Page 271 - Marketing Management

248 PART 4 BUILDING STRONG BRANDS

Zappos exhibited notable energized differentiation by communicating
dynamism and creativity in ways most other brands did not.
Formally, the BAV analysis identified three factors that help define
energy and the marketplace momentum it creates:
Marketing InsightInsight 1. Vision—A clear direction and point of view on the world and how it
Marketin
g
can and should be changed.
2. Invention—An intention for the product or service to change the
way people think, feel, and behave.
Brand Bubble Trouble 3. Dynamism—Excitement and affinity in the way the brand is presented.
The authors offer a five-step framework to infuse brands with more
In The Brand Bubble, brand consultants Ed Lebar and John Gerzema use
energy.
Y&R’s historical BAV database to conduct a comprehensive examination
of the state of brands. Beginning with data from mid-2004, they discov- 1. Perform an “energy audit” on your brand. Identify the current
ered several odd trends. For thousands of consumer goods and services sources and level of energy to understand your brand’s strengths
brands, key brand value measures such as consumer “top-of-mind” and weaknesses and how well brand management aligns with the
awareness, trust, regard, and admiration experienced significant drops. dynamics of the new marketplace.
At the same time, however, share prices for a number of years 2. Make your brand an organizing principle for the business. Find
were being driven higher by the intangible value the markets were at- an essential brand idea or thought that can serve as a lens through
tributing to consumer brands. Digging deeper, Lebar and Gerzema which you define every aspect of the customer experience, including
found the increase was actually due to a very few extremely strong products, services, and communications.
brands such as Google, Apple, and Nike. The value created by the vast 3. Create an energized value chain. Make the organization’s goals
majority of brands was stagnating or falling. for the brand real for everyone; all participants must think uniquely
The authors viewed this mismatch between the value consumers see in from the perspective of the brand and understand how their own
brands and the value the markets were ascribing to them as a recipe for dis- actions boost the energy level of the brand and fuel the core.
aster in two ways.At the macroeconomic level, it implied that stock prices of
4. Become an energy-driven enterprise. Stakeholders need to trans-
most consumer companies are overstated.At the microeconomic, company
fer their energy and passion to their business units and functions.
level, it pointed to a serious and continuing problem in brand management.
Once management’s aspirations for the brand and business begin
Why have consumer attitudes toward brands declined? The re-
becoming part of the culture, the process of building an energized
search identified three fundamental causes. First, there has been a pro-
brand enterprise is nearly complete.
liferation of brands. New product introductions have accelerated, but
many fail to register with consumers. Two, consumers expect creative 5. Create a loop of constant reinvention. Finally, keep the organi-
“big ideas” from brands and feel they are just not getting them. Finally, zation and its brand in a state of constant renewal. Brand man-
due to corporate scandals, product crises, and executive misbehavior, agers must be keenly aware of shifts in consumers’ perception and
trust in brands has plummeted. values and be ready to reshape themselves again and again.
Yet, vital brands are still being successfully built. Although all four
pillars of the BAV model play a role, the strongest brands resonated with Sources: John Gerzema and Ed Lebar, The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis
in Brand Value and How to Avoid It (New York: Jossey-Bass, 2008); John
consumers in a special way. Amazon.com, Axe, Facebook, Innocent,
Gerzema and Ed Lebar, “The Trouble with Brands,” Strategy+Business 55
IKEA, Land Rover, LG, LEGO, Tata, Nano, Twitter, Whole Foods, and (Summer 2009).

According to this model, enacting the four steps means establishing a pyramid of six “brand build-
ing blocks”as illustrated in Figure 9.4. The model emphasizes the duality of brands—the rational
route to brand building is on the left side of the pyramid and the emotional route is on the right side. 22
MasterCard is a brand with duality, because it emphasizes both the rational advantages of the
credit card—its acceptance at establishments worldwide—as well as the emotional advantages,
expressed in the award-winning “Priceless” advertising campaign (“There are some things money
can’t buy; for everything else, there’s MasterCard.”).
Creating significant brand equity requires reaching the top of the brand pyramid, which occurs
only if the right building blocks are put into place.
• Brand salience is how often and how easily customers think of the brand under various
purchase or consumption situations.
• Brand performance is how well the product or service meets customers’ functional needs.
• Brand imagery describes the extrinsic properties of the product or service, including the ways
in which the brand attempts to meet customers’ psychological or social needs.