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Better branding
Nora A. Aufreiter, David Elzinga, and Jonathan W. Gordon
Marketers rely too much on intuition. The key to building brands more
scientifically is to combine a forward-looking market segmentation with
a better understanding of customers and a brands identity.

uilding strong brands isnt getting any easier. An explosion in the

number of brandsas well as a proliferation of ways to communicate

them, from hundreds of cable channels to the Internet, product placement
in movies, and even mobile-phone display screenshas made it tougher to
get messages through. In addition, converging product-performance and
service levels in many industries have made it more difficult to sustain existing brands.1 Meanwhile, the economic downturn has hamstrung marketers
by cutting their budgets (Exhibit 1, on the next page).
Rising above the clutter without breaking the bank will require companies
to get smarter about branding. During the 1990s, marketers spent unprecedented sums, but many discovered later that more wasnt better. The promotional efforts of some companies were indiscriminate, focusing on aspects of
the brand that didnt drive customer buying patterns. Others failed to note
shifting customer preferences and evolving market segments; Volvo, for
example, lost out on years of potential sales by waiting until 2003 to introduce a sport utility vehicle. In short, marketers relied too heavily on intuition and not enough on a fact-based understanding of the marketplace.
A few companies are starting to build their brands more scientificallyand
in doing so have pushed marketing to new frontiers. The key is combining a

In the automotive industry, for example, vehicle-performance levels (measured in such attributes as
acceleration, braking, cornering, fuel efficiency, and reliability) have converged dramatically over the
past 40 years. See Lance Ealey and Luis Troyano-Bermdez, Are automobiles the next commodity?
The McKinsey Quarterly, 1996 Number 4, pp. 6275 (www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/7388).

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EXHIBIT 1

Getting tougher all the time

Number of brands on
US grocery store shelves

Number of advertising
messages to which average
US resident is exposed daily

45,000

US spending on
advertising, $ billion

5,000

169

2000

2000

149

147

20011

20021

3,000
1,500

15,000

1991

2001

1960

1990

1
Estimated (2000 dollars).
Source: Advertising Age ; Brand Names Educational Foundation; Consumer Reports ; Morgan Stanley, Yankelovich Monitor

forward-looking market segmentation with a more precise understanding

of the needs of customers and a brands identity. The wealth of information
about customers and buying patterns (obtained by studying everything from
loyalty programs to cheap Internet-based surveys) and the availability of
more sophisticated and accessible statistical tools make it possible to undertake these tasks with more precision and accuracy than ever. In short, reaching the next level requires a more rigorous, data-based edge to branding.
Certainly, even the most advanced quantitative techniques cant save brands
whose value propositions lag behind those of competitors. And adopting
new methodologies has its challenges. The solid analytics at the heart of the
new approach may not only require new skills in the marketing department
but also highlight steps that other parts of the organizationfrom product
development to operations to customer servicemust take to help deliver
the brand. Moreover, some marketers may worry that adopting more quantitative techniques will compromise their creativity. In our experience, though,
getting analytical about customer needs and the brand identity helps channel
the imagination into areas in which it makes a difference. And the ability to
avoid costly trial and error and to build a better brand more efficiently is too
compelling to pass up, particularly in challenging economic times.

Tomorrows segments today

The first order of business is to take a hard look at the long-term profit
potential of each customer segment; otherwise, marketers can waste a huge
amount of effort defining and delivering brands for segments that dont warrant the investment. While no good brand manager ignores shifts that are
clearly under way, marketers have traditionally based their segmentation
schemes on current conditions, such as the size, income, age, and ethnicity

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of various target populations; estimates of their consumption and loyalty;

and information about their locations, lifestyles, needs, and attitudes.
Helpful as traditional segmentation efforts are, they run the risk of leading
companies to chase customer groups with weak long-term potential. Many
apparel companies, for example, target the fad-conscious teenage segment.
But now, with teenagers representing a declining demographic in many
Western economies, the fruits of figuring out how to cater to these fickle
customers seem likely to shrink. Fortunately, deciding when its time to
rethink a segment doesnt require marketers to gaze into a crystal ball;
rather, they must only spot developing trends, work out how the changes
will affect a segment, and assess the impact on future profitability.

