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Brand management cannot succeed without research. Brand Creation-- Research uncovers the underlying customer values, attitudes, needs, motivations and perceptions that lead to a brand's positioning. It identifies competitors' strengths and weaknesses, helping you further differentiate your brand from the competition, and perhaps even allowing you to reposition their brands to your brand's advantage. Research can help you identify the most powerful brand identity configuration, one that delivers the highest recognition and recall and the most positive associations. It can help you choose the advertising execution that best meets your brand's objectives. Research will help you determine the most advantageous pricing strategy for your brand. It can also help you determine the optimal mix of product/service attributes that deliver the greatest customer value for the least cost. Brand Management -- Ongoing brand equity monitoring can help you identify ways to strengthen your brand's equity and customer's loyalty to the brand. It can also help you identify when the brand might need to be repositioned to remain vital. A wide variety of brand equity components should be monitored in this process -- from awareness, relevance, differentiation, value and accessibility to emotional connection, vitality, preference, personality and other key associations. Brand Growth -- Research significantly increases the probability of success when entering new geographic markets with a brand. And research is essential in maximizing the likelihood of success when extending the brand into new product and service categories. In summary, research is essential to your brand's success as you create, manage and grow it. I will devote the next several columns to the effective use of research in each step of the brand management process. This will include a discussion of the different research methodologies available and the most important considerations when using them. Corporate Sponsorship of Everything I have been following with some interest the emergence of corporate sponsorships in various aspects of our lives. It started with sports brands sponsoring athletes. If you watch Tiger Woods play golf, the Nike brand has been encoded in your brain. Sponsorships branched out to the naming rights for stadiums and arenas. Pick a city and you can usually find a sponsored sports venue. When I was in Detroit recently, I found it ironic that Toyota sponsored the Scout Shop at the Detroit Boy Scout office. I am sure that marketers at GM, Ford and Chrysler would not use the word 'ironic.' I remember reading not so long ago that Clark, Texas offered to rename their town DISH in return for free satellite TV from the DISH network for its small number of homeowners. Las Vegas is selling naming rights to its monorail and Chicago is seeking the highest bidder to name to a freeway, currently called the Chicago Skyway. Just recently, USA Today ran an article citing Sheboygan, Wisconsin's push to sell rights to virtually anything at two public high schools as a way to raise cash. For instance, those high schools now have Kohler Credit Union kitchens ($45,000), Acuity Insurance field houses ($650,000), Sheboygan Orthopedic Associates locker rooms ($45,000) and Associated Bank school stores ($60,000) among other named entities. Where will this stop? I will not be surprised to hear that a parent has named a child after some company in return for a small financial donation. Come to think of it, I remember having an Allen Bradley cap as a child, something my parents said the Allen Bradley company sent them after my birth was announced in the local paper (my full name is Alan Bradley VanAuken). I wonder if they received any money for my name. Probably not. I was born too soon for that and besides, they misspelled "Allen." It will be very interesting to read of the types of sponsorships are offered for sale next. 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
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