How to Build Brand Equity

I love the story about a room full of marketers talking about their strategy to market a new, fuel efficient, compact car.

As ideas we’re flying and excitement was building, someone from their ad agency stopped the group and asked each person what kind of car they drove. The response? Big cars. Fast cars. No cars.

What became immediately evident was that no one in the room fit their target market for this new car. They had no idea how their target customers made decisions, their criteria for choosing a new car, or what was really important to them.

What was missing?

The voice of the customer.

How can a company create relevant products or services, or communicate a meaningful brand promise, if they don’t have a way to listen to the voice of the customer on a regular basis?

There are numerous ways to do this.

• Engage employees who are already avid customers.
• Invite best customers into the decision-making process.
• Use available insight gathering tools and techniques, such as customer panels, online customer communities, spot surveys throughout the buying process, etc.

Companies that have a clearly defined “voice-of-the-customer” process, generally have strong brands. And strong brands ensure the brand experience maps to the brand promise.

This is what builds brand equity.

Building Brand Equity

As highlighted in a previous post, here’s a mathematical model to build brand equity:

Brand Equity increases when
Brand Experience = Brand Promise

Seems simple enough. But for many companies it’s hard to achieve.

• The promise might be for the friendliest staff, but the experience was no one could be found when needed.
• The promise might be for the biggest selection, but the experience was many items out of stock.
• The promise might be for fast delivery, but the experience proved it was no different than competitors.
• The promise might be a quality product, but the experience proved quality was sadly lacking (and many returned items).

When the brand experience does NOT equal the brand promise, customers are left feeling disappointed, let down, or confused. It means there was a disconnect between what was promised (expected) and what was delivered (experienced). This translates into zero (or even negative) equity.

When this happens, there are only two choices:

• Change the brand promise. If the company can’t deliver on the brand promise, change it to something that can be delivered, consistently and reliably.
• Change the brand experience. If the company can deliver on the brand promise, change the experience to align with the promise.

The first one (brand promise) is a strategic issue. As highlighted in previous articles, it requires a thorough analysis of the business to identify and clearly define what is unique, relevant, and sustainable.

The second part (brand experience) is a more practical issue. I’ll address this in the next post.

What companies do you feel succeed at making the brand experience = the brand promise?