Trend spotting
Winning the race in any given segment is much easier with the wind of
a strong trend at your back. Major transformationsfrom behavioral
changes, such as dietary shifts, to demographic evolution, such as the aging
of the baby boomers and the swelling of the US Hispanic populationcan
be a marketers friends, but only if they are identified and embraced.
Consider the impact that an increase in the frequency of on-the-move eating
and the growing popularity of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins
diet could have on breakfast cereal producers such as Kelloggs and Quaker
Oats. Cereal customers have long been divided into an adult segment (for
which brands emphasize health issues, including fiber content and ingredients that lower cholesterol) and a kid segment (appealed to by stressing
fun and taste while reassuring mom and dad about the nutritional content).
Cereal-focused market research would be unlikely to suggest modifying this
approach. Yet on-the-move eating has already helped products such as NutriGrain bars, which appeal to both segments, succeed at the expense of some
breakfast cereals. And more than 15 million people in the United States
have tried the Atkins diet, so assessing the future economic potential of
a protein-seeking segment that eschews the carbohydrates in breakfast
cereals is important.
The segments size today would be only a starting point. Marketers would
also need to project their estimates on the basis of obesity rates, the number
of Atkins books sold, growth rates in the markets that embraced Atkins first,
and the adoption trajectories of past diet crazes. While such estimates are
bound to be uncertain, projections with an error range as large as 20 percent
can still help marketers bound the potential impact of trends, decide which
are worth reacting to, and identify those (for instance, the grapefruit diet)
that are flashes in the pan.

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Follow the money

Once marketers have spotted meaningful trends, the next challenge is to
determine their probable impact on the customer landscape and the likely
profitability of the resulting segments. Rapidly growing ones may not be
the most profitable down the road, so its vital to translate growth projections into dollars and cents.
Consider what has been happening in the hospitality sector. For decades,
the industry recognized two customer segments: service-oriented business
travelers and price-driven leisure travelers. In recent years, however, the
highly profitable business segment has begun splintering, with threatening
implications for hotels (including stalwarts such as Hilton Hotels, Marriott
International, and Sheraton) whose brands are associated with traditional
business travelers and their needs. At one end of the spectrum, rising pressure on corporate expenses has produced a new kind of value-driven business traveler. At the other, a new breed of mobile, aspiring professional
will go to great lengths to avoid standard business hotels, for these luxurydriven business travelers increasingly wish to merge work and play. Some are
fashion-seekers, who view the hotels they patronize as a form of personal
expression. Others are escape-seekers, who are looking for a break from
the humdrum of business on the road and want to feel pampered.
Responding effectively to these pressures requires an understanding of each
segments future economic potential. Volume is part of the story, but variables such as capital requirements, changing room rates, and earnings from
sideline services are important as well. Playing in the fast-growing valuebusiness segment requires a delicate balancing act: keeping costs low enough
to meet the customers low-price expectations profitably while spending
enough to build a differentiated brand. The luxury fashion segment also
presents perils: it depends heavily on spending for style and status
extras that customers might choose to do without during economic
downturns. Fashionable hotels may also have to spend more to
keep their bars, restaurants, and lobbies in vogue.
Such insights help marketers decide which segments to target
and how to go after them. Where growth is likely but profitability less certain, the prudent course is often to limit the downside risk, perhaps by stretching existing brands to meet new needs. Some
hotel chains took this approach by offering what they call value rates
within existing properties or by creating value sub-brands such as Holiday
Inn Express and Courtyard by Marriott. These brands had reasonably
healthy returns both before and during the recent economic downturn.

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By contrast, during the late 1990s the superluxury business segment

attracted a flood of new entrants ranging from independent boutique hotels
to companies such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Marriott,
which expanded their St. Regis and Ritz-Carlton brands, respectively. While
many of the hotels briefly filled their rooms at stratospheric rates, revenue
per available room in this segment has fallen more than twice as fast as the
industry average during the economic downturn. Distinguishing between
cyclical effects and long-term trends might have limited the carnage.

Building the brand

Once marketers have their eye on the most promising future
segments, they must rethink the brandan increasingly complex process. Brand proliferation and rapid imitation have
diminished the return on clever advertising and breakthrough
ideas, such as adding a miracle ingredient to a detergent or associating
a sports star with a particular brand of athletic shoes. Today, cost-effective
brand building depends on knowing precisely what consumers care about
and tailoring the brand accordingly. Sophisticated new analytic approaches
provide the precision but only when coupled with conceptual clarity in first
defining a brand and then actually delivering it through a variety of what
marketers call touchpoints, the sites where consumers interact with it.

