Brand Equity and Crisis Management

We are living in very volatile times full of huge concerns about our health, the economy, social justice, the political environment and so many other things. Brand equity is perhaps not our foremost concern. But if brands are to survive it eventually has to be.

Examples of brands faced with current challenges

The notion that brands will not be impacted by the various challenges we now face is wishful thinking. There are headline-grabbing examples:

• 3M initially said they were going to export much needed PPE because they had been contracted to do so and received a lot of public pushback. Has this hurt them, or has it been lost in the rush of subsequent events?
• Goodyear created a policy that allowed Black Lives Matter pins to be worn but not Blue Lives Matter. In this case, there was backlash from some and support from others. It is not clear that they intended to become part of the cultural battle but they did. Did it help or hurt them?
• Most recently, we see big tech, especially Twitter, caught in the crosshairs of political division. What will be the long-term impact on them?

There are many other examples and, of course, most firms have stayed out of the headlines. That doesn’t necessarily mean their world has not changed. For example, what if your product was in short supply? That alone might cause a negative impact on your brand equity. On the other hand, it might harm you if consumers substituted (and liked) a different brand. So in my view, every brand should be looking to do an equity measure soon.

Take a Temperature Check on Your Brand Equity

How do we do that? Well, first off, we want to measure perceptions of brand without asking too many leading questions.  In other words, we wouldn’t want to say “Does 3M’s policy on PPE impact your perception of their brand?” Certainly we want to understand that, but not as part of our measure of equity.  A two-part approach is in order.

Start with a Conjoint

The first is a conjoint exercise in which we ask people to choose between different brands. In other words, we ask them to do a typical purchase decision. By varying the features of each product (brand, price, size, color, etc.), a conjoint exercise is similar to a shopping trip. We then take these data and run simulations that alter price until each brand has the same share (see our white paper for more on this technique). The result gives a measure of brand equity in dollars and cents.

Engage in a Thorough Follow-up

While this is powerful data to have, it doesn’t tell us why. Some follow-up questions can be added that explore and quantify any potential known issues (such as the 3M, Goodyear and Twitter examples above). But to really get at the underlying causes of brand equity, we would recommend qualitative research. Ideally, a combination of In-Depth-Interviews (IDI’s) prior to the online survey to uncover changes to the established key equity components along with well executed open-ends following the conjoint exercise within the online survey. By well executed I mean questions using projective techniques and follow-up automated probing to maximize the learning.

Tap into Text Analytics for the Complete Picture

All of the unstructured text data can then be interrogated to learn what is driving the brand scores. To do this we would use a combination of simple techniques (word counts for example) and more advanced methods (such as sentiment analysis).

Ultimately full integration of the quantitative (conjoint) and qualitative (IDI’s/open-ends) data will provide you with a clear picture of brand equity and an understanding of what you should do next.