it is interpreted.

On a somewhat related note, I discovered that most company news and articles result from paid placement in Russia. There is far less opportunity (especially for large companies) to place stories through a media relations story pitching process. In Russia, the distinction between advertising and PR generated coverage is greatly diminished. Because of this, editorial independence also has less meaning.

Top U.S. City Slogans and Nicknames

Recently, Eric Swartz, president of TaglineGuru released his company’s list of the top 50 U.S. city slogans and nicknames. Following are the top ten of each:

Slogans

  1. Las Vegas, NV – What Happens Here, Stays Here.
  2. Charlottesville, VA – So Very Virginia.
  3. Atlantic City, NJ – Always Turned On.
  4. Cleveland, OH – Cleveland Rocks!
  5. Hershey, PA – The Sweetest Place on Earth.
  6. Omaha, NE – Rare. Well Done.
  7. Sante Fe, NM – The City Different.
  8. Eagle Pass, TX – Where Yee-Ha Meets Olé.
  9. San Diego, CA – City with Sol.
  10. Peculiar, MO – Where the Odds Are With You.
Nicknames
  1. New York City, NY – The Big Apple
  2. Las Vegas, NV – Sin City
  3. New Orleans, LA – The Big Easy
  4. Detroit, MI – Motor City
  5. Chicago, IL – The Windy City
  6. Boston, MA – Beantown
  7. San Francisco, CA – Baghdad by the Bay
  8. Hollywood, CA – Tinseltown
  9. Cleveland, OH – Mistake on the Lake
  10. Los Angeles, CA – La-La Land

 


Brad VanAuken is president and founder of BrandForward, Inc., a full-service brand management consultancy with clients throughout the world. Previously, Brad was the vice president of marketing for Element K, a leading e-learning company and director of brand management and marketing for Hallmark Cards, Inc. During his tenure as Hallmark’s chief brand advocate, Hallmark received the Brand Management of the Year award. Recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on brand management and marketing, Brad is a much sought after speaker and writer. He wrote the books The Brand Management Checklist and Brand Aid. His free online brand management and marketing newsletter is read by thousands of marketers throughout the world. Brad has a BS degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Email: vanauken@brandforward.com
Company Profile: BrandForward, Inc.
Company URL: http://www.brandforward.com

 

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