Brand Advocacy, Positioning, Trends, Benchmarks & Measurements

Measuring brand strength
In the early 2000’s, Frederick Reichheld, founder of the Loyalty practice at Bain & Company, conducted an independent study to better understand the relationship between consumer loyalty, short-term purchase and referral behaviors, and long-term corporate financial performance.

Word of mouth
When a brand is recommended by a trusted friend, family member or adviser (a.k.a. third party brand advocate), the consumer is much more likely to believe the recommendation and purchase that brand.

Your most valuable customers
They contribute more to your brand's bottom line because they buy more often and in higher quantities, are less enticed by the price-cutting promotions of competitors and, in the best case scenario, will even help market your brand for you.

Turning negative brand experiences positive
Brands can even turn a negative experience into a loyalty-building one, if it is handled right.

Defining brand identity
Brand identity, defined as the outward communication of your brand, is the foundation of building brand equity.

Creating brand identity
An identity based on functional benefits alone is just not as effective at building upmarket relationships with consumers as one that has an emotional and expressive character.

Brand frame of reference
Often, your frame of reference is your competition – other brands that are most likely in the preference set you’ve targeted for your brand.

Brand truth
When considering upmarket brands, consumers have highter expectations than when considering mid- and down-market brands.

Brand evaluation
We recommend, once a year, that top management step back and take a look at how the brand is holding up.

Trading up
The move toward creating an upmarket brand experience begins when you embrace the well-documented fact that not all consumers are hell-bent on finding the cheapest product.

Branding for Baby Boomers
There’s an unmistakable youth bias in brand communications, and it’s not a new problem.

Consumer generated content (CGC)
It's extremely important to reach out to consumers with consistently branded messages when and where they're paying attention.

Targeting Baby Boomers
If you're responsible for marketing an upmarket brand, you can't just target 18-34 year-olds with your advertising and expect to thrive.

The Baby Boomer market
How are the creators of advertising responding to this unmistakable trend?

Targeting Baby Boomers for your UpMarket Brand
They have a heightened awareness of how they are being marketed to, so you need to understand them.

Reaching Baby Boomers in Core Markets
They may not look like the core audience, especially to the people standing in the circle, but their money is green and their motivations are different that what ad people think they are.

Brand advocacy and Apple Computer
In some loyal minds, using an Apple Computer translates into belonging to a superior part of the human race – the computer elite – who “get” why Apple Computers are better than all those other computers.

Brand advocacy and Jack Daniels
Since 1956, Jack Daniels has been granting brand loyalists one square foot of Jack Daniels land.

Brand advocacy and profitability
In our work with The Gallup Organization in the early 1990’s, Smith & Jones first learned the correlation between measured advocacy, short-term revenue and long-term profitability.

Direct mail response rate benchmarks
I received a direct mailing today from a company that wants me to buy better paper for the direct mail campaigns I produce. Inside are a few interesting statistics, which I am sharing here in case you aren't on their mailing list.

Alternative media strategies for building brand awareness
Peter Sealy, an adjunct professor at UC Berkley, contrasts the more accessible media markets of nearly 40 years ago with the intensely fragmented media markets of the 21st century.

Advocacy as a Brand Performance Measure
Most companies that understand the relationship between advocacy and financial performance are experiencing the highest margins in their categories.

The Annual Brand Check Up™
A great way for top management to get a quick read on how well the brand is performing is a simple exercise we call The Annual Brand Check Up.

The Brand Audit
When it comes right down to it, the size and scope of a brand audit should be defined by the brand situation.

Defining relevant brand experiences
What does “experience” mean to your market? What must you do to create an experience that is as fulfilling for your stockholders as it is for your customers?

Creating an upscale brand experience
Finding the big idea that powers brand experience is not an easy task. Making sure it is delivered consistently, day in and day out, is a labor of love.

Brand identity - the long-term financial value
Brand leaders recognize the long-term financial value of building and shepherding a unique upmarket brand identity.

The value of brand awareness
Awareness is a critical asset when building upmarket brand equity – one which, by itself, can offer exceptional short-term value.

Brand awareness and brand equity
It is important to remind ourselves that awareness alone does not lead to brand equity.

Consumer brand preference set
When building preference, the goal is to first get on the consumer’s preference set.

Trial, preference and upmarket value proposition
Continued and consistent branding initiatives that reinforce the consumer’s purchase decision will, over time, land you in consumer preference sets.

Brand equity, financial performance and long-term value
In addition to increasing the number of people who desire your brand, building upmarket brand equity also increases the amount of business generated by existing customers.

The value of brand equity for the upmarket
From a financial perspective, the existence of brand equity is most apparent as the difference between how the market values your upmarket brand and how they would value a generic or commodity product or service competing in the same category.

Building consumer brand preference
The same branding activities that drive awareness also drive preference. And, while awareness alone will not sustain preference, it will improve the brand’s potential for building and maintaining preference.

Brand equity as a strategic advantage
In the absence of upmarket brand equity, the thing you are trying to sell is likely to become a commodity and your competitiveness adversely and permanently diminished under this scenario.

Building brand equity and refining your marketing mix
The core of our philosophy toward building brand equity lies in determining what combination of marketing actions will most effectively and efficiently drive brand assets (while minimizing liabilities) for a specific brand at any given moment in its life cycle. Since every brand and every situation is unique, each will require its own distinct combination of drivers.