BRANDSCAPEBRAND ASSOCIATIONS

May 2011

INTRODUCTION

What is BrandScape?

is StrategyOne’s

proprietary brand image study.

It builds upon Jennifer Aaker's Brand

Personality Scale1 and Joel Rubison’s2

concept of “mental marketplaces”

Consumer focused and forward looking,

BrandScape research uncovers brand

essence, personality and potential.

Its insights are grounded on a new paradigm of

communication and on new rules for brand

competition.

1. Aaker, J. (1997). "Dimensions of brand personality." Journal of Marketing

Research 34 (August): 347-356.

2. Rubinson, Joel, “Brand Building in a Two Way World.” Joel Rubinson on

Marketing Research. 2/12/2011. 4/1/2011 (http://blog.joelrubinson.net/).

Why develop BrandScape?

Helping consumers make straightforward,

meaningful choices requires a novel approach

to how we communicate a brand’s image.

Digital life has brought a fundamental

shift to communication.

The pervasiveness of communication tools

has enabled consumers to remain in constant

connection and to ingest uninterrupted

streams of information. This has expanded

consumer choice more than ever before, to a

degree of saturation. Consumers struggle to

simplify their decision-making and their

daily lives, and brands become symbols that

provide the shortcut.

Why develop BrandScape?

That shortcut is very powerful. Favorite

brands are extensions of consumers and

purchasing becomes a symbolic process that

satisfies self-consistency and self-esteem.3

Effective communication about brands must

leverage consumers’ process of symbolic

categorization that turns brands into

anthropomorphic constructs (like trendy or

down-to-earth). These constructs inhabit

specific marketplaces in consumers’ minds.

The value of BrandScape is in being able to

uncover mental marketplaces in order to

provide continuous, rather than episodic,

insight into consumer behavior. 3. Zinkhan, G. D., D. Haytko and A. Ward (1996). “Self-Concept Theory.”

Journal of Marketing Communication, 2 (1): 1-19.

Why develop BrandScape?

BrandScape works with the new rules of brand competition.

Brand positioning has traditionally aimed to differentiate a brand from others in its

competitive set. Although this approach highlights what is unique about a brand in

utilitarian terms, it fails to capture the symbolic space that brands take up in consumers’

minds. BrandScape goes a step further.

Why develop BrandScape?

BrandScape builds on the insight of mental

marketplaces - that competitors can be

functionally unrelated. A brand can share

real estate in constructs such as affordable

or wellness with other brands, and each

brand must vie for attention.

Drawing on Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale,

BrandScape explores how consumers

categorize brands to uncover brand

meaning and to discern a widening

competitive set in consumers’ mental

marketplaces.

Why does BrandScape matter?

A brand wins by “owning” a mental space, as

prominence enables the brand to leverage multilayer,

deep connections with consumers to gain credibility.

In order to win, brands need to uncover where they

exist, and who is there with them. Competitors can

be functionally unrelated, and so can allies.

BrandScape is a unique brand image study

that reveals unlikely competitors as well as

meaningful partnerships among brands that

only share mind real estate.

StrategyOne works to develop brand positioning

that is current and versatile, by looking at brands in

the way consumers understand them. This approach

ensures future growth and signals opportunities that

traditional methods miss.

Why does BrandScape matter?

Our research methodology is unique and reveals true

mindshare. StrategyOne collected data through unaided, open-

ended questions in reverse order. Rather than prompting

respondents with a brand to ask about descriptors that come

to mind, StrategyOne posed Aaker’s attributes of feelings, values

and personalities, and then asked which brands occupied those

spaces.

The study is essentially a focus group amplified among a

nationally-representative sample of 3,000 consumers with

respect to five demographic dimensions (gender, age, household

income and geographic location). Analysts quantified more than

70,000 unaided associations. The result is

an unprecedented look at brands, which turns traditional

tracking on its head as research participants are not rating

brands, but giving us insight into which brands inhabit

their mental spaces.

Research Methodology

Nationally representative sample of 3,000 US adults ages 18-64 (in three groups

of n=1,000). Margin of Error is +/- 3.1% at 95% confidence interval.

Online survey

Data collected between December 29, 2010, and January 7, 2011.

Brand personality attributesDown-to-earth, Family-oriented, Small-town, Honest, Daring, Trendy, Exciting, Reliable, Hard-working,

Secure, Upper class, Glamorous, Outdoorsy, Masculine, Sincere, Real, Wholesome, Original, Spirited, Cool,

Young, Imaginative, Intelligent, Technical, Corporate, Good looking, Charming, Rugged, Cheerful,

Sentimental, Friendly, Unique, Up-to-date, Independent, Contemporary, Successful, Leader, Confident,

Feminine, Smooth, Western and Tough.

StrategyOne fielded an online survey among 3,000 adult US consumers (broken out into three cells of n=1,000). Interviewers posed respondents with Aaker’s 42 brand personality attributes and asked which brand or company came to mind when thinking of each attribute. The following slides show top brand associations for the total population and for segments of the population (demographic breaks by gender, age, household income and geographic location).

Who

How

When

BRAND ASSOCIATIONS

SAMPLE

ReliableAssociations by Income Level

<$30,000

1 Ford 11.4%

2 Johnson & Johnson 8.6%

3 Walmart 7.0%

4 Nike 6.5%

5Sony

Microsoft

Levi

5.9%

6 Proctor & Gamble 5.4%

7Kraft

Dell 4.9%

8 Apple 4.3%

9Target

Coca Cola

Samsung

3.8%

10Honda

Chevrolet3.2%

$30,000-$60,000

1 Ford 10.0%

2 Kraft 8.5%

3 Proctor & Gamble 8.1%

4 Johnson & Johnson 7.7%

5 Sony 6.6%

6 Walmart 6.3%

7 Chevrolet 5.5%

8 Toyota 5.2%

9 Apple 4.8%

10 Honda 4.4%

11 Nike 4.1%

12 Dell 3.7%

$60,000-$82,500

1 Honda 10.1%

2Ford

Toyota8.6%

3 Apple 7.9%

4Sony

Microsoft6.5%

5 GE 5.0%

6Proctor & Gamble

Johnson & Johnson4.3%

7Kraft

Walmart

Target

3.6%

$82,500+

1 Apple 12.2%

2 Sony 11.3%

3 Ford 9.2%

4 Honda 6.7%

5Toyota

Johnson & Johnson

Chevrolet

5.9%

6Proctor & Gamble

Dell5.5%

7 Hewlett-Packard 4.6%

8 GE 4.2%

9Samsung

Maytag3.8%

Brand associations among income groups

To purchase the full 200-page report visit

www.strategyone.com/brandscape.html

ABOUT US

StrategyOne is an insights-driven strategic consulting firm owned by Daniel

J. Edelman, the world’s largest independent PR company. StrategyOne provides

evidence based stakeholder insights, analysis and media measurement, and

specializes in reputation, branding and communications research, with

international capabilities. StrategyOne has offices located in New York,

Washington, Paris, London, Brussels, Chicago, Abu Dhabi, Atlanta and Silicon

Valley.

StrategyOne is a recognized firm among the 2010 Honomichl list of top 50

market research firms across the United States. The Honomichl 50 is

published in the annual business report of Marketing News, an American

Marketing Association publication, and acknowledges the leading 50 research

firms based on revenue generated in the US.

Visit www.strategyone.com for more information.