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Brand Awareness

* Dr. P.Shanmukha Rao ** Dr.N.V.S.Suryanarayana

Brand awareness is a marketing concept that measures consumers' knowledge of a brand's existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brands and also are important to customers.

Measurement driven conceptualization

Brand awareness can be measured by showing a consumer the brand and asking whether or not they knew of it beforehand. However, in common market research practice a variety of recognition and recall measures of brand awareness are employed all of which test the brand name's association to a product category cue, this came about because most market research in the 20th Century was conducted by post or telephone, actually showing the brand to consumers usually required more expensive face-to-face interviews (until web-based interviews became possible). This has led many textbooks to conceptualize brand awareness simply as its measures, that is, knowledge that the brand is a member of a particular product category, e.g. soft-drinks. Examples of such measures include:

• Brand recognition - Either the brand name or both the brand name and category name are presented to respondents.
• Brand recall - the product category name is given to respondents who are asked to recall as many brands as possible that are members of the category.
• Top of mind brand awareness - as above, but only the first brand recalled is recorded (also known as spontaneous brand recall).

Research on metrics

There has been discussion in industry and practice about the meaning and value of various brand awareness metrics. Recently, an empirical study appeared to put this debate to rest by suggested that all awareness metrics were systematically related, simply reflecting their difficulty, in the same way that certain questions are more difficult in academic exams

Stability of responses

While brand awareness scores tend to be quite stable at aggregate (level) level, individual consumers show considerable propensity to change their responses to recall based brand awareness measures. For top of mind recall measures, consumers give the same answer in two interviews typically only 50% the time. Similar low levels of consistency in response have been recorded for other cues to elicit brand name responses

7 steps in brand awareness

To some, branding might not feel like a tangible aspect of running a business. It can't be seen like a product on the shelf, or counted like a cash drawer at the end of the night. But, branding is the reason people pay three times more for a product at one store over another. Good branding is the product of a clear vision, and nobody knows more about vision than small business owners. But, with limited resources, creating a brand identity can be tricky. Fortunately, building brand awareness on the Internet doesn't need to take a lot of money or resources. Here are seven strategies to build your business brand:

Define the vision. Before moving ahead with the web site, create a brand positioning statement. "This isn't just, ‘What kind of web site do we want to be?' This is ‘Who are we?'" says Harley Manning, vice president at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., a technology and market research firm that advises on the effects technology has on consumers and businesses. Good brand statements typically include the company's mission, vision and values. "It's succinct. It's typically something that will fit on a page easily," he says.

Build a brand worth believing in. "Do you so believe in what you're creating that you would trademark it?" says Andrea Fitch, president and CEO of Red Carpet Creations, Inc., and national president of the Society for Marketing Professional Services, both based out of Alexandria, Va. Really consider what kind of brand could represent the business through the next decade. "Don't have a logo that in five years you're going to be tired of and discard for another," she says.

Remember, the web site is the brand. "A web site is not just a communication medium," Manning says. "It is actually a channel that must deliver on the promise." Essentially, a web site should embody the promise that it makes to customers. If, for instance, a business claims to be innovative, the web site should look fresh and modern.

Create a cohesive experience between all mediums. Before she launched her company's new web site, Fitch made sure it would be an event that her potential clients would never forget. Red Carpet Creations mailed 4,000 silver tubes containing scrolls that looked like rolled-up carpet. Inside the scrolls was an announcement about the web site's launch. Once online, the web site was an extension of the invitations because it followed through on the themes of red carpet imagery and references to visitors being treated like a VIP. Customers should easily be able to recognize the company's brand, whether it is print, online or some other form of media, Manning says.

Don't sacrifice creativity. Once the brand's guidelines are established, creative choices must bring those attributes to life, Manning says. Don't let the company's brand become so dominating that there is no room for new thoughts and ideas. Brand should be the jumping-off point for interesting ideas, not the place where every new idea dead-ends. Fitch stresses that asense of fun and whimsy will only enhance the likelihood that people will take an interest in the web site.

Don't communicate brand at the expense of delivering. While a web site can be a significant tool for building brand awareness, clarity and functionality are paramount. "Just be careful not to let the communication about your brand get in the way of delivering your message," Manning says. People should be able to understand how to navigate the site without knowing a thing about the company's catch phrases. "You can't frustrate and annoy people into liking your brand," he says.

Listen to the customers: They determine a brand's true value. Pay attention to customer feedback about the site because, ultimately, it's the customers' opinion that counts. When it comes to building a brand, a company can incorporate everything from signature colors to catch phrases, but at the end of the day, it's the consumer who decides what a brand is really worth. "It's not what you say [about] yourself, it's what others say of you," Fitch says.

The Power of Brand Accessibility

• Coca-Cola used to focus its strategy on the three A's: availability, acceptability, and affordability. While these provided for tremendous growth, they also led to lowered entry barriers. Today, Coca-Cola's mantra is the three P's: preference, pervasive penetration, and price-related value.
• If you were another soft drink company, you might define your competitive frame of reference as the cola market or the soft drink market or even the beverage market. But Coke thinks of its business and its market share in terms of "share of human liquid consumption." This makes water a competitor. In fact, a Coke executive has said that he won't be satisfied until "there is a Coca-Cola faucet in every home." Coca-Cola's mantra is "within an arm's reach of desire."
• An indication of Coke's drive for accessibility, beyond the vending machines that seem to be everywhere, is illustrated in a recent trip I took to Peru. We had spent several days traveling down Rio Madre de Dios on a riverboat, moving deeper and deeper into the Amazon river basin, jungle, and Manu World Biosphere Reserve. When we finally encountered a riverside village of indigenous people and thatched huts, what was waiting for us? A Coke sign and fresh Coke.