Whats my brand, anyway?

Defining a brand involves emphasizing its key benefits and attributes for consumers. To do so, marketers must recognize that a brand consists of more
than a bundle of tangible, functional attributes; its intangible, emotional
benefits, along with its identity, frequently serve as the basis for long-term
competitive differentiation and sustained loyalty. Coca-Cola, for example, is
a powerful global brand not just because the beverage comes in a familiar red
can and customers like the taste but also because it conveys an image as an
optimistic, American product.
Marketers could promote many tangible and intangible brand attributes,
but the goal is to uncover the relevance of each to consumers and the degree
to which it helps distinguish the brand from those of competitors. The
number of brand elements at play and the interdependencies that often exist
between tangible and intangible attributes can make these assessments complex. Fortunately, statistical techniques can now increase their reliability. As
such an analysis often shows, certain features may differentiate a brand from
its competitors but dont matter to customers. These attributes are the fools
gold of branding.

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Some attributes, however, are important even

What really matters
though customers
expect them from any
High
Antes
Drivers
competitor. We call
Features that are
Features that are
important to consumers both important to
them antes, after the
but are provided by
consumers and highly
all competitors at
differentiated from
small payments poker
similar level
those of competitors
players make to receive
cards from the dealer.
Neutrals
Fools gold
In the hotel industry,
Features that are
Features that are
for example, Holiday
irrelevant to consumers distinctive but do not
drive consumers
Inn Express seeks to
loyalty to brand
provide clean, fresh,
comfortable facilities,
Low
and Four Seasons
Low
High
Differentiation
Hotels and Resorts tries
to offer all the business
services its customers
might need. These antes arent the centerpiece of either brand, because they
dont distinguish the players from other competitors. Nonetheless, such basic
brand benefits cant be ignored: a value establishment wont last long if it
offers dirty rooms or uncomfortable beds, nor would a luxury business
hotels brand remain credible without fax and Internet facilities.
Relevance

EXHIBIT 2

The most successful brands emphasize features that are both important to
consumers and quite differentiated from those of competitors (Exhibit 2).
We refer to these features as brand drivers. Holiday Inn Express hopes
to distinguish itself by providing customers with the emotional benefit of
feeling like a smarter business traveler and attempts to convey a brand
personality that is fun, even a bit wacky. For the road warrior whose
expense limit has been cut, an opportunity to be smarter and fun,
not just cheaper, is attractive. Further up the price scale, Westin Hotels &
Resorts is trying to differentiate itself from Hilton, Marriott, and Sheraton
by claiming to offer serenity and efficiency. Among higher-end customers,
the Four Seasons seeks to distinguish itself by providing what it calls an
escape from the ordinary and a personality of calm sophistication.

Which touchpoints matter?

With the brand antes and drivers defined, a critical issue remains: how to
deliver them cost-effectively. Brands are delivered at touchpoints, which for
a hotel include reservations, check-in and checkout, frequent-stay programs,
room service, business services, exercise facilities, laundry service, restaurants, and bars. Holiday Inn Express delivers its smarter and fun brand
through touchpoints such as quality breakfasts, assurances that its on-line

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rates are the lowest publicly available, and zany advertising. Westin provides
serenity for business travelers with its Heavenly Bed. And the Four Seasons
relies on personal touches, such as a staff that always addresses guests by
name, higher-powered employees who understand the needs of sophisticated
business travelers, and at least one best-in-region facility, such as a premier
restaurant or spa.
Trade-offs are possible. Airlines, for example, are unlikely to differentiate
themselves for business travelers through easily imitated benefits such as better
food and wine or portable DVD players. More durable brand delivery mechanisms are costlier. British Airways, for instance, redesigned its cabins to offer
the first flat beds in business class when other airlines merely increased the
pitch or width of their seats. Virgin Atlantic Airways reinforced its famous
doing things differently brand personality with a restyled Upper Class
service that features designer-styled cabins, a sit-down bar, an in-flight
massage service, and flat-bed seats. Deciding whether such expensive initiatives are worthwhile requires an understanding of their potential returns,
and the quantitative tools now available to marketers can help with this too.
Delivering on touchpoints involves a concerted, creative effort throughout
the organization. Companies may even have to develop operational targets
to help build their brands. If an airline, for instance, decided that the most
cost-effective way to deliver a considerate brand was to speed up its checkin and security-clearance procedures, it might strive for performance levels
dramatically exceeding those of competitorsfor example, a two-minute
check-in and a five-minute security clearance.
Persuading other parts of the organization to play along is often more difficult for marketers than exercising their creativity and planning a brands
advertising, sponsorship, and promotion. Fortunately, analytic approaches
can help marketers make their case by dramatically increasing the
likelihood that they will put forward the right proposals.

