Discussion
I get asked to 'measure stuff' for a living and the latest is a new way of measuring 'brand image'beyiond the traditional focus group, survey/questionnnaire etc. Not being a marketing person and getting not too much sense from those in marketing I do know I turn to the PH massive;
Obviously putting this term into google produces every PR company within the known world, and from Dudley, but very little in terms of outlining the theoretical dimensions upon which a brand image can be placed. I have an academic friend who dabbles on the edge of this area and he suggested that there are some known and agreed dimentions such as:
Stability, Probity, Ecology (greeness), Healthiness, Freshness, Fairness, citizenship, Creative/Innovative, fashionable/cool, cleanliness, quality, value, reliable
Any more suggestions, preferably with the source ( happy to take recommendations on texts to read in the area).
ocks this sounds! Buzzword fecking central in your office?I remember James May reviewing the new Honda Civic: "If on a wet Wednesday morning leaving the little Chef on your way to a management marketing conference, on seeing the little red starter button you might think, 'no I dont think I will kill myself today'".
I feel sorry for you (assuming this isnt a wind up).
I feel sorry for you (assuming this isnt a wind up).
ukvoyager.info said:
I remember James May reviewing the new Honda Civic: "If on a wet Wednesday morning leaving the little Chef on your way to a management marketing conference, on seeing the little red starter button you might think, 'no I dont think I will kill myself today'".
I feel sorry for you (assuming this isnt a wind up).
They pay, I play! It does feel a bit like bullshit bingo but the capacity to measure changes in how people see the brand and how that changes when they spend a few bob on trying to change it is obviously important to them (ask Northern Rock).I feel sorry for you (assuming this isnt a wind up).
Indeed!
I am guessing the naysayers above either do not understand the importance or are the type of businesspeople who throw their companies money into marketing plans without bothering to assess what the results are!
Whilst it is easy if it is a 'sales orientated' push you can focus on sales, however with large businesses much of their 'pull' is based solely on the value of the brand.
After all, this is what makes a real Armani shirt make someone hand over £100, and the cheaper but still decent copy a tenner. Also why M&S food is deemed to be entirely different to ASDA.
As the OP has said there are no easy ways to quantify the current 'value' of a brand, however if the company is going to spend £50million on brand based advertising and positioning, it would make sense to quantify whether that kind of money is fulfilling what it is supposed to do!
My input would be that the factors you have raised are good ones. Eric's idea is great too, as although the positives are all very nice, the negative aspects are just as important. Maybe that would come under a 'Trustworthy' heading - perhaps how 'Watchdogworthy' they are seen!?
Of course this would all have to be broken down to a numerical answer set to gain quantitative results which could be benchmarked.
I am guessing the naysayers above either do not understand the importance or are the type of businesspeople who throw their companies money into marketing plans without bothering to assess what the results are!
Whilst it is easy if it is a 'sales orientated' push you can focus on sales, however with large businesses much of their 'pull' is based solely on the value of the brand.
After all, this is what makes a real Armani shirt make someone hand over £100, and the cheaper but still decent copy a tenner. Also why M&S food is deemed to be entirely different to ASDA.
As the OP has said there are no easy ways to quantify the current 'value' of a brand, however if the company is going to spend £50million on brand based advertising and positioning, it would make sense to quantify whether that kind of money is fulfilling what it is supposed to do!
My input would be that the factors you have raised are good ones. Eric's idea is great too, as although the positives are all very nice, the negative aspects are just as important. Maybe that would come under a 'Trustworthy' heading - perhaps how 'Watchdogworthy' they are seen!?
Of course this would all have to be broken down to a numerical answer set to gain quantitative results which could be benchmarked.
JustinP1 said:
Indeed!
I am guessing the naysayers above either do not understand the importance or are the type of businesspeople who throw their companies money into marketing plans without bothering to assess what the results are!
Whilst it is easy if it is a 'sales orientated' push you can focus on sales, however with large businesses much of their 'pull' is based solely on the value of the brand.
After all, this is what makes a real Armani shirt make someone hand over £100, and the cheaper but still decent copy a tenner. Also why M&S food is deemed to be entirely different to ASDA.
