BRANDSCAPE BRAND ASSOCIATIONS
May 2011
INTRODUCTION
What is BrandScape? is StrategyOne’s proprietary brand image study. It builds upon Jennifer Aaker's Brand Personality Scale1 and Joel Rubison’s2 concept of “mental marketplaces” Consumer focused and forward looking, BrandScape research uncovers brand essence, personality and potential. Its insights are grounded on a new paradigm of communication and on new rules for brand competition. 1. Aaker, J. (1997). "Dimensions of brand personality." Journal of Marketing Research 34 (August): 347-356. 2. Rubinson, Joel, “Brand Building in a Two Way World.” Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research. 2/12/2011. 4/1/2011 (http://blog.joelrubinson.net/).
Why develop BrandScape? Helping consumers make straightforward, meaningful choices requires a novel approach to how we communicate a brand’s image. Digital life has brought a fundamental shift to communication. The pervasiveness of communication tools has enabled consumers to remain in constant connection and to ingest uninterrupted streams of information. This has expanded consumer choice more than ever before, to a degree of saturation. Consumers struggle to simplify their decision-making and their daily lives, and brands become symbols that provide the shortcut.
Why develop BrandScape? That shortcut is very powerful. Favorite brands are extensions of consumers and purchasing becomes a symbolic process that satisfies self-consistency and self-esteem.3 Effective communication about brands must leverage consumers’ process of symbolic categorization that turns brands into anthropomorphic constructs (like trendy or down-to-earth).These constructs inhabit specific marketplaces in consumers’ minds. The value of BrandScape is in being able to uncover mental marketplaces in order to provide continuous, rather than episodic, insight into consumer behavior. 3. Zinkhan, G. D., D. Haytko and A. Ward (1996). “Self-Concept Theory.”
Journal of Marketing Communication, 2 (1): 1-19.
Why develop BrandScape? BrandScape works with the new rules of brand competition. Brand positioning has traditionally aimed to differentiate a brand from others in its competitive set. Although this approach highlights what is unique about a brand in utilitarian terms, it fails to capture the symbolic space that brands take up in consumers’ minds. BrandScape goes a step further.
Why develop BrandScape? BrandScape builds on the insight of mental marketplaces - that competitors can be functionally unrelated. A brand can share real estate in constructs such as affordable or wellness with other brands, and each brand must vie for attention. Drawing on Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale, BrandScape explores how consumers categorize brands to uncover brand meaning and to discern a widening competitive set in consumers’ mental marketplaces.
Why does BrandScape matter? A brand wins by “owning� a mental space, as prominence enables the brand to leverage multilayer, deep connections with consumers to gain credibility. In order to win, brands need to uncover where they exist, and who is there with them. Competitors can be functionally unrelated, and so can allies. BrandScape is a unique brand image study that reveals unlikely competitors as well as meaningful partnerships among brands that only share mind real estate. StrategyOne works to develop brand positioning that is current and versatile, by looking at brands in the way consumers understand them. This approach ensures future growth and signals opportunities that traditional methods miss.
Why does BrandScape matter? Our research methodology is unique and reveals true mindshare. StrategyOne collected data through unaided, openended questions in reverse order. Rather than prompting respondents with a brand to ask about descriptors that come to mind, StrategyOne posed Aaker’s attributes of feelings, values and personalities, and then asked which brands occupied those spaces. The study is essentially a focus group amplified among a nationally-representative sample of 3,000 consumers with respect to five demographic dimensions (gender, age, household income and geographic location). Analysts quantified more than 70,000 unaided associations. The result is an unprecedented look at brands, which turns traditional tracking on its head as research participants are not rating brands, but giving us insight into which brands inhabit their mental spaces.
Research Methodology StrategyOne fielded an online survey among 3,000 adult US consumers (broken out into three cells of n=1,000). Interviewers posed respondents with Aaker’s 42 brand personality attributes and asked which brand or company came to mind when thinking of each attribute. The following slides show top brand associations for the total population and for segments of the population (demographic breaks by gender, age, household income and geographic location).
Who
Nationally representative sample of 3,000 US adults ages 18-64 (in three groups of n=1,000). Margin of Error is +/- 3.1% at 95% confidence interval.
How
Online survey
When
Data collected between December 29, 2010, and January 7, 2011.
Brand personality attributes Down-to-earth, Family-oriented, Small-town, Honest, Daring, Trendy, Exciting, Reliable, Hard-working, Secure, Upper class, Glamorous, Outdoorsy, Masculine, Sincere, Real, Wholesome, Original, Spirited, Cool, Young, Imaginative, Intelligent, Technical, Corporate, Good looking, Charming, Rugged, Cheerful, Sentimental, Friendly, Unique, Up-to-date, Independent, Contemporary, Successful, Leader, Confident, Feminine, Smooth, Western and Tough.
BRAND ASSOCIATIONS
SAMPLE
Reliable Associations by Income Level <$30,000
$30,000-$60,000
$60,000-$82,500
1
Ford
11.4%
1
Ford
10.0%
2
Johnson & Johnson 8.6%
2
Kraft
8.5%
3
Walmart
7.0%
3
Proctor & Gamble 8.1%
4
Nike
6.5%
5
Sony Microsoft Levi
5.9%
Proctor & Gamble
5.4%
6 7 8 9 10
Kraft Dell
Apple
4 5
4.9%
4.3%
Target Coca Cola Samsung
3.8%
Honda Chevrolet
3.2%
Honda
10.1%
1
Apple
12.2%
2
Ford Toyota
8.6%
2
Sony
11.3%
3
Apple
7.9%
3
Ford
9.2%
4
Sony Microsoft
6.5%
4
Honda
6.7%
5
GE
5.0%
5
Toyota Johnson & Johnson Chevrolet
5.9%
6
Proctor & Gamble Johnson & Johnson
4.3%
6
Proctor & Gamble Dell
5.5%
Kraft Walmart Target
3.6%
7
Hewlett-Packard
4.6%
8
GE
4.2%
9
Samsung Maytag
3.8%
6.6%
6
Walmart
6.3%
7
Chevrolet
5.5%
8
1
Johnson & Johnson 7.7% Sony
Toyota
5.2%
7
9
Apple
4.8%
10
Honda
4.4%
11
Nike
4.1%
12
Dell
3.7%
$82,500+
Brand associations among income groups
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ABOUT US
StrategyOne is an insights-driven strategic consulting firm owned by Daniel J. Edelman, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest independent PR company. StrategyOne provides evidence based stakeholder insights, analysis and media measurement, and specializes in reputation, branding and communications research, with international capabilities. StrategyOne has offices located in New York, Washington, Paris, London, Brussels, Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Atlanta and Silicon Valley. StrategyOne is a recognized firm among the 2010 Honomichl list of top 50 market research firms across the United States. The Honomichl 50 is published in the annual business report of Marketing News, an American Marketing Association publication, and acknowledges the leading 50 research firms based on revenue generated in the US. Visit www.strategyone.com for more information.