So, people know about your brand, but did you know that there are several aspects to successful brand awareness? It’s not just flashing pictures of your product on every flat surface, no matter how much fun that could be…
First off, brand awareness is when people are acquainted with the product/service and associate your brand with that specific product or service. For example, Apple for iPhones. Customers identify the brand by its attributes and personality, namely the most premium brand anyone can choose in the smartphone industry.
But there is more to brand awareness, much more, and while some aspects overlap, brand awareness is actually an artform.
So get creative!
Simplistically, brand awareness describes the degree of consumer recognition of a product by its name – but there is more to it than that…
Brand recognition is when consumers can accurately differentiate your brand from other brands offering the same or similar products and/or service. For example, without even having to read the name, customers can identify the local McDonalds because it is highly recognisable ‘M’ logo owing to extensive promotions and customer exposure – and money, much branding money…
Visual branding is another interesting aspect to brand awareness. When customers can recall your brand through visual symbols, packaging and advertisements this is visual branding. Case in point is Nike. (And I heard you say: “Just do it!”) Through their minimalistic logo, they encourage people to add excitement to their life and invite them to use Nike to achieve it. Funny thing is customers often buy a product by visual association but often cannot name the product. Strange huh?
While brand recall is the ability of a customer to recall the specific brand when the product category is mentioned, normally by association, for example “name an airline”. It is generally easier to recognise a brand rather than recall it from memory.
Top of mind is when customers name the first thing that comes to mind. For example, if you ask: “name your favourite chocolate” and they name it directly. This is when customers immediately associate your brand with the product description.
Brand awareness has important implications for marketing strategy and advertising.
Then there is the brand awareness motherlode: brand dominance. This is when customers cannot recall any other brand other than yours for a specific product category. For example, household bleach… in South Africa JIK immediately comes to mind, despite there being several other brands. This is an eponym.
‘An eponym refers to a person or thing after which something else is named. For example: Napoleon is the eponym of the Napoleonic Code.’
Another example is Google, as is Alzheimer disease. Essentially, when people name your brand to describe your (or even a similar) product, you have hit the brand awareness jackpot!
You see the difference now?