As the OP has said there are no easy ways to quantify the current 'value' of a brand, however if the company is going to spend £50million on brand based advertising and positioning, it would make sense to quantify whether that kind of money is fulfilling what it is supposed to do!
My input would be that the factors you have raised are good ones. Eric's idea is great too, as although the positives are all very nice, the negative aspects are just as important. Maybe that would come under a 'Trustworthy' heading - perhaps how 'Watchdogworthy' they are seen!?
Of course this would all have to be broken down to a numerical answer set to gain quantitative results which could be benchmarked.
I already have a few headings: Probity, stability, quality, creativity, fairness, ecology, contemporary, cleanliness, healthy and a broader catch-all for customer experience called 'contact'.I am guessing the naysayers above either do not understand the importance or are the type of businesspeople who throw their companies money into marketing plans without bothering to assess what the results are!
Whilst it is easy if it is a 'sales orientated' push you can focus on sales, however with large businesses much of their 'pull' is based solely on the value of the brand.
After all, this is what makes a real Armani shirt make someone hand over £100, and the cheaper but still decent copy a tenner. Also why M&S food is deemed to be entirely different to ASDA.
As the OP has said there are no easy ways to quantify the current 'value' of a brand, however if the company is going to spend £50million on brand based advertising and positioning, it would make sense to quantify whether that kind of money is fulfilling what it is supposed to do!
My input would be that the factors you have raised are good ones. Eric's idea is great too, as although the positives are all very nice, the negative aspects are just as important. Maybe that would come under a 'Trustworthy' heading - perhaps how 'Watchdogworthy' they are seen!?
Of course this would all have to be broken down to a numerical answer set to gain quantitative results which could be benchmarked.
The client is wanting to use an IT system which I currently use to measure subliminal psychological responses in other work I do to see how the community and customers see them after recent employment tribunals. As the measurement system isn't impacted by the need for the respondent to 'think' about their response it isn't affected by people saying what they thing you want to hear. The client will want a measure of the 'fairness' and possible 'probity' factors and to benchmark that with competitors, and then to take additional measures as they role out various fairness programmes to address the tribunal reports.
I just thought that as I was having to put the architecture in place for this new use I would enable it to measure all the dimensions businesses and organisations might want to measure in the future although I hope it will also have a client upload system to measure new 'factors'.
As the system depends upon the 'factor' being fairly tight I have taken the initial factor (e.g. probity), and then used a thesaurus to generate words with similar meanings and words having the opposite meaning. So although it feels like bullshit bingo because of that it needs to say the same thing 7 different ways and 7 opposit ways!
It does output a numerical result which I guess is what the likes of BA (after the Heathrow landing: just thought of another factor; safety) and Northern Rock (and Parliament given the Conway affair) would like to track across time and which isn't impacted hy the desire to 'send a message' or go with the crowd when completing surveys on the net or street corners or in focus groups.
There is also some good academic evidence that people who have stronger subliminal attachments to a brand or product measured in this way are more likely to buy it, use and/or it to want to have it. ker....ching ££££$$$$££££
Edited by Gordon Brown on Monday 4th February 08:55
Edited by Gordon Brown on Monday 4th February 09:05
Gordon Brown said:
...There is also some good academic evidence that people who have stronger subliminal attachments to a brand or product measured in this way are more likely to buy it, use and/or it to want to have it. ker....ching ££££$$$$££££
Without a doubt!What is also interesting is how the actual company logo imparts these same feelings even if the customer has never used the company before. Fonts and colour schemes have a huge influence.
My personal concern would be if the person taking the survey understands the meaning of the word they are rating the company by - and even then their understanding of it would be slightly different to the next person. As you say though, the best way to counter this would be to use a combination of words to define the factor later.
The other concern would be to gain useful results that actually mean something - for example not in the way the government use speeding and KSI statistics!
To be able to do this you would have to be careful of the exact demographic of respondent and make sure the 'before and after' surveys are consistent, or even better the same people.
Also to be able to have faith in perhaps what might be a small, but financially very significant shift to be real and not just a statistical anomaly a pretty large number of surveys would have to be taken in detail. My guesstimate is 1000 absolute minimum - ideally ten times that. Of course you could get results from a smaller number but this would impact on the value of the results.
Beyond your "Contact", I think there's an area in User Experience (whether actual or perceived).
