Developing Brand Architecture

Was that a fun exercise? Let’s see what we came up with for the brand personality of Etch A Sketch. Now I ask our trusted camera man, Kyle here, to explain what he felt was the personality of Etch A Sketch. Now what did he say? So for age, he said, it is about 6 to 8, because this is for younger children, and that’s who use the brand. And so that’s what the Etch A Sketch is, fun and young at heart, and also age. Now for gender, he said, female. And for traits of the person, he said, creative and patient.

Now that kind of makes sense, right? Creative, you need to think, imagine things that you want to draw and the Etch A Sketch and put it to action and really realize what you have in your head on the Etch A Sketch and that’s creativity. But to do that you need a lot of patient to actually accomplish that thing. Now that does go in with, in most cases I don’t want to stereotype here but in most cases with female. And I can tell from experience, I got two boys and patience is not something that they are known for. And so, what is the personality of Etch A Sketch?

It is really about the person who uses this brand, who we think uses this brand, younger, six to eight years old, female, but very creative and very patient. Now this personality of Etch A Sketch is part of a bigger view of what we call a brand architecture. Now marketing uses the brand architecture to connect product features and attributes to the emotional connection that you and I feel with the brands. Now what is that? So that would be something like the knobs that we have on Etch A Sketch, while while working on the knobs. These are features, but these features actually give you an emotional connection with the brand and that’s what the brand architecture captures.

Now the brand architecture then tells you what parts of the brand need to be influenced by marketing. It tells you that the brand is a multi-dimensional concept that needs to be influenced across different ways and how marketing can then influence it. Where does analytics come in? Analytics comes in to understand how parts of the marketing actions affect parts of the brand architecture. So analytics tells us, is marketing really working and affects the aspects of the brand architecture that need to be influenced. Now, let’s apply this concept to an example. Let’s go and talk about Southwest. So Southwest started as a low price, point-to-point airline for business travelers.

So the product features of Southwest were, essentially, a point-to-point airline, low price, and downtown, which mean it is for business travelers. Now these product attributes translate into some benefits. Now, really, when we buy products, we buy the benefits not the features of the product or the attributes. So the point-to-point, low price, and business travel means less time, reliable, and it’s a convenient experience with less stopovers. Now all of these benefits give us some emotional benefit from using the product. And that would be less hassle and it really is a pleasant experience. Now these emotional benefits. What is the personality of a brand that provide these emotional benefits?

Now that would a brand, that it could be something that is friendly, fun, down to earth. And those are the emotional benefits that is provided by this brand personality. And all of this kind of translates into a brand essence of freedom. Freedom from the typical features of an airline industry. Now this is how you would take a brand architecture and connect the product a tributes to emotional benefits, personality and the essence of a brand. Now when marketers think about the brand architecture and consider new features that they want to add to the brand, they need to see whether these new features are consistent with the benefits that the customers experience from the brand.

And also the personalities and the essence of the brand that they expect from this brand, right? So, we saw that with Southwest. Now let’s try something and apply this concept of brand architecture to Red Bull. Now there is another popular brand. Let’s see, you can work with it and take some time. Take five to ten minutes, take ten minutes. And think about the brand architecture of Red Bull. And I am not going anywhere, I’m going to be right here. Take some time, work through this and fill out the brand architecture for Red Bull and I’ll be here waiting for you. Let’s do this. Let’s get started.