Standing Out: The Application of Distinctive Assets
Distinctive assets (DA) are powerful brand elements for any marketer to both understand and use. It is a shame many misuse DA and overestimate the strength of their brands DA. If you want to avoid these pitfalls and learn what made me cry in a school bathroom, read ahead!
Firstly, what are Distinctive assets?
Distinctive assets are brand elements which evoke a brand without highlighting the brands name. Distinctive assets can be visual (logos, colours etc), auditory (jingles, music etc) or verbal (slogans or taglines etc). If I asked which brand comes to mind when you read “Just Do It” or if I showed you the Apple logo, I am certain the brands “Nike” and “Apple” would come to mind respectively. These are DA. Distinctive assets need to be associated with your brand in any given category and not evoke your competitors. The examples outlined here are for strong and well-known DA. Unfortunately, most real-world applications are not as strong as these. You’re reading an article on DA. Having Nike and Apple come to mind is not really an achievement for these brands. You are primed to think about brands right now. In the real world, conditions are different and we behaviour very differently; it’s weird and wild stuff.
A disclaimer.
Much research as already gone into DA. For detailed knowledge and background, I highly recommend Jenni Romaniuk’s seminal work on DA in “Building Distinctive Brand Assets”. Jenni has made significant work in DA and in particular the development of the Distinctive Asset Grid. I am not here to add to this knowledge. While there is still more to be learnt about DA, there are smarter people than I to do this. I will leave that to Jenni and her team. Rather, I am here to discuss the application of DA. I’ve been a shmuck with some DA decisions in the past and I am sure you can learn some lessons from me.
If we do not maintain distinctive assets, they will not maintain us.
There are two components to an overarching DA strategy: building and maintaining distinctive assets. As an industry, we love being creative. I suspect we love it even more when we can tell our CEO, CFO and boards that there is “scientific rigour” behind what we are doing. Being creative is a vital part of marketing. Creativity breeds ideas which can give rise to opportunities. Unfortunately, this can be to the detriment of DA.
Read the first sentence above again: building and maintaining distinctive assets. The maintaining part appears to be a stumbling block for modern marketers. Many brands are decent, maybe even good, at introducing DA. Some excel at building them showing brilliant creativity. However, very few show discipline in maintaining DA. How many times have you noticed a brand change its logo, tagline or even advertising style? Chances are you have a fleeting arousal that a brand does not feel or look the same as before and move on with your life. Little do you know that your DA memory structures are being eroded from the inside. While the shiny new DA will get all the attention from the brand manager, the old DA (logo, tagline etc) will slowly decay into irrelevance. All the time and financial resources spent on building the DA in the first place will be lost. The good ol’ “brand refresh”. This is not playing the long game. Distinctive assets are by nature, long-term focused. They take time to build. I am yet to come across a genuine and logical reason why a brand refresh or change in a brand’s DA is a good decision. That doesn’t mean a reason doesn’t exist; I just haven’t found one. But don’t listen to me, I am being hypocritical. I’ve done the same…to my brands detriment.
Why would any brand change its DA? Many reasons. A new CMO wants to leave their mark, the marketing team gets ‘board’ and feels the brand is no longer relevant for the market it serves are just a couple of reasons. In most cases, it’s not a good long-term brand strategy. Maintaining a brands DA is an art. As a brand manager I have listened to my brands jingle so many times my eye twitches whenever I hear it on TV or the radio. I never want to hear it again. But the jingle is not for me. Or anybody in the marketing department. Or the creative agency. It’s for your current and potential customers. They don’t hear it ad nauseam like you do. This is the art of maintaining your DA. Keeping consistency. You will hate yourself for it. You’ll get bored with it. You’ll look so deeply and often at the lines in your logo and swear they form demonic signs. DA loathing sets in quick. The market won’t see/feel any of this. Make it easy for them to know its you. Keeping using your DA!
Curb your expectations.
When I was seven years old, I thought I was a handy runner. When the recess bell rang, my legs would take me to the playground first, outrunning my fellow classmates. Then I changed schools. I was old enough to patriciate at our sport carnival and I fancied my chances in the sprinting event. By the time I heard “GO”, I was already four metres behind. Turns out that I overestimated my running ability. It was a humbling realisation. I cried in the bathrooms after the race. The experience taught me an important lesson about being overconfident. Overconfidence is a bad trait in marketers. It can destroy brands. Yet we all do this with our DA. We overestimate how unique they are. How closely they are associated with our brand. I can only conclude that it’s human nature to work on something for such a long time and expect you’re the best. It is clearly a cognitive bias. I have fallen for this while managing DA in my career.
Building (and maintaining) DA takes time. However, its not a linear process. It is not a simple algebra formula where time in market (t) can be divided by the number of times the DA has been used (u) to determine when it will hit a successful point. There are so many variables: what type of DA, how you use your DA, your activity in the market, your competitors DA, just to name a few. If there is a more scientific approach than “just keep at it”, I am yet to discover it or have had it presented to me. When it comes to DA building, patience is a virtue. Whatever your expectations are for the strength of your brands DA, halve them. In fact, so you don’t end up crying in the bathroom like me, halve them again. It will take time. And it will not be a linear process.
Hey, wouldn’t it be amazing if all this money was real?
“That is the single most predictable and BORING thing that anyone could ever say whilst playing Monopoly”; Vyvyan snapped back at Rick in an episode of The Young Ones. It’s time for the boring part: the importance of research in DA. For the record, I find research highly exciting but I fully acknowledge that research is a means to an end for many. Bluntly, if you want to be serious about DA, you need to undertake research. You know your brand. You know its DA. You know the market. You know competing DA. But that’s only 50% of the story. What you don’t know is how strong these DA are and if they are in fact working for you. You can only get this through consumer research.
Not wanting to get on my high horse, but it amazes me how many marketers I hear discuss their DA and their relative strength without actually doing research. Apparently ‘being in market for a long time” is enough. Its not. Do the research. I have seen (and participated) in strategic marketing planning sessions using DA without actually knowing if the DA in question is working FOR or AGAINST the brand. Its madness. If you want a sound methodology for testing, refer to Building Distinctive Brand Assets. As I have grown older, I have relaxed my tolerance for rigours, academic level research. Getting good, reliable research is important. But don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress. If you’ve just started out, you don’t need to go big. Just start. It will set a good discipline for wanting to do research in the future.
Protect yourself before you wreck yourself
Trademarking your brands DA (logo, colour or even packaging shape etc), can assist in building strong DA for the future. However, not every brand asset can be trademarked. It is quite a rigours process involving research and needing to prove use over time. For example, common words, phrases and images will never be accepted for trademark. What constitutes commonality? This will be to the discretion of IP Australia. This is further reason why having distinctive brand assets are crucial. For the assets you can, trademark them. Stop competitors from using them. They are precious and need protection. Simple. Yet so many DA remain unprotected even when they can be (I have been guilty of this myself).
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! I haven’t bored you. If you want to chat distinctive assets or anything strategy, feel free to reach out. Always happy for a chat.
Further learning on distinctive assets: