Driving mind measure for a brand is one of the core challenges these days. Mind measure refers to top of mind awareness, spontaneous awareness, brand consideration etc. Even though media inputs play a crucial role in driving these mind measures, the content of communication plays an equally important role. Thus measuring brand attributes (product based or proposition based)that are directly or indirectly communicated takes a front seat in terms of priority for any brand health management.
Brand attributes can be explained as the associations, either functional or emotional, that consumer assigns to the brand. Brand attributes can be either negative or positive and can have varying degrees of relevance and importance. Today, many marketers are going beyond just measurement of attributes and in estimating which of imagery statement or attribute drive measures such as TOM, Consideration and Bonding scores. Sophisticated econometric models are being used in estimating this causality. Once the attribute driver is identified, then brand management is focuses on creating communication tailored around those attributes so that the equity of the brand can be enhanced. This paper highlights the approach taken for a set of consumer packaged category (CPG) brands in identifying the right brand attributes that contributed in its to the growth of brand equity.
Two brands in the CPG category with its multi market presence. The objectives set were
Thorough analysis of the data pattern in the data understanding phase. Analysis of attribute scores trend maps through mapping of the scores with the brand proposition over time. This led to grouping the markets that displayed similarity in pattern.
Using Vector Auto Regression (VAR) to identify the key mind measures drove sales. VAR was used to capture the interrelationship between marketing variables and to make the standard error of the estimates least. Spontaneous awareness was the key mind measure metric that drove business for the first brand and "one among two to three brands one considers" was the key mind measure metric for the second brand.
Using principal component analysis, attribute statement scores were factored to represent combination of statements. Thus three factors were derived. This process was undertaken because of high interrelationships between some of the statements. By factoring the statements the correlation between them can be taken care of and distinct uncorrelated groups can be derived.
Using vector auto regression, modeled the key mind measures with the factors. Selection of the key attribute combination was basis statistical significance.
Combination of attribute scores contributed high in driving the mind measure metrics for brands. The driver statements varied across markets. The proposition for brand A that was communicated came through as an important combination — emotional and softer elements of skin. In addition to this "the brand that lasts longer" and "cleans in depth" emerged as most important and significant statements for three core markets. The sensitivity of these statements on mind measures was close to 0.6, which meant a unit percentage increase in scores for these statements would lead to 0.6 unit percentage increase in spontaneous awareness.
The analysis opened up new communication opportunities and media connect opportunities in terms of brand activation for the two brands. The implementation basis the shortlist of brand attribute communication helped the brand to move up in the ladder in a cluttered category. Most of marketing mix analytics focus on identifying the drivers of sales with marketing inputs and media inputs. Wealth of research information on brand track can be utilized to go deep down using analytics on the brand attribute factors thus helping to arrive at a more effective brand communication strategy.