For smaller, younger organizations, key brand activities include developing a strong brand identity, building brand awareness through publicity and other less expensive means and sometimes, better understanding their consumers through marketing research (such as attitude & usage studies and focus groups).

For larger, older organizations, the brand management job is much more complex. The most important task is to get the senior leadership team to agree to a distinctive, compelling marketplace positioning for the brand. Often the brand needs to be repositioned. Often the brand identity standards and systems need to be overhauled (and the brand hierarchy simplified). Frequently, major organizational design changes are required. The necessary changes may be as wide reaching as rethinking the business portfolio itself. Clearly, brand management needs vary with organization age and size.

Ideation and Creative Problem Solving

The mostly highly admired brands are usually unique, original, fresh, and leading edge. In fact, many have invented or reinvented entire categories. To be that kind of a brand, an organization must be highly innovative. Element K CEO Bruce Barnes likes to talk about the "Virtuous Circle of Investment/Innovation." It is very simple:

• Investing in customer-relevant product/service innovation leads to increased revenues
• Increased revenues enable continued product/service innovation

Innovative brands with innovative products, services, and marketing approaches typically make extensive use of creative problem solving and ideation (idea generation) techniques.

Creative problem solving usually requires two distinct phases: divergent thinking (ideation) and convergent thinking (idea analysis and evaluation). The purpose of ideation is to generate as many ideas as possible in as condensed a timeframe as possible.

Brainstorming is the most popular ideation technique. Brainstorming requires the following components to be successful:

• A well defined problem
• Two or more people together in a room. Ideally, you have a mix of people from different disciplines, including someone who knows nothing about the subject (to offer perspective) and a subject matter expert. Also, participants should be screened for divergent thinkers with diverse experiences who are willing to actively share their thoughts and ideas.
• Relaxation training, autogenics, psychodrama, sociodrama, and other techniques can help prepare people to ideate effectively. The intent is to break down mental blocks and preconceived notions and to get people to relax and to feel confident and safe from criticism. A warm-up exercise also helps to get people to think about things in new ways, to encourage "boundary-less" thinking.
• Providing participants with crayons and paper, Play-Dough, clay, Tinker Toys and other activities often helps people open up in their thinking.
• The exchange of ideas to generate more ideas
• Session ground rules: no criticism or judgments allowed
• The facilitator ensures that each person's ideas are drawn out.
• No ideas are filtered out by the session facilitator – all are captured as presented, typically on a flip chart.
• The facilitator keeps the session moving so that people don't have time to make premature judgments.

The facilitator interjects questions to stimulate additional ideas when ideas are waning. Facilitators should have prepared a set of conceptual blockbusting questions before the session. "What if it were bigger? What if it were the opposite of what it is? What if we morphed it? What if it were only one-dimensional? What could we do to solve the problem if we had no money to do so? What could we do if we had unlimited financial resources? What if it were round? What if it were red? What is the high-tech solution? What is the low-tech solution? How would environmentalists solve the problem? How would farmers solve the problem? How would Albert Einstein solve the problem? How would a five-year-old girl solve the problem? How would the Chinese government solve the problem? How would your cat solve the problem? How does nature address this? What if you were the problem? What would you do? What if you were the solution? How would you feel? Etc."

Other ideation techniques include the following:

• Visualization, guided imagery, fantasizing and envisioning the future
• Attribute listing, discovering connections between those attributes
• Mind mapping, diagramming relationships
• Question the problem and its assumptions, broaden the problem, look at the problem at a meta-level.
• Applying ideas from one context to another (metaphorical thinking)
• Creating connections for two previously unconnected items (bisociation)
• Free associations (What is the first word that comes to your mind when I say…?)
• Forced relationships (Or, forcing an association between the problem or solution and random words)
• Conceiving of two unrelated entities occupying the same space (homospatial thinking)
• Stopping to further consider associations that initially make us laugh (laughter results from the unexpected connection between two things)
• Sketching and doodling
• Stream of consciousness writing
• Experience the problem emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and physically
• Incubation (walking away from the problem after intensely thinking about it)
• Live a life of diverse experience

*Dr. SHANMUKHA PADALA : The author is a well qualified and posses Vast teaching experience in Field of Management. He has great interest in the field of Human Resource Management and Accountancy. Now he is working as Faculty in the Department of Commerce and Management Studies, Andhra University Campus, Vizianagaram. He participated in several National and International Seminars, Workshops, Symposias, FDP Programmes and published rich number of articles in reputed journals. E-Mail: srpadaslaau@gmail.com and Mobile : +91 94403 23606.

**Dr. N.V.S.SURYANARAYANA : The author is an renowned personality in the field of Education. Presently he is working as Faculty in the Department of Education, Andhra University Campus, Vizianagaram. He has rich experience in the field of Teacher Education about a decade at Post Degree and PG level. He is very much fascinated to Psychology and possess much interested in Educational Psychology and Guidance & Counseling. He participated in so many National and International Seminars, Workshops, Refresher Courses, Symposia's and published so many articles in reputed Journals. He produced a number of M.Ed and M.Phil Dissertations.He wrote so many books on recent trends in education and innovative Psychological concepts. He is having Lifetime memberships in various alleged Associations. suryanarayana_nvs@yahoo.com, Mobile : +91 94403 48609,

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