Brand Identity
Brand Salience. Achieving the right brand identity involves creating brand salience.
Brand salience relates to aspects of customer awareness of the brand. How easily
and often is the brand evoked under various situations or circumstances? To what
extent is the brand top-of-mind and easily recalled or recognized? What types of
cues or reminders are necessary? How pervasive is brand awareness?
Formally, brand awareness refers to customers’ ability to recall and recognize a
brand. Brand awareness is more than just the fact that customers know a brand
name and the fact that they have previously seen it, perhaps even many times.
Brand awareness also involves linking the brand—brand name, logo, symbol, and
so forth—to certain associations in memory. In particular, building brand aware-
ness involves making sure that customers understand the product or service catego-
ry in which the brand competes. There must be clear links to other products or
services sold under the brand name. At a broader, more abstract level, however,
building brand awareness also means ensuring that customers know which of their
needs the brand is designed to satisfy—through these products. In other words,
what basic functions does the brand provide for customers?
Salience forms the foundational building block in developing brand equity and
provides three important functions. First, salience influences the formation and
strength of brand associations that make up the brand image and gives the brand
meaning. Second, creating a high level of brand salience in terms of category iden-
tification and needs satisfied is of crucial importance during possible purchase or
consumption opportunities. Brand salience influences the likelihood that the
brand will be a member of the consideration set, those handful of brands that
receive serious consideration for purchase. Brand salience is also important during
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possible consumption settings in terms of maximizing potential usage. Third,
when customers have “low involvement” with a product category, they may make
choices based on brand salience alone. Low involvement occurs when customers
lack either: (1) purchase motivation (e.g., when customers do not care about the
product or service) or (2) purchase ability (e.g., when customers do not know any-
thing else about the brands in a category or lack the expertise to judge quality even
if they do know some things).
Key Criteria for Brand Identity
Brand awareness can be distinguished in terms of two key dimensions—depth and
breadth. Depth of brand awareness refers to how easily customers can recall or rec-
ognize the brand. Breadth of brand awareness refers to the range of purchase and
consumption situations in which the brand comes to mind. A highly salient brand
is one that possesses both depth and breadth of brand awareness, so that customers
always make sufficient purchases as well as always think of the brand in a variety of
settings in which the brand could be employed or consumed.
Thus, in terms of creating brand salience, in many cases it is not only the depth of
brand awareness that matters, but also the breadth of brand awareness and the
proper linkage of the brand to various categories and cues in the minds of cus-
tomers. In other words, it is important that the brand not only be “top-of-mind”
and have sufficient “mind share,” but it must also do so at the right times and
right places.
Breadth is an often-neglected consideration, even for brands that are category lead-
ers. With many brands, the key question is not whether customers can recall the
brand, but rather, where do they think of the brand, when do they think of the
brand, and how easily and often do they think of the brand? In particular, many
brands and products are ignored or forgotten in possible usage situations.
Increasing the salience of the brand in those settings can be an effective means to
drive consumption and increase sales volume. For example, a potentially effective
strategy for market leader Campbell’s Soup might be to ensure that its customers
think of the soup during possibly overlooked consumption opportunities (e.g., as
a sidedish at dinner).