Brand Core · Brand Value · Module
Awareness
Whether the brand is known, and whether it comes to mind at the moment a choice is being made — which is the harder and more useful question.
The idea
How it works
Recognition — “have you heard of this?” — is easy to achieve and worth very little. Recall at the moment of choice is what determines whether the brand is in the set being considered, and it is a much smaller number.
Awareness is also situational. A brand can be recalled readily for one occasion and not at all for another, which is why the useful measure is tied to the buying situations rather than to the category in general.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Measure unprompted, then prompted
The gap between the two is more informative than either. A large gap means the brand is known and not retrieved.
- 02
Ask by situation, not by category
“Who would you use when X happens” predicts behaviour; “which of these have you heard of” does not.
- 03
Track it against competitors
An awareness figure with no comparison is uninterpretable. Rising while the category rises faster is a decline.
- 04
Hold the question wording still
Changing the instrument between waves means the trend measures the wording rather than the brand.
One level in
The components of awareness
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
A large gap between prompted and unprompted awareness means the brand is known and not retrieved. That is a different problem.
The other modules in brand value
Associations
What comes to mind with the brand, how strongly, how favourably and how uniquely — the part of brand value that does the actual work.
LearnLoyalty
Whether people come back, and whether they would defend the choice if a cheaper option appeared — behaviour and attitude, measured separately because they diverge.
LearnValuation
What the brand is worth financially, on a stated method, with the assumptions visible — because the number is entirely a function of them.
Learn