Getting rid of guesswork

Recognizing antes, drivers, and touchpoints is difficult enough in
retrospect. How should companies choose the right ones prospectively?
Traditionally, the elements that deliver a brands value to the consumer have
been identified through costly trial and error. The process involves posing
direct questions about a brands functional benefits, analyzing the results
through techniques such as conjoint analysis, and then taking a series of creative leaps that qualitative research may not validate. Although this approach
has been useful over the years, its functional focus runs the risk of overlooking a brands subtler, intangible dimensions. Traditional techniques are also

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ill equipped to identify with precision the relationship between a brands

attributes and the most cost-effective touchpoints for delivering them.
Finally, the experimentation that is part and parcel of traditional techniques
can have the unintended consequence of confusing consumers by emphasizing first one set of brand attributes, then another.
Today, marketers can eliminate much of the guesswork by applying socialscience techniques to identify the underlying brand attributes driving loyalty
among specific customers. Known as pathway (or structural-equation) modeling, these techniques arent new; they rely heavily on fundamental regression techniques. But they are only now beginning to be applied to branding
as marketers become more and more aware that targeting precisely what
customers care about is the core of efficient brand building. Developing this
understanding is possible today because of the information boom generated
by diverse factors (such as loyalty programs, cheaper Internet-based con-

Behind the math

Pathway modeling applies a type of multivariate
statistical analysis (known as pathway analysis or
structural-equation modeling) to quantify relationships between brand benefits and product attributesrelations that so far have been grasped
only qualitatively. The result: a better understanding of what drives consumer preferences.

This analysis helps marketers isolate the most

effective (strongest) and most efficient (focused)
pathway of antes, drivers, and touchpoints that
could influence consumer perceptions about a
brand. It shows which intangible brand associations (say, the brand makes me feel connected
with my friends) have the strongest relationship
with the brand-preference composite. In addition,
it identifies the set of tangible brand associations
(for instance, the brand comes in packaging I
can easily share with others) that are most
strongly related both to brand preferences
(exhibit) and to the intangible associations the
marketer hopes to inspire. Identifying the tangible
marketing activities that create intangible connections is invaluable because strong brands
rest on compelling and distinctive emotional connections with their customers.

The first step is to create, through factor analysis,

a composite brand-preference variable made
up of both attitudes (for instance, a brand I
recommend to others is . . .) and actual behavior
(such as consumption of the brand as a proportion of the consumers total category consumption). The next step is to identify the correlation
between the brand-preference composite and
various brand associations, ranging from intangibles (for example, a brands reputation and personality) to tangible considerations (such as
John T. Copeland
functional benefits and brand symbols). In this
model, the brand preference represents the
dependent (outcome) variable; brand associations John Copeland is a principal in McKinseys
Chicago office.
are independent (predictor) variables.

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sumer surveys, and electronic point-of-sale data) and by attitude-based

research from third-party research firms as well as the availability of increasingly sophisticated and accessible data-analysis packages.

Investing in analysis
The first step is to conduct consumer research: developing questionnaires
that probe as many as 250 tangible and intangible brand attributes, asking
consumers to rate the brand and its competitors on each dimension, and
then quantitatively linking these dimensions to the consumers overall loyalty. Three features distinguish this approach from traditional methodologies
such as focus groupbased qualitative research and conjoint analysis. First,
the specificity and breadth of the questions help marketers understand the
brands tangible and intangible benefits in great detail. Second, the analysis
shows marketers the relationships among each of the brands elements

EXHIBIT

Combining forces
Disguised example of retailer
Relative impact
on brand preference1

Tangible brand features

Most popular/latest styles

Salespeople knowledgeable about fashion

Most popular/latest styles

Salespeople knowledgeable about fashion

Most popular/latest styles

Comfortable environment
in store

Comfortable environment
in store

1.22
0.95

Well-organized stores

0.77

Most popular/latest styles

0.49

Salespeople knowledgeable about fashion

0.41

Comfortable environment
in store

Frequent promotions

0.23

Widest variety of styles

Advertising with
fun themes

0.20

Well-organized stores

Frequent promotions

0.06

Well-organized stores

0.03

Widest variety of styles

0.03

Frequent promotions

0.02

Expressed as unstandardized regression coefficient.

