Leaning on meaning could undermine your distinctive assets

When embarking on the journey to build distinctive assets, the first hurdle is deciding which assets to build. A smorgasbord of options are available, and no single right answer, even when all the crappy options are removed. It might seem easy to decide when there are multiple right answers, I mean, how can you go wrong? The challenge is often not the decision itself but explaining it to others afterwards.

Looking for an asset with ‘meaning’ seems like a useful tactic to provide an explanation for your choice. Meaning in this context refers to any association evoked by the asset prior to selection as a brand’s distinctive asset. For example, choosing the colour yellow because it is ‘uplifting’, a picture of a flower because it shows ‘naturalness’, or Snoop Dogg because he is ‘cool’. Leaning on meaning makes it easy to explain why you selected asset B over A and C.

But what is the price of this easy explanation?

Using meaning to select an asset might not only compromise selection, but also future asset building, use and protection.

As Figure 1 illustrates, there are four broad stages in the distinctive asset creation process. Let’s see how meaning can affect each of these stages.

Selection: Leaning on meaning can reduce uniqueness

In this stage, we choose assets to build. First, let go of the idea that there is only one right choice. Brands in the same category show us time and time again that many different colour assets could work, as could many different shapes or faces. It’s not about picking a winner, it’s about picking a contender. Whether it becomes a winner or not depends on the stages that follow selection.

You do need to avoid two major pitfalls when using meaning to select an asset:

1. Reduced distinctiveness – as it may lead multiple brands, accessing the same source, to select the same asset (eg, let’s use green to boost the perception we are a sustainable organisation, or slant the font upwards to show we are rising up). An asset shared across competitors is a weak asset.
2. Blinded weakness – a positive meaning can blind you to the asset’s drawbacks, such as links to a competitor, because you hope the benefit from the meaning will overcome any drawbacks. For example, using a cartoon bear character because it connects with kids when competitors also use a similar style of character.

Building: Leaning on meaning can make it harder to build strong assets

This stage is the grunt work of creating memory links between the brand name and the asset in as many category buyers as possible. As a memory objective this involves expanding the buyer’s associative network of what can evoke the brand name to include this asset. Tactically, this means widespread co-presentation of the asset with the brand name – where the buyer notices the brand name and the asset together, to form the link in memory.

To achieve this outcome is a challenge as both the brand and the asset must stand out in a sea of creative elements, employed for their attention-getting properties.

Prior asset meaning makes this challenge even more difficult as the mental competition is not just what is in the environment but also what is already in the buyer’s memory. This makes it harder for co-presentation to succeed. The brand needs to get attached to the asset’s memory network and the stronger that is, the more muscle the brand needs to be able to squeeze itself in.

When experiencing the asset leads the viewer to go off onto a mental tangent, rather than process the brand, they can fail to make or refresh the desired brand-asset link. For example, seeing an image of a rose reminds you of the fabulous Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner War of the Roses movie, which then reminds you that you haven’t seen Romancing the Stone for ages and… lo and behold… you fail to register the Lancashire tea brand sitting next to the rose image.

Using: Leaning on meaning can restrict the value of an asset

This is where you reap the benefits of stage two and start using the asset independently of the brand name.

How much benefit we reap depends on how often we can use the asset. The wider the variety of contexts in which the asset can be used, the more valuable it is.

This is why a font is typically a less valuable asset than a tagline. Fonts have limited use, only for words and only in visual media, whereas taglines have widespread use, and so can be employed in a wider range of environments, including audio, visual and be shown as well as spoken/written.

Any strong asset meaning (other than the brand name) could restrict its utility, as the asset can’t be used when that meaning is not mirrored by the advertising message. Given buyers only have a limited capacity to process any information, a ‘meaning’ that differs from the message is either going to interfere with, or distract from, message processing.

Fewer opportunities to use the asset means less value from the asset, and also less ‘natural’ protection, which brings us to the final element.

Protection: Leaning on meaning can make it hard to keep an asset strong

Once built, an asset needs protection. The good news is that using the asset generates ‘natural’ protection, as it keeps it fresh in the minds of category buyers. A strong asset is one that is commonly used, not just on special occasions.

Having a strong ‘out-of-brand’ meaning can hamper your ability to get legal protection too, as if something has prior meaning, it is harder to argue its key meaning is your brand.

Intellectual property laws in several countries warn that colours, for example, can have descriptive meaning in some categories (eg, ‘green’ and ‘organic’). In this case you can only trademark an asset if you can prove it is a strong distinctive asset and is inextricably linked with your brand name, so that means the asset is vulnerable to competitor ambushing, unless you can build it surreptitiously.

Finally, asset meaning can put an expiry date on the asset, if the company expands its product line or shifts its strategic direction, whereby the meaning is distracting or confusing. An asset that is predominantly about the brand can adapt as the brand changes over time.

Professor Jenni Romaniuk is associate director (international) at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science, the world’s largest centre for research into marketing.