Familiarity
It's one thing to have high awareness, but quite another to have high familiarity. If someone cites your brand unaided as part of the consideration set of brands in the category, do they know what you do or what makes you distinct? Qualcomm is a well-established brand that has fairly high awareness scores, but a lot of people think it's a sports brand because of its prominent exposure at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Qualcomm is one of the largest manufacturers of semiconductors for mobile devices. It's an ingredient brand, and familiarity is probably the most important measure of health it should track.
Familiarity is another measure that doesn't require expensive studies. It can be facilitated online quite nicely, and you can even uncover useful insights from informal qualitative research. Statistical significance is nice to have, but the prescription for poor familiarity is often better informed by the data you generate in deep discussions with targets. What do they think the brand is or does? What makes them think that?
Linking
The sine quo non of brand building is the "higher order" of brand drivers. Al Ries and Jack Trout famously claimed [in their book "Positioning: The Battle for your Mind"] that positioning is the battle for the mind of your target. The war is won when you link your brand to emotional and self-expressive associations. People link Disney to magic, Nike to performance, and Apple to creativity. What do people associate with your brand, if anything? Are the associations the ones you want them to have, or are they a byproduct of the past?
Linking studies are critical for repositioning projects, but they are often poorly designed. The brand community suffers from a nasty plague: rational inquiry. Too many studies attempt to measure brand associations by using rational inquiry. Hedonism plays a role in Virgin Atlantic's brand equity. It's a brand that glorifies life in upper class. But if you tried to measure the link between Virgin and hedonism by directly asking respondents how much they value Virgin's ability to let them indulge their sensual side, you might be fooled by the results. A lot of brand equity derives from irrational associations. When you attempt to rationalize it, you tend to get three kinds of erroneous answers. First, you get people who are too embarrassed to say what they really feel, so they answer falsely to conform to a social norm. Second, you get people who answer in a very logical way. The problem is, in the moment of brand use, they aren't thinking logically. Finally, we tend to forget our irrational impulses. Since most studies are backward-looking (the study asks respondents questions about past behavior), they sometimes just remember wrong.
One solution to the problem is to simply design better descriptive studies. The old rule about garbage in/garbage out applies. Many managers skip over discussions about the attributes or questions to include on the survey. Survey design is both an art and a science. The artful part is often neglected.
The other solution is to consider experimental study formats. Most people think experimental research is reserved for academics, but experimental studies can be cost effective and highly predictive. Online brands have relied on experimental research more than offline brands, largely because it easier to conduct. Amazon.com frequently tests new features and new user interface designs in real-time by pushing the new material live for a small random sample of its customers. It then compares the behavior of the sample with the behavior of the general population. It's a safe and effective method for product testing. With a little ingenuity and bravery, brand managers can use similar designs to test changes in brand positioning.
Also, it is important to consider that brands are not static entities. They change over time, just like consumer tastes. Longitudinal studies that track changes in brand associations over time are a useful approach. While the first year of the study might be the most costly, incremental waves of the study are generally easy and economical to execute. Just as your doctor keeps a record of your vital signs, an ongoing linking study provides a simple diagnostic of your wellness.
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