Building Brand Equity

Marketers build brand equity by creating the right brand knowledge structures with the right consumers. The success of this process depends on all brand-related contacts—whether marketer-initiated or not.

From a marketing management perspective, however, there are three main sets of brand equity drivers:

1. The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand (brand names, URLs, logos, symbols, characters, spokespeople, slogans, jingles, packages, and signage)
—Microsoft chose the name Bing for its new search engine because it felt it unambiguously conveyed search and the “aha” moment of finding what you are looking for. It is also short, appealing, memorable, active, and effective multiculturally.

2.The product and service and all accompanying marketing activities and supporting pro-grams
—General Mills is employing a number of new marketing activities to sell cereals, cake mixes, and yogurt. The company is exploring how to best use smart phones with consumers via QR codes, apps, and augmented reality, developing new packaging strategies in the process.

3. Other associations indirectly transferred to the brand by linking it to some other entity (a person, place, or thing)
—The brand name of New Zealand vodka 42BELOW refers to both a latitude that runs through New Zealand and the percentage of the drink’s alcohol content. The packaging and other visual cues are designed to leverage the perceived purity of the country to communicate the brand’s positioning

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