brand key model-en

8/12/2019 Brand Key Model-En

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EUROPEAN INSTITUTE FOR BRAND MANAGEMENT

Model: Brand Key

Type of model: Brand model (structure and process model)

Author(s): unknown

Domain: Brand positioning

Figure 1: The eight brand positioning steps as per the Brand Key model.

The Brand Key is a model that can be used to position brands. This model is

used in a range of different organisations, comes in different shapes and sizes,

and has different names (such as Brand Box), making its origin not entirely

clear. At Unilever, they use the model in the form presented in this article. The

model names eight steps/ stages that can lead to differentiating and relevant

brand positioning: (1) competitive environment, (2) target, (3) consumer insight,

(4) benefits, (5) values & personality, (6) reasons to believe, (7) discriminator

and (8) brand essence. The Brand Key is all about taking stock of all relevant

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information for these eight subjects, by putting some succinct points to paper for

each (in total about one A4). In doing so, you can make a distinction between

describing the current situation (‘ist’, which is referred to as the master key in

this model) and a separate description of the future, desired situation (‘soll’; in

this model the vision key). At Unilever, a separate brand key is completed for

each extension. In the following we will further explain the eight stages of the

Brand Key, including indications of the model’s shortcomings, and finally

present another model that was derived from this one.

The Brand Key model works on the assumption that a brand manager takes the

following eight steps in a brand positioning process:

The market and alternative choices

as seen by the consumer and therelative value that the brand offersin that market.

1. Competitive environment: the first step on

the road to clear positioning involvesmapping the competition situation. This

means taking stock of the brands/

products that a customer can consider when making his/her purchase

decision. These can include direct competitors – in the sense that Pepsi-

Cola is a ‘real’ competitor of Coca-Cola – but also less obvious competitors

that, for example, tailor to the generic need for the quenching of thirst. At this

stage, the brand manager will not only have to identify competing brands,

but also consider how these position themselves in the market, and which

associations customers/ consumers have with these brands. A handy aid forthe taking stock of competitors is Porter’s Five Forces Model.

The person and situation for whichthe brand is always the best choi-ce, defined in terms of their attitu-des and values; not just demogra-

phics.

2. Target: this step consists of identifying the

(desired) target group; not only in terms of

demographics, but also in terms of

attitudes and values. This, in principle,

means answering the question why the

brand in question makes the best choice for a certain person and/ or in a

certain situation.

That element of all you know aboutthe target consumer and theirneeds (in this competitive environ-ment) upon which the brand is founded.

3. Consumer insight: for a brand to besuccessful in a market, it will have to tie in

with a relevant consumer insight. A

consumer insight concerns a latent

purchase motive in the target group with

relation to the product. A consumer insight does not merely answer the

question why consumers buy a certain product, but rather lays bare the

latent needs driving consumers to buy a certain product. This is not just

about finding out why consumers buy a certain product, but also about

finding out why they would not buy it. By way of example, we can refer to the

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personified; describing the brand in terms of personal(ity) characteristics or

traits. A way of doing that in marketing communication is using celebrities

with these characteristics in advertising (such as George Clooney in the

Nespresso ads).

The proof we offer to substantiatepositioning.

6. Reason to believe: at this stage of the

process, the idea is to formulate

arguments based on which the target group will believe the brand is the best

option for them. This preference can mostly be captured in sentences such

as: ‘I buy brand X because... ‘. These arguments can be used in advertising,

but actual customer contacts can also be set up in such a way that they

‘prove’ to consumers that the brand actually stands for what it claims to

stand for. For example: a travel agency claiming to be very cheap will better

support that image by having austere decoration than with lots of luxury andsleek style in their agency interiors. One example is the case of a certain

scientific search engine building a delay into the program, because users

had little confidence in its accuracy due to the rapid return of search results.

Single most compelling & competi-tive statement the target consumer

would make for buying the brand.

7. Discriminator: in this penultimate step, the

brand manager will have to concisely

state what the actual difference is

between the brand in question and other brands. This difference can mostly

be captured in sentences such as: ‘Only brand X has...‘.

The distillation of the brand’s gene-tic code into one clear thought. 8. The brand essence: this is a summary ofstages 4 to 7. The idea here is to catch

the brand’s essence in one or two words; such as ‘motherly care’ in case of

Blue Band margarine, and ‘driving enjoyment’ for BMW.

In a later version of this model, marketing staff at Unilever added one more step

to the Brand Key in the form of the brand’s root strengths. This stage involves

pinpointing what has made the brand what it is, what it can build on. Describing

root strengths should be done prior to the eight above steps.

The advantage of the Brand Key is that it profiles virtually every single relevantstep in a positioning process; but the downside is that it overemphasizes the

outside-in approach, making the model less suitable for brands where the

inside-out approach is relevant (such as in the case of service providers). The

outside-in emphasis particularly comes to the fore in the fact that ‘values &

personality’ features rather late on in the model (stage 5). When positioning a

brand that strongly depends on an inside-out movement, values & personality

tend to be a fact that serves as the basic principle of positioning: it is therefore

rather tricky to apply this model for service providers, for example. The diagram

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below is a rejigged version of the brand key model, with the new name Brand

Box, which does indeed identify the same phases as the Brand Key.

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