There are certain brands & products I am unlikely to use again or recommend based on bad experience (or poor recommendation). There are some brands that are basically dull, but dependable. There are some that are sexy, but frustrating.
Some examples:
My perception of EasyJet (two experiences, plus comments) is that provided you play by the rules, you'll get what you expect - a passable trip at a decent price. My perception of RyanAir (comment only) is that they are crooks and will try to rip me off.
My perception of Microsoft is that it's too complicated and too proscribed - you have to follow a procedure set by some programmer in the basement in Redmond, who has never actually had to use the software. A common claim by Mac fanboys (myself included) is that it just does it. Google "just works", Yahoo was a pain, and I can't remember when I last visited.
Take a look around your home, and you'll find a load of products where the user experience (and the brand affinity that results) differs from the accepted brand image - whether delighting or disappointing. Think also of the High Street. How about the web - how many websites sound like a great idea but really don't deliver?
On a more general note, one thing I'd want to see in your system is a demonstration of the deviation from the norm. A score only tells me the average. Some brands will generate a wide spread in opinion - some love it, some hate it, some love to hate it, many may just be ambivalent (and so on). A 50% score might mean half the population adore it, half hate it, or it could mean noone actually gives a rat's a***. The variation can show up critical insights. You should build in a method of flagging discrepancies.
There are certain brands & products I am unlikely to use again or recommend based on bad experience (or poor recommendation). There are some brands that are basically dull, but dependable. There are some that are sexy, but frustrating.
Some examples:
My perception of EasyJet (two experiences, plus comments) is that provided you play by the rules, you'll get what you expect - a passable trip at a decent price. My perception of RyanAir (comment only) is that they are crooks and will try to rip me off.
My perception of Microsoft is that it's too complicated and too proscribed - you have to follow a procedure set by some programmer in the basement in Redmond, who has never actually had to use the software. A common claim by Mac fanboys (myself included) is that it just does it. Google "just works", Yahoo was a pain, and I can't remember when I last visited.
Take a look around your home, and you'll find a load of products where the user experience (and the brand affinity that results) differs from the accepted brand image - whether delighting or disappointing. Think also of the High Street. How about the web - how many websites sound like a great idea but really don't deliver?
On a more general note, one thing I'd want to see in your system is a demonstration of the deviation from the norm. A score only tells me the average. Some brands will generate a wide spread in opinion - some love it, some hate it, some love to hate it, many may just be ambivalent (and so on). A 50% score might mean half the population adore it, half hate it, or it could mean noone actually gives a rat's a***. The variation can show up critical insights. You should build in a method of flagging discrepancies.
HiRich said:
Beyond your "Contact", I think there's an area in User Experience (whether actual or perceived).
There are certain brands & products I am unlikely to use again or recommend based on bad experience (or poor recommendation). There are some brands that are basically dull, but dependable. There are some that are sexy, but frustrating.
Some examples:
My perception of EasyJet (two experiences, plus comments) is that provided you play by the rules, you'll get what you expect - a passable trip at a decent price. My perception of RyanAir (comment only) is that they are crooks and will try to rip me off.
My perception of Microsoft is that it's too complicated and too proscribed - you have to follow a procedure set by some programmer in the basement in Redmond, who has never actually had to use the software. A common claim by Mac fanboys (myself included) is that it just does it. Google "just works", Yahoo was a pain, and I can't remember when I last visited.
Take a look around your home, and you'll find a load of products where the user experience (and the brand affinity that results) differs from the accepted brand image - whether delighting or disappointing. Think also of the High Street. How about the web - how many websites sound like a great idea but really don't deliver?
On a more general note, one thing I'd want to see in your system is a demonstration of the deviation from the norm. A score only tells me the average. Some brands will generate a wide spread in opinion - some love it, some hate it, some love to hate it, many may just be ambivalent (and so on). A 50% score might mean half the population adore it, half hate it, or it could mean noone actually gives a rat's a***. The variation can show up critical insights. You should build in a method of flagging discrepancies.
Yeah, that was my thinking and I think also Gordon's reason to ask the same question a few times in slightly different ways to root out anomalies between questions and avoid 'leading' questions.There are certain brands & products I am unlikely to use again or recommend based on bad experience (or poor recommendation). There are some brands that are basically dull, but dependable. There are some that are sexy, but frustrating.
