Branding has become more important than ever to companies competing in today’s marketplace. At a time when battered investors, customers, and even employees are questioning whom they can trust, the ability of a familiar brand to deliver proven value has become extremely important. A belief in the power of brands has spread beyond the traditional consumergoods marketers, and branding has become a very important part of the marketing strategy for companies in almost every industry. Purveyors of products ranging from Gillette razors to BMW automobiles to Starbucks coffee have been able to use their strong brands to keep growing without succumbing to the pricing pressure of an  intense promotional environment. However,many of the traditional big-brand companies are striving to reinvent themselves and to restore value to their venerable brands. And as they do so,many are looking to their advertising agencies to help them determine the best way to build strong brands and connect with their customers.

Advertising agencies often conduct research studies for their clients, using techniques such as surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic studies to help them better understand their customers and determine the best way to communicate with them. However, in recent years a number of agencies have been conducting branding research and developing proprietary models to help better identify clients’ customers and determine how they connect to their brands. DDB Worldwide provides clients with branding insights through its Brand Capital Study, which amasses information on more than 500 brands ranging from Wal-Mart to Yahoo and from Budweiser to Michelin. The proprietary branding research is based on a global marketing study consisting of quantitative surveys conducted among 14,000 consumers in 14 countries. The surveys consist of a battery of questions focusing on consumer attitudes, interests, desired self-image, values, and product use as well as various subjects and issues including family, religion, politics, advertising, and brands. The agency uses the information from the Brand Capital Study to compare the desired self-images and lifestyles of consumers who love a brand with those who have a less strong connection. The study also measures brand magnetism, which is the brand’s ability to strengthen its connection with consumers and is based on four factors: high quality, leadership in the category, growth in popularity, and uniqueness in the category.  According to the agency’s worldwide brand planning director, the success of a product or brand is tied to how it is perceived in popular culture: “In category after category, around the world, the evidence is clear. As a brand’s breadth of connection with consumers increases, its depth of connection increases exponentially.” DDB describes this phenomenon of each consumer’s feelings about a brand being directly affected by other consumer’s feelings as “brand contagion.” Young & Rubicam is another agency that has developed a proprietary tool for building and managing brands, a tool it refers to as the Brand Asset Valuator. The agency has invested over $70 million and conducted over 120 studies in building a comprehensive global database of consumer perceptions of brands. This tool views brands as developing through a very specific progression of four consumer perceptions, including differentiation, relevance, esteem, and knowledge. Differentiation measures the strength of the brand’s meaning, while relevance measures the personal appropriateness of the brand to consumers. These two measures together form brand strength, which is viewed as an important indicator of future performance and potential. Esteem is the extent to which consumers like a brand and hold it in high regard, while knowledge represents awareness of the brand and what it stands for and is the culmination of brand-building efforts. Esteem and knowledge form brand stature, which is a more traditional measure of the status of a brand and its current performance, which is a strong strategic indicator of the health of a brand. The Brand Asset Valuator uses measures of these four factors to identify core issues for the brand and to evaluate current brand performance and potential.

The Leo Burnett agency relies on its Brand Belief System to guide its global brand-building philosophy and practice. This system focuses on the development of the brand–believer bond,which is at the core of the relationship between a brand and its believers, and considers four fundamental questions. The first question involves the category and asks,Where does the brand truly belong? The second involves the content and asks, How will the brand inspire belief? The third question considers the culture and asks,What shapes belief in the brand? The final question involves the customer and asks,With whom and how will the brand belong? Leo Burnett uses a set of proprietary research tools to provide information that can be used as part of the Brand Belief System and provide the agency with a basis for brand analysis and planning. Nearly all the major agencies are conducting branding research and/or developing models or systems that they can use to gain better insight into consumers and develop more effective campaigns for their clients. The importance of building and maintaining strong brands is likely to become even greater in the future. This will put even more pressure on agencies to develop new and better tools and techniques that can be used to guide their clients’ advertising campaigns.