Building a strong brand involves maximizing all ten characteristics. And that is, clearly, a worthy goal. But in practice, it is tremendously difficult because in many cases when a company focuses on improving one, others may suffer. Consider a premium brand facing a new market entrant with comparable features at a lower price. The brand’s managers might be tempted to rethink their pricing strategy. Lowering prices might successfully block the new entrant from gaining market share in the short term. But what effect would that have in the long term? Will stepping outside its definition of “premium” change the brand in the minds of its target customers? Will it create the impression that the brand is no longer top of the line or that the innovation is no longer solid? Will the brand’s message become cloudy?
The price change may in fact attract customers from a different market segment to try the brand, producing a short-term blip in sales. But will those customers be the true target? Will their purchases put off the brand’s original market? The trick is to get a handle on how a brand performs on all ten attributes and then to evaluate any move from all possible perspectives. How will this new ad campaign affect customers’ perception of price? How will this new product line affect the brand hierarchy in our portfolio? Does this tweak in positioning gain enough ground to offset any potential damage caused if customers feel we’ve been inconsistent? One would think that monitoring brand performance wouldn’t necessarily be included in the equation. But even effectively monitoring brand performance can have negative repercussions if you just go through the motions or don’t follow through decisively on what you’ve learned.