Question

Pick a brand. Identify all its brand elements and assess their ability to contribute to brand equity

Answer 1

Once you’ve chosen a brand, analyze its brand elements for the six key criteria:

• Adaptability

• Likability

• Meaningfulness

• Memorability

• Protectability

• Transferability

For example, suppose you chose a popular insurance company, brand elements of which include blue on white text and a personable, price-gun-wielding spokeswoman. Those elements can be used to extol several positive attributes and new services, so they seem adaptable and transferable. They are certainly likable. If you know to which company those brand elements point, then they are both meaningful and memorable. It wouldn’t be difficult for another company to mimic those elements in a kind of legal parody, so they aren’t absolutely protectable. Whether that competitive strategy would be useful, however, is another matter, as such parody may only reinforce the existing brand in consumers’ minds.