Rate your brand from one to ten for each characteristic below and discuss with your brand management team. This exercise will help identify areas for improvement, recognize strengths, and gain insights into your brand's configuration.
To gain a broader perspective, assess competitors' brands using your own perceptions as both a competitor and consumer. Your external viewpoint may provide valuable insights into how their brands are perceived in the market.
While evaluating your brand, try to adopt a consumer-centric viewpoint rather than focusing solely on internal factors such as budgets, teams, and initiatives.
Evaluate the following brand characteristics:
- Delivering Desired Benefits: Have you identified and addressed unmet customer needs? By what methods? Are you dedicated to maximizing customer experiences and obtaining feedback for continuous improvement?
- Consumer Understanding: Do you know customers' preferences and associations with the brand? Have you developed detailed customer profiles? Have you defined boundaries for brand extensions and marketing guidelines based on customer insights?
- Relevance: Have you invested in product improvements that offer better value? Are you aware of customers' preferences, market conditions, and emerging trends? Do your marketing decisions align with this knowledge?
- Pricing Strategy: Does your pricing align with customers' perceived value? Have you optimized price, cost, and quality to meet or exceed expectations? Do you monitor customers' perceptions of your brand's value?
- Proper Positioning: Have you established competitive points of parity and points of difference? Is your brand positioned effectively to differentiate itself from competitors?
- Consistency: Are your marketing programs consistent and free from conflicting messages over time? Are you adapting programs to stay current?
- Utilizing Marketing Activities: Are you maximizing brand awareness through effective use of brand name, logo, slogan, packaging, and other elements? Do your marketing activities target both distributors and customers? Are all relevant activities aligned, and do they consistently convey the brand's intended meaning?
- Brand Portfolio and Hierarchy: Does your corporate brand provide a cohesive umbrella for the entire portfolio? Do individual brands occupy distinct niches? Is there overlap among brands? Does the brand hierarchy make sense?
- Sustained Support: Are marketing programs evaluated comprehensively before making changes? Does the brand receive adequate R&D support? Have you resisted reducing marketing support during market downturns or sales slumps?
- Brand Equity Monitoring: Have you established a brand charter to define brand meaning and equity? Do you conduct regular brand audits and tracking studies to assess performance and set strategic direction? Do you distribute brand equity reports to inform decision-making? Have you assigned explicit responsibility for monitoring and preserving brand equity?
Regularly assessing these aspects will help maintain a strong brand and ensure alignment with customer needs and expectations.