Distinctive Brand Assets? Hands off!

Names are not the reason why we remember brands

Imagine you’re launching a premium tech hardware company. Would you name it after a basic fruit? Or use a German superlative prefix to name a taxi app? By the way, you might consider avoiding any creative effort there: ?thousands of brands that are parts of our life have just been named after their founder’s name.

?Names are not the reason why we remember brands. The positive experience caused by their product is the only reason why. Names are just there as a mental shortcut towards that memory, in case we would like to repeat or share the experience. A good name just needs to be different from existing names in the category, short, easy enough to pronounce and not close from any embarrassing meaning in some key countries where the brand needs to grow. Period.

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Logos either

How about logos now. Imagine you’re launching a very high-end luxury red sport car. Would you flank it with a garish yellow logo ? Would you choose a promotional orange as the brand code for a luxury Champagne label? Brand colors and logo shapes are like names. They don’t need to be meaningful or linked to the product nature, but easy to memorize. They need to be distinct enough and enjoy a rigorously consistent execution to find a durable spot in our lazy brain.

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Should I change my logo to grow better?

In all the projects I run for founders of innovative companies, brand repositioning is what unlocks growth. Yet, the first question I get is almost always about the branding. Founders wonder if they have the right name for their brand to accelerate growth, the right logo to penetrate a new region of the globe or to address a new audience? CMOs of some large corporations behave the same: They believe their visual identity deserves to be “modernized” to “rejuvenate” their audience. Let he who has never done that mistake cast the first stone. (I’ve pleaded guilty a couple of times).

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It can be necessary to change it in rare occasions, but they are the exception.

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The rule: don’t EVER touch it if it’s started to build some memory structure in your audience brain. And if you do, do it with a simplification intent. Measure of success: No one has noticed! I have dozens of cases that demonstrate how breaking that rule can seriously damage a business. Not even one to prove that a logo change helped the topline grow. Logos like Louis Vuitton and Coca Cola have not changed at all for over 130 years . Have they kept those brands from growing?

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Understanding DBAs

For those looking to “name” what we are talking about, these are Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs). Meaningless attributes that are uniquely associated to your brand. Memory shortcuts. They are most often visual or sound elements. Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp have done an amazing work to theorize them with the first “How brands grow ” book in 2010. Then Jenni thought DBAs deserved a bible on their own . Which she published in 2018. Why is this all so recent research? Because it’s tied to the also recent memory sciences.

The magic of Distinctive Brand Assets

If you have a strong enough DBA, anytime you advertise your product, the audience brain will understand right away that this is your brand talking. You can then use 100% of this brain attention to share your brand promise. Whereas if you have a weak one, or don’t dare to show it enough, your brand recognition will cause attention efforts... or fail. You will then waste a large part of your investment. Call it “unbranded reach”. The most common and expensive sin in the advertising world.

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Let data trump opinions.

Do you have one or various DBAs? Don’t trust your judgment. If you work for the brand, remember that you have the most biased brain on earth to answer that question. I’ve worked for some iconic global brands who believed they had as many as eight DBAs. Only two passed the test. Brands rarely have more than two. It’s a huge and long investment to build one. And oh… by the way: if you believe your tagline is a DBA, I’m ready to bet it’s not.

?Can proper DBA management help growth?

Yes it can. But it’s a discipline game where consistency is paramount. Imagine consolidating the robustness of a memory link in someone's brain, like a string between the brain and the brand experience. Every impression opportunity is like a thread added to that rope, making it even stronger.

Every impression where the brain can't immediately recognize a DBA is a lost impression for the brand. It doesn't damage the rope, but it doesn't use it either. Every time a change in a DBA prevents the brain from being on autopilot, this effort removes several threads from the rope. The greater the effort required of the brain, the more the brand is damaged.