New Life For Tired Brands

(Strategy + Business, Spring 2008)

The Brand Vitality Assessment Process

Brands that go through a BVA should have several residual strengths: the ability to evoke specific associations among consumers, the potential for meaningful differentiation on at least one purchase driver, and a basic distribution infrastructure that will help support revitalization.

The BVA consists of 4 related evaluations that incorporate consumer research to create a holistic and data-driven view of how the brand is currently performing in the marketplace. This, in turn, helps determine the brand's revitalization potential.

1. Purchase Funnel Assessment

This is the first step in evaluating the strength of a brand, examining every step in the purchase funnel model of consumer decision making from awareness to the decision to buy, to reveal how effectively the brand translates awareness into purchases and retention.

The PFA should expose leaks in the purchase funnel and suggest fixes. Those that occur in the upper part of the funnel, which narrows from "awareness" to "familiarity" to "opinion" to "consideration", point to marketing-related issues such as brand messaging and media planning. Leaks that occur in the lower part of the funnel, which narros from "intention" to "shopping" to "purchase", point to a different set of issues, such as the retail environment, competitive conditions, and pricing. This approach can also uncover what it might take to match the purchase funnel of the brand to that of its best-in-class competitor. Then the question is, Would matching that funnel be worth the investment?

The PFA should also answer the question, Does the brand suffer from poor awareness or from poor opinion? The Ford Taurus had high awareness, but consumer opinion of the brand had slowly eroded. The fleet sales were one culprit. Another was that the manufacturer's suggested retail price for the Taurus had by the mid-1990s crept higher than that of its competitors, but the car tended to sell for less.

2. Brand Equity Review

The objective of the BER is to find out whether the brand has any equity left with its target customer segment and how loyal those customers are to the brand. In addition, it can help identify the brand's attributes and zero in on which of those attributes have eroded or been rendered irrelevant by competitors.

In our experience, the core attributes of the brand may not be embodied in the current generation of products, but they are often still attainable. In such cases, revitalization may simply be a matter of going back to the brand's roots, as Ford did with the Mustang. By the 1990s, the Mustang had lost its cachet as the premier muscle car on the road. But once Ford introduced a retro design that combined the traditional styling and brand values with updated technology, the Mustang easily recaptured its old glory.

Would a similar strategy work for the Taurus? When the brand was launched, it was considered modern and daring. It represented the future and demonstrated that Detroit could, in fact, build great cars. By the time it gave way to the Five Hundred, the Taurus was viewed as dull and conservative. In that case, the BER would see whether its original brand values were still attainable, or whether the ho-hum image had overtaken the brand.

3. Competitive Dynamics Assessment

The PFA has already told us whether the problems lie in the marketing-focused upper funnel or the sales-focused lower funnel. The CDA looks at which competitors are taking away market share, why, and how easily the problems could be rectified.

A CDA on the Taurus would show that by the mid-1990s it had lost its position atop the field of family sedans to the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord, among other competitors. The aerodynamic design that Ford had pioneered was now commonplace, and the carmaker had let both Japanese competitors beat it to the punch with new versions of their cars well before Ford introduced its revamped Taurus. The high price of the vehicle only confirmed the suspicion that Ford had failed to recognize how much more crowded and competitive the market had become in the 10 years since it had introduced the Taurus.

Another brand that could benefit from a CDA is CSC Brands' V8 Splash, which has suffered since its 1996 introduction. A fruit juice spin-off of the classic vegetable juice, it is most popular among children and their parents, in large part because it launched with a strategy to "reach kids through moms." It later abandoned that approach, making itself more vulnerable to competition from other beverages aimed at both targets. In the kids' market it competes against Welch's juices, Ocean Spray 100% Juice, and Tropicana Twister, and those brands are responsible for more than half of V8 Splash's recent sales decline. In the adult market, it competes against SoBe, Snapple and Mystic, which have also stoeln share. The brand is overpriced, too: a 64-ounce bottle of Tropicana Twister costs 42 cents less than V8 Splash; Welch's is 77 cents cheaper.