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nuances that conjoint techniques cant provide. Finally, rather than trying
to determine the importance of individual elements, the new approach pins
down their contribution to brand loyaltywhich is significant, because
what people say and what they do can be at odds. Whereas traditional methods might reveal that hotel customers have a broad interest in reliable business services or comfortable in-room amenities, the new techniques make it
possible to uncover the core need (such as a hotel that makes me feel like
I am at home while I am away) underlying these desires. Meeting such
needs is the essence of building an effective brand.
Completing the core consumer research and analysis helps pinpoint the
most effective combination of touchpoints that will deliver the brands value
proposition. The key is determining which touchpoints correlate best with
the brands essence (that is, which make me feel special) and then assessing the statistical relationship between the touchpoints themselves to arrive
at the groupings that correlate best with the desired brand positioning (see
sidebar, Behind the math, on the previous spread). This analysis often
highlights instances in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Combining a strong frequent-guest program with fast check-in and checkout
procedures, for example, might have the strongest collective correlation with
a given hotels brand proposition, even if rapid room service and high-speed
Internet connections had stronger individual associations with the brand.

The payoff
As complex as pathway modeling may sound, it should make the eyes of
marketers light up because it allows them to quantify the potential impact
of brand initiatives on customer loyalty, which can be translated into dollars
and cents. When compared with likely costs, these forecasts let marketers
make rough estimates of the return on their branding investments.
Such estimates simplify the process of making touchpoint trade-offs.
Consider the plight of an airline that targets frequent business travelers and
wants to be seen as more considerate. At least 20 customer-care touchpoints can be identified, including faster check-in, higher checked-baggage
allowances, more upgrades, more extras onboard, and more frequent-flyer
miles. Without careful targeting, the airline could squander resources on the
wrong one. Techniques such as pathway modeling can also identify touchpoint conflicts. A Canadian food service company turned to cash-only transactions at its drive-throughs when it found that speed was of the highest
importance to customersdebit cards (previously thought to be a highpriority touchpoint) were slowing things down.
The businesses pioneering these techniques are achieving impressive results.
For example, a pharmaceutical company that understood which physicians

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were prescribing what products, but not exactly why, discovered the brand
attributes that would be most likely to influence prescription-writing patterns. It did so by surveying more than 2,000 physicians around the world
about more than 150 tangible and intangible brand dimensionsa huge leap
forward from the simple, functionally oriented surveys it had previously
used. In the brands first year of repositioning, sales increased by more than
10 percent. An industrial company that used the techniques to overhaul its
go-to-market strategy generated $200 million in new sales. And a specialty
retailer boosted same-store sales by 2 percent within three months
of refining the way it appealed to loyal customers.

Ensuring success
Pinpointing the attributes that distinguish a brand and the
touchpoints through which they should be delivered isnt just a
quantitative exercise. After all, if a questionnaire doesnt ask about
a potential brand attribute, it wont show up in customer responses. Relevant
input from everyonesenior executives to brand managers and sales representatives to advertising peopleis therefore vital. Broad involvement can
create issues of its own: in designing research the dice can certainly be
loaded for or against an executives pet theory. Senior leaders can play an
important role by calling for a level playing field that allows the research to
settle disputes in a fact-based way rather than perpetuating them.
Marketers can increase their chances of success by investing heavily to communicate their analyses internally and to show their colleagues why these
analyses support proposed initiatives. Pathway modeling can easily sound
quite academic; the challenge is to present its conclusions in a way that
senior leaders who arent marketers can understand and believe. Armed with
conviction, the CEO and the business-unit heads can become the chief brand
advocates in their organizationscrucial in a world where brand building
depends not just on a catchy jingle but on the whole company.

Companies can build better brands for less money with a forward-looking
segmentation and sophisticated analytic tools that increase the precision of
defining and delivering a brand. This approach requires an open mind and
persistence, but it beats placing bets that may not deliver.

The authors wish to thank Paul Brown, John Copeland, David Court, Blair Crawford, and Laxman
Narasimhan for their contributions to this article.

Nora Aufreiter is a director in McKinseys Toronto office; Dave Elzinga is a principal in the Chicago
office; Jonathan Gordon is an associate principal in the New York office. Copyright 2003
McKinsey & Company. All rights reserved.

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