CHAPTER 4:

CHOOSING BRAND ELEMENTS TO BUILD BRAND EQUITY

Building Customer-Based Brand Equity

Brand knowledge structures depend on:

The initial choices for the brand elements
The supporting marketing program and the manner
by which the brand is integrated into it
Other associations indirectly transferred to the
brand by linking it to some other entities

Brand Element
Brand elements, sometimes called brand identities, are
those trademarkable devices that serve to identify and
differentiate the brand.The main ones are brand names,
URLs, logos, symbols, charecters, spokespeople, slogans,
jingles, packages, and signage.

Criteria for Choosing Brand Elements

Memorability
Meaningfulness
Likability
Transferability
Adaptability
Protectability

Marketers offensive strategy

and build brand equity

Defensive role for leveraging

and maintaining brand equity

Criteria for choosing brand elements

1.

2.

3.

Memorable
1.
Easily recognized
2. Easily recalled
Meaningful
1.
Descriptive
2. Persuasive
Likable
1.
Fun and interesting
2. Rich visual and verbal
imagery

4. Transferable
1.
2.

Within and across product

categories
Across geographic
boundaries and cultures

5. Adaptable
1.
Flexible
2. updatable
6. Protectable
1.
Legally
2. competitively

Memorability
Easily recognized, Easily recalled
Brand elements should inherently be memorable and
attention-getting, and therefore facilitate recall or
recognition.

Meaningfulness
Descriptive
Persuasive
Brand elements may take on all kinds of meaning, with
either descriptive or persuasive content.
Two particularly important criteria
General information about the nature of the
product category
Specific information about particular attributes
and benefits of the brand

Likability
Fun and Interesting
Rich Visual and verbal imagery
Aesthetically pleasing
Do customers find the brand element aesthetically
appealing?
Descriptive and persuasive elements reduce the
burden on marketing communications to build
awareness.

Transferability
Within and across product category
Across geographic boundaries and cultures
How useful is the brand element for line or category
extensions?
To what extent does the brand element add to brand
equity across geographic boundaries and market
segments?

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Adaptability
Flexible
Updatable
The more adaptable and flexible the brand element, the easier
it is to update it to changes in consumer values and opinions.
For example, logos and characters can be given a new look or a
new design to make them appear more modern and relevant.

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Protectability

Legally
Competitively
Marketers should:
1. Choose brand elements that can be legally
protected internationally.
2. Formally register chosen brand elements with
the appropriate legal bodies.
3. Vigorously defend trademarks from unauthorized
competitive infringement.

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Tactics for Brand Elements

A variety of brand elements can be chosen that
inherently enhance brand awareness or facilitate the
formation of strong, favorable, and unique brand
associations.
Brand names
URLs
Logos and symbols
Characters
Slogans
Packaging
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Brand Names
Like any brand element, brand names must be chosen
with the six general criteria of memorability,
meaningfulness, likability,transferability, adaptability,
and protectability in mind.

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Brand Naming Guidelines

Brand awareness
Simplicity and ease of pronunciation and spelling
- Ex. Coke, BMW, Nokia, Sony
Familiarity and meaningfulness
Ex. Newsweek
Differentiated, distinctive, and uniqueness
Ex. Toys R Us

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Brand Naming Guidelines

Brand associations
The explicit and implicit meanings consumers extract from it
are important. In particular, the brand name can reinforce an
important attribute or benefit association that makes up its
product positioning.
Ex. Head & Shoulders shampoo, Close-up toothpaste,

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Brand Naming Procedures

Define objectives
Generate names
Screen initial candidates
Study candidate names
Research the final candidates
Select the final name

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Landors Brand Name Taxonomy

Descriptive:
describes function literally; generally unregisterable. Ex. Airbus
Suggestive:
suggestive of a benefits or function. Ex. Newsweek, Times
Compounds:
combination of two or more. Ex. Redhat,
Arbitrary:
Real words with no obvious tie-in company. Ex. Apple
Fanciful:
Coined words with no obvious meaning. Ex. Exxon, Kodak
Founders' names: Using the names of real people, (especially a founder's
name), such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell or Disney

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URLs
URLs (uniform resource locators) specify locations of
pages on the web and are also commonly referred to
as domain names.
A company can either sue the current owner of the
URL for copyright infringement, buy the name from
the current owner, or register all conceivable
variations of its brand as domain names ahead of
time.

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Logos and Symbols

Logos range from corporate names or trademarks
(word marks with text only) written in a distinctive
form, to entirely abstract designs that may be
completely unrelated to the word mark, corporate
name, or corporate activities.
Benefit of Logo:
1. It enhance brand meaning and awareness
2. It express the identity of the product.
3. It may be transfer over a long range of product
category.
4. It give easy identification of the product

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Characters
A special type of brand symbolone that takes on
human or real-life characteristics
Benefit of Character.

Harland Sanders

1.It is useful for getting attention.

2.It express product reliability.
3.It enhance product likeability.
4.It transfer easily across brand
Category.

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Slogans

Slogans are short phrases that communicate

descriptive or persuasive information about the
brand. Slogans are powerful branding devices
because, like brand names, they are an extremely
efficient, shorthand means to build brand equity.

Benefit of Slogan.
1. It make the product Special
2. It build brand awareness.
3. It create point of difference
4. It interpret product performance.
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Classic Slogans

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Jingles
Jingles are musical messages written around the brand.
Typically composed by professional songwriters, they often
have enough catchy hooks and choruses to become almost
permanently registered in the minds of listeners
sometimes whether they want them to or not!
Benefit of Jingle:
1.It communicate brand benefit
2.It increase memorability
3.It relate with feeling and personality
4. It allow multiple encoding opportunities.

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Packaging
From the perspective of both the firm and
consumers, packaging must achieve a number of
objectives:
Identify the brand
Convey descriptive and persuasive information
Facilitate product transportation and protection
Assist at-home storage
Aid product consumption

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Packaging can create strong appeal on the

store shelf and stand out from the clutter

You expose to 20,000 or more products in shopping

visit that may last less than 30 mins
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Psychology of Packaging
Packaging Can
Packaging Can
Packaging Can
Packaging Can

Influence Value
Influence Consumption
Influence How a Person Uses a Product
Influence Taste.

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Putting It All Together

The entire set of brand elements makes up the brand
identity, the contribution of all brand elements to
awareness and image.
The cohesiveness of the brand identity depends on
the extent to which the brand elements are
consistent.

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