- Only 54% of marketers have a quantitative tracking system for brand properties,
- 55% of marketers change their brand properties due to organisational change, especially a change in marketing director, with a further 20% changing brand properties based on a judgment call. Only 24% of marketers change brand properties strategically based on quantitative data.
The first global study on brand properties – shape, slogan, sound, symbols, celebrity, etc.– reveals new science for building iconic brands using a scientific approach that draws on neuroscience and psychology.
The study also warns that brand-owners may be destroying brand memory structure, and even promoting competitor brands, if they continue to chop and change brand properties based on subjective decision-making, or simply when a new marketing director is appointed.
The study is a collaboration between Phil Barden, managing director of Decode Marketing and author of ‘Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy’, and David Taylor, managing partner of international consultancy the brandgym, and author of ‘Grow the Core: How to Focus on Your Core Business for Brand Success’.
The research evaluated survey data from 85 senior marketing professionals from Europe, Africa, Asia, USA and Latin America. Also, 1,000 UK consumers took part in the Iconic Asset Tracker (IcAT) study, an approach that Decode Marketing developed. The IcAT uses techniques from cognitive neuroscience to evaluate brand properties regarding their impact on branding and brand equity. The research was carried out in July and August.
David Taylor said: “The research shows that brand properties are seen as ‘highly important’. However, only half of the companies surveyed have a proper process for identifying and tracking the strength of these.
“As a result, brand properties are often chopped and changed based on personal judgement alone or as a result of changes in the organisation, such as the arrival of a new marketing director. This prevents the creation of valuable memory structure in consumers’ minds that can take several years to build. The study presents major opportunities for brand-owners to create stronger, iconic brands.”
The IcAT study on ice-cream, beer and cosmetic brands measured the strength of brand properties, captured in a Branding Power Score and highlighting the ‘iconic assets’ that activate the brand and build brand equity. As an example, Magnum’s most iconic asset is the product shape, with a 93% activation score. In contrast, the brand’s slogan, ‘For pleasure seekers’, is less strong at 41%. Celebrities score much lower, with the most recent Magnum endorser, actor Benicio del Toro, scoring just 21%.
Phil Barden added: “One reason for the current, and narrow, perspective on brand properties is a misconception about how the consumer’s brain perceives and processes brand properties. Marketers continue to focus on the obvious – logos and colour – whereas properties such as product shape, images and fictional characters can also be powerful assets in building iconic brands.”
The IcAT approach uses insights from decision sciences on how brand properties are processed and how memory structures are built, in order to enable objective, fact-based management of these brand assets. It enables decisions about which brand properties are safe to change and which are iconic assets that should be sacred. Barden adds: “This knowledge enables organisations to protect their brand memory structure, avoid common branding pitfalls and save money on misdirected rebrands.”
Brandgym has produced a paper on the practical issues of identifying and amplifying brand properties, ‘The Power of Brand Properties’. Decode Marketing has produced a paper with more detail on the scientific background and how to set up an iconic asset management platform to effectively steer these important brand assets, ‘Unlocking the Power of Brand Properties through Neuroscience.’
Both of these papers are available free from the agencies on request.
Key research results:
- 83% of marketers consider brand properties to be ‘extremely important’ in growing brands,
- Only 54% of marketers have a proper quantitative tracking system for brand properties,
- 55% of marketers change their brand properties due to organisational change, especially a change in marketing director, with a further 20% changing brand properties based on a judgment call. Only 24% of marketers change brand properties strategically based on quantitative data,
- 95% of marketers use logos as brand properties and 85% use colour, but only 18% use sonic branding,
- 90% of characters are used as properties for more than 3 years, but only 25% of celebrities are, possibly reflecting the risk of celebrities needing to be changed owing to problems in their behaviour (eg. Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong),
- Product shapes have a significantly higher Branding Power Score than claims or slogans,
- Brand properties that lack distinctiveness can inadvertently activate competitor brands, which means a negative return on marketing investment: 31% of people mistakenly associate Häagen Dazs when seeing Benicio del Toro, versus 21% correctly associating Magnum.