Some examples:
My perception of EasyJet (two experiences, plus comments) is that provided you play by the rules, you'll get what you expect - a passable trip at a decent price. My perception of RyanAir (comment only) is that they are crooks and will try to rip me off.
My perception of Microsoft is that it's too complicated and too proscribed - you have to follow a procedure set by some programmer in the basement in Redmond, who has never actually had to use the software. A common claim by Mac fanboys (myself included) is that it just does it. Google "just works", Yahoo was a pain, and I can't remember when I last visited.
Take a look around your home, and you'll find a load of products where the user experience (and the brand affinity that results) differs from the accepted brand image - whether delighting or disappointing. Think also of the High Street. How about the web - how many websites sound like a great idea but really don't deliver?
On a more general note, one thing I'd want to see in your system is a demonstration of the deviation from the norm. A score only tells me the average. Some brands will generate a wide spread in opinion - some love it, some hate it, some love to hate it, many may just be ambivalent (and so on). A 50% score might mean half the population adore it, half hate it, or it could mean noone actually gives a rat's a***. The variation can show up critical insights. You should build in a method of flagging discrepancies.
I think one of the most important things will be how the numerics links to the verbal part. For example a simple change in wording may make all the difference. If you have a 1-5 scale you might call the numbers 1=Excellent 2=Good 3=Average 4=Poor 5=Awful.
Just the connotations of those words on the scale will seriously affect how the respondent will want to vary away from 3. Interestingly I am sure you would get different results due to psychology if you actually showed the linkage to the numerics and had the scale from -2 to +2.
I think people would have to find more reason to 'award' points or say something literally negative to vary away from zero. Interestingly also I think you would get a group of people who would set their own average at 1, as they at least want to give them 'some' credit for being OK!
JustinP1 said:
Gordon Brown said:
...There is also some good academic evidence that people who have stronger subliminal attachments to a brand or product measured in this way are more likely to buy it, use and/or it to want to have it. ker....ching ££££$$$$££££
Without a doubt!What is also interesting is how the actual company logo imparts these same feelings even if the customer has never used the company before. Fonts and colour schemes have a huge influence.
Even when masked the impluse we measure is activated even at exposures at brief as 35 milliseconds
In 6 sigma Bul:lshi!T terminology you are talking attritute measurement system and for that you need to go a KAPPA gauge R and R to check the credibility of your measurement system.
For each of the brand attibutes you intend to measure you need to identify people who fit the target market to act as 'rulers'
I'm off to hang myself from the false ceiling in the bogs !!!
For each of the brand attibutes you intend to measure you need to identify people who fit the target market to act as 'rulers'
I'm off to hang myself from the false ceiling in the bogs !!!
jacko lah said:
In 6 sigma Bul:lshi!T terminology you are talking attritute measurement system and for that you need to go a KAPPA gauge R and R to check the credibility of your measurement system.
For each of the brand attibutes you intend to measure you need to identify people who fit the target market to act as 'rulers'
I'm off to hang myself from the false ceiling in the bogs !!!
I am told the client has a box of tame participants in white Kappa track suits, is that close enough? Is the Kappa Gage R and R+R for dichotomous variables as that is all most of the academics talk about when I googled?For each of the brand attibutes you intend to measure you need to identify people who fit the target market to act as 'rulers'
I'm off to hang myself from the false ceiling in the bogs !!!
I would normally depend on simple test-retest reliability to evidence stability amd then a criterion stuidy of some sort to show that the differences mean something in terms of intention or desire to buy. I am looking for a demo product with which there is some customer capacity to make regular choices, for example airlines, or fast food or cars raher than those to which we tend to be wedded by habit or inertia like banks, mobile technology or broadband providers so that I can tie it to behaviour.
an old colleague called Jonathan Knowles, very nice chap, set up a company measuring brand value.
take a look at http://brandecon.com
there might be something useful there.
also
http://www.brandeconomics.com/approach.htm
take a look at http://brandecon.com
there might be something useful there.
also
http://www.brandeconomics.com/approach.htm
Edited by logoman on Tuesday 5th February 23:54
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