What is Brand?
This article covers:
- What is Brand and how to display it for maximum impact?
- How do we measure branding?
- How to get branding right in an ad?
What is Brand and how to display it for maximum impact?
80% ads worldwide have no effect. Because people can't even recall the brand.
Brand is not just your logo. Colour, mascot, way of speaking, jingle, shape, packaging… anything that immediately associates your brand. The key is to build up these distinctive brand assets and keep displaying them connected to the Need (or situation) of your customers. And repeat and refresh. By repetition, solid mental connections are built (brand salience) and your brand pops up to the customer's mind in relevant shopping situations.
How do we measure branding?
As the key metric, we use brand recall for Impact test and Video pre-test and brand fit for Concept tests.
Brand recall (in Impact test, Video pre-test)
Each respondent is presented with a randomly selected 5-seconds clip from the video. After the clip, we ask an open-ended question: What brand the ad promotes? The respondents write their own answer without being prompted with any brands. If they have no idea, they can skip forward. When testing is done, we code the answers of all respondents, from all 5s clips, and sum up the occurrence of your brand. After dividing this number by overall sample size, we get the key metric: total brand recall in %. We compare that score to benchmarks (learn more about benchmarks).
Brand recall (in Concept test)
After showing the concept (picture) to respondents, we ask a few follow-up questions (emotion reaction etc.). Then we proceed with an open-ended question: Do they recall the brand that the concept promotes? The respondents write their own answer. If they have no idea, they can skip forward. We code the answers of all respondents and sum up the occurrence of your brand - resulting in % of total sample who recalled the brand. We compare that score to benchmarks (learn more about benchmarks).
How to get branding right in an ad?
More is more
It is not enough to display your logo at the end of an ad. Your viewers are not watching the ad from beginning to end. Make sure your brand is clearly recognizable for as long as possible during the ad and especially at its emotional peak.
Pro tip: The most effective ads have the brand recognizable for the whole duration of the video. But you can't just show your logo or repeat brand name all the time. For full-time branding, you need to build and use the symbols of your brand (brand assets) to gently incorporate into the ad (and that needs long-term strategy).
Build and use your brand assets. And again. And again.
In the era of digital video, ad skipping and people generally being overwhelmed and annoyed with advertising in general, you need to grab their attention in the first second of your ad. Attention usually stems from a strong emotive reaction.
Exploit your emotional peak for maximum impact
Resist the temptation for constant creative change. Keep and use the brand assets you have already built. Repeat and refresh. There is a lot of creativity needed for repeating your symbols in a playful and fresh way, invest in that.
Strictly avoid anything that resembles your competition
Always be distinctive. If your competition uses something, avoid using anything even remotely similar as your symbols, ads, topics you talk about…
For example, You want to appoint a favorite actor to act in your ad? Make sure he is not taken (or even associated by people) by another brand. Do not hire George Clooney if you are not Nespresso.
Pro tip: Once you have built up simple symbols such as the
of McDonald's, you can connect them in a more complex one. Such as McDrive.
Long-term, it is smart to find a strong connection between your brand and a specific Need. Find one that many people have but is not occupied by other brands.
For example, McDrive is now a complex symbol of customer Need I want to eat quickly while driving a car. By repeating the