A CDA could help V8 Splash plot its comeback. It would probably suggest that it pick one target - either adults, among whom it scores high on wellness attributes, or kids, whom it had attracted successfully with its previous strategy. The direction it chooses would in turn suggest a pricing strategy. If it targets kids, the price would have to drop. If it targets adults as a health beverage, it could retain at least some of its premium pricing.

4. Value Proposition Check

By analyzing the brand's benefits thoroughly, including its markting communications and pricing, companies can determine why the target consumer should purchase the brand instead of one of its competitors. A good value proposition offers a variety of benefits at the right price. These benefits can be categorized into a three-level hierarchy, with functional beneftis being the most basic, emotional benefits occupying the middle level, and self-expressive benefits being the most advanced. Consumers, for instance, might buy Apple's iPod rather than Microsoft's Zune because they believe the iPod is perceived as "cooler", even if the functional attributes of the two brands are similar. Marketers view the benefits higher in the hierarchy as more powerful, more sustainable, and harder for competitors to erode.

To study the value proposition, companies have to look at three different perspectives on the brand: consumer, competitor, and internal. The first looks at whether the brand can deliver to consumers tangible benefits that positively influence key purchase drivers. The second looks at how the brand is differentiated from its competitors in the minds of the target customer and whether it is difficult to imitate, even in the long run. And the last looks at whether the company can actually deliver on the value proposition. It reflects the brand's core competencies and whether they are easily understood, both internally and externally.

This may be a sobering exercise, but it is absolutely necessary if a company is to make a correct decision about whether to revitalize or abandon the brand. In the case of the Taurus, it's clear that the value proposition diminished over time. At the end of its first life cycle, it was difficult for consumers to justify buying the higher-priced Taurus when competitors' cars had matched, or surpassed, the brand's core features. The new Taurus brand, which replaced the Five Hundred, may still have to work on providing a more compelling value proposition if it is to be a true competitor in the family sedan marketplace. Current advertising pushes the message that the Taurus is "rated the safest full-size family car in America." Although safety is an important attribute to many car buyers - and a common claim among carmakers - it is not what turned the old Taurus into an icon, and it will do little to add vitality to the brand or differentiate it from the competition.

Brand Vitality Potential

A brand can take many paths toward revitalization. Although there certainly is room for qualitative judgments, this final evaluation is where the cold hard facts, as uncovered by the previous four analyses, come into play.

We often find that a simple "back to roots" strategy would work fine, as it did with the Mustang. This is typically the case after a failed growth strategy. The parent company, usually under pressure from investors, demands ever-greater sales results and growth targets until the brand grows beyond its niche and loses the attributes that made it unique. Sales subsequenty drop dramatically because the brand never appealed to new customers has lost its appeal with its original customer base. At this point the brand team must decide whether to retrench or replace.

Alternatively, we may find that the entire product category has reached the end of its natural life cycle, and should be phased out and replaced with something else. If this is the case, can the brand attributes of the old category be extended into a new category be extended into a new category? Brand extension potential is a function of four factors: perception of the brand's quality, whether the new product complements the old one, whether consumers believe the brand's old attributes can be transferred to the new product, and whether the new product category can be substituted for the old one.

This was the question facing Kodak, which lost its market dominance when its core film business gave way to digital photography. Suddenly Kodak went from being the number one brand in photography to competing fiercely with Canon, Nikon, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard, all of which have some piece of the digital photography business. Kodak has been able to transfer some of its brand equity to such products as digital cameras, printers, and its online Kodak Gallery. However, it has been unable to recapture the market supremacy it had when the film business was analog.

The Brand Vitality Assessment is not a panacea for tired brands. Brands get tired for a host of reasons, and it may be impossible to revitalize them after years of negative associations and sluggish performance. What the BVA offers is a rigorous, data-driven approach to deciding a brand's future. Companies that do choose to revitalize old brands should realize that the decision to go forward is only the beginning. The decision to revive a brand should include a commitment to its continued nourishment, to making the necessary investments, and to building the capabilities to make the brand's new life robust.