Why develop BrandScape?

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
To purchase the full 200-page report visit
www.strategyone.com/brandscape.html
ABOUT US
StrategyOne is an insights-driven strategic consulting firm owned by Daniel
J. Edelman, the world’s largest independent PR company. StrategyOne provides
evidence based stakeholder insights, analysis and media measurement, and
specializes in reputation, branding and communications research, with
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