Brand assets and why they're important
How do you know a Coke from a Pepsi? Is it the taste? Probably not. It’s more likely the colour red, probably the logo and maybe the bottle shape.
Ok - there’s a meerkat with a dollar-shop Eastern European accent on the TV. Which brand is that? Yeah, that was still pretty easy - Compare the Market.
What I’ve just described to you are some of CocaCola and Compare the Market’s brand assets or codes. They the things that help you recognise the brand when you see it.
Brand assets can be all sorts of things;
Logo - Literally any logo is the most basic form of brand asset.
Colours - These are harder, but in certain categories it’s clear who owns what. Who comes to mind when you see purple in the chocolate aisle at the shops?
Fonts (or typefaces if you want to sound fancy) - Usually linked to, or an extension of the logo.
Particular shapes, motifs or patterns - Think of all the high fashion brands that have specific patterns they own.
Packaging or product wrapping - My favourite is the pre-workout in a plastic grenade.
Characters - That horrifying red-headed clown and his posse doesn’t even need a category to guess who he’s representing.
Celebrities - These are incredibly powerful, but importantly though the brand and the celebrity need to be aligned for best effect. Think coffee and George Clooney. Or Diego Maradona and luxury Swiss-made watches (wait, what? Just read the article).
Founders - Col. Sanders and his 11 herbs and spices!
Smells - Charles Tyrwhitt in the UK made all their shops smell of sandalwood. I’m also sure Subway cookie smell is pumped out of their shops to lure us in!
Locations - Both macro (think iconic cities) and micro your corner shop.
Audio - Jingles or audio ‘stings’ are incredibly powerful. Luckkkky, you’re with ….who? One three, double 1, double 6 *Trumpet sound*… who? Songs can be powerful too if they’re properly aligned and applied consistently.
Most brands have a suite of them. The trick is to not have too many. 2-4 should do. Any more and you’ll water it down.
As well as having assets that are meaningful to your business and brand, having ones that stand out amongst your competitors (distinctiveness) is very important too.
Why do you need brand assets?
Ok, stay with me. I’m going to try and summarise a very long book I admittedly didn’t finish called ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. Trust me, this’ll make more sense than I am right now.
Kahneman’s central point was we have two ways of thinking.
Fast using system 1 - Think of this as your day to day auto pilot for things that don’t need much thought.
Slow using system 2 - This one is reserved for bigger challenges that require more brain power.
95%+ of our decisions are made using system 1, the less than 5% left over using system 2.
Why is this important? It comes down to what influences those two systems.
System 2 - Think of buying a car. You’re not doing it on a whim, you’ll think long and hard about it. That’s system 2 coming into play. We’ll influence system 2 thinking with things like our product’s positioning and differentiation because customers are being more considered.
System 1 - This is where our brand assets come into play and demonstrates why they’re so important. When a customer isn’t thinking and they’re shooting from the hip to make a purchase, they’re relying on cues… I bet you can guess what those cues are. They’re your brand assets.
What do they do though?
As I’ve alluded to, if we get our brand assets right they help customers make System 1 decisions to buy our products.
And as much as there’s an intrinsic benefit to having everything look pretty and consistent, there are other benefits that stem from this, like:
Increasing brand saliency and consideration - that your customers will pick your brand ahead of your competitors when given a choice. This means a stronger, broader funnel and increased revenue and profit as you can hold your margin.
Creates linkage across your advertising and other assets - especially if you’re doing both brand building and sales activation advertising.
Helps build your brand image - this relates back to your positioning. If you’re trying to come off as a global luxury fashion brand, you’re going to have a different set of codes to a fish and chip shop.
Codify everything
The way you get the most value from your brand assets once you’ve defined them is to apply them liberally and consistently.
There’s no more to it than that.
No exceptions.
Just do it (see what I did there?)
How do you come up with them?
The trick here is to be an old brand with plenty of history to draw on. For these brands assets are easy to define because you can test with your target market who have history. A good test is think of your oldest or most loyal customer. Take the name off your product and show them a combination of your codes. Can they still tell its you? If they can, those are the codes you’ve been looking for.
If you’re fresh out of the gate and a new(ish) brand talk to creative people like us! Let us take your six and help you define and deploy your brand codes for maximum impact.