The Top Ten Traits

The world’s strongest brands share these ten attributes:

1. The brand excels at delivering the benefits customers truly desire. Why do customers really buy a product? Not because the product is a collection of attributes but because those attributes, together with the brand’s image, the service, and many other tangible and intangible factors, create an attractive whole. In some cases, the whole isn’t even something that customers know or can say they want.
2. The brand stays relevant. In strong brands, brand equity is tied both to the actual quality of the product or service and to various intangible factors. Those intangibles include “user imagery” (the type of person who uses the brand); “usage imagery” (the type of situations in which the brand is used); the type of personality the brand portrays (sincere, exciting, competent, rugged);
3. The pricing strategy is based on consumers’ perceptions of value.
4. The brand is properly positioned. Brands that are well positioned occupy particular niches in consumers’ minds.
5. The brand is consistent.
6. The brand portfolio and hierarchy make sense.
7. The brand makes use of and coordinates a full repertoire of marketing activities to build equity.
8. The brand’s managers understand what the brand means to consumers.
9. The brand is given proper support, and that support is sustained over the long run.
10. The company monitors sources of brand equity.

Strong brands generally make good and frequent use of in-depth brand audits and ongoing brand-tracking studies. A brand audit is an exercise designed to assess the health of a given brand. Typically, it consists of a detailed internal description of exactly how the brand has been marketed (called a “brand inventory”) and a thorough external investigation, through focus groups and other consumer research, of exactly what the brand does and could mean to consumers (called a “brand exploratory”).

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