Understanding a brand’s value is crucial in today’s competitive marketplace. The brand asset model (BAV) is a great way to measure how strong and valuable your brand is. It’s one of the most popular brand valuation models out there, and companies of all sizes use it to track their brand’s performance and make smart marketing choices.
The BAV model collects information by asking people and looking at what’s being said about a brand. Then, it scores the company on how customers see the brand in terms of quality, credibility, and other factors.
In this blog post, we’ll be looking at how you can leverage the brand asset valuator model to gain insight into your brand’s performance and identify areas of improvement.
The Origins of the Brand Asset Valuator Model (BAV)
The Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) model was developed by Young & Rubicam (Y&R), a global advertising agency.
Y&R’s inspiration for creating the BAV was to develop a more holistic and nuanced approach to measuring brand value. At the time, brand valuation models focused mainly on financial metrics like market share, brand awareness, etc. But Y&R knew these metrics didn’t tell the full story.
Y&R and their clients have been using the BAV model for years to track and measure brand value, and it’s been adopted by many businesses and organizations, including some of the biggest companies in the world, universities, and nonprofits.
Understanding the Brand Asset Valuator Model (BAV) Model
Your brand identity and perception play a vital role in influencing consumer behavior, and a strong brand can be a valuable asset for any company. Measuring and tracking your brand value, allows you to gain insights into how your brands are perceived by consumers and identify areas for development
The BAV model helps us understand how strong a brand is. It uses four important parts to check brand health. Let’s break them down:
- Four Pillars of Brand Health
The BAV model looks at four main things to understand a brand:
- Brand Differentiation –
This means how unique and distinct a brand is. Think about it this way, if all the superheroes were the same, wouldn’t it be boring, and would they still qualify as superheroes?
But when each superhero has unique powers, that’s what makes them so great. Brand differentiation is like the unique superpower of every brand.
- Relevance
This is how well your brand meets the needs and expectations of your target market. It’s about being the right fit for the people you created your product or services for.
- Esteem
Esteem is like the popularity or reputation of a brand. You want people to think highly of your brand because when people like a brand, they trust it more and want to use it.
Also, when people hold high esteem for your brand they are willing to pay more for your products, and will easily recommend your product/services to their friends and family.
- Knowledge –
This is about what people know about a brand. Brands also want people to know them well. You want people to know a lot about your brand, from your product or services to your values, mission, and vision for the future.
When people know your brand well, they’re more likely to choose it because they feel comfortable with it.
Methodology of the Brand Asset Valuator Model
We’ve discussed the pillars of the BAV model, but how do you leverage it to improve your branding efforts? Find out in this step-by-step guide:
1. Data Collection
Data collection is the first step in BAV model implementation. This is how you collect people’s opinions to know how different people perceive your brand.
Let’s take a look at the different ways you can collect data for the BAV model.
- Surveys and Interviews
Start by collecting people’s opinions about you in a survey or do one-on-one interviews. This is where you ask people how they feel about your brand, the words they associate with your brand, and if they find your brand product/services relevant to them.
This process can be very rigorous but using an engaging survey tool like Formplus makes this process easier. With Formplus, you can create beautiful forms to host your surveys, you can even add images of your products or your brand ads to enable customers to visualize their opinions and give insightful responses.
- Market Research
After your survey, you also need to design and perform market research such as social listening to see what people are saying about your brand. This information helps you see your brand through the lens of your customers, and get an accurate assessment of your reputation.
- Compare Your Brand with Other Brands
Competitor research and analysis is the final part of the BAV model data collection phase.
You need to collect information about what your competitors are doing- is your branding very similar or different from other brands? Answering this question would help you understand if your brand is the special one amongst the competitors, or if you need to improve your brand strategy.
2. Scoring System
After collecting data about your brand, the next and final step in the BAV model is to establish a scoring system and use it to grade your brand. Here’s how it works:
- Giving Grades – This is where you score your brand based on brand reputation, positive perception, loyalty, and recognition. The scores in these areas will show how special or popular your brand is to your target audience.
- Attributes and Qualities – You need to evaluate the collected data to see popular opinions about your brand. For example, you can check if people think your brand is trustworthy, fun, or high-quality.
- Meaning of Scores – The scores tell us how well your brand is doing in people’s minds. For example, if most people respond that your brand is fun, then it means many people find your brand engaging. But if it has low scores for trustworthiness, it means people don’t trust your brand either because of your product/quality or your brand reputation.
Practical Applications
The BAV model is not an abstract concept nobody uses. Here are the areas you can leverage it to build and grow your brand:
A. Brand Strategy
The BAV model can help you build and improve your brand strategy in several ways, including
- Understanding the Brand’s Strengths – BAV helps you figure out what’s so great about your brand. Think of it as finding out your brand’s superhero’s special powers.
- Identifying Weaknesses – BAV also shows what’s not so great about your brand. For example, if your brand has a strong reputation for having poor customer experience, the BAV model will help you spot this.
- Connecting with Customers – Businesses use BAV to see how much customers like their brand. It’s like asking people if they like the superhero costume.
- Creating a Plan – With all this information, they make a plan to make the brand even better. It’s like a superhero training to become stronger.
B. Competitor Analysis
BAV helps your brand see how you compare to your competitors. Here’s how:
- Reviewing the Competition – BAV takes a look at what other companies are doing and helps you figure out where they’re ahead of you. This data will help you focus your brand resources on the right areas to make your brand better.
- Learning from Others – The BAV model can also help you figure out what your competitors are doing that makes them so much better than you are. Once you identify and apply these strategies, you will most likely have the same appeal or better your competitor has to your target market.
- Getting Better – BAV makes your brand stand out from the crowd by finding its weak spots and turning those weak spots into strengths.
C. Rebranding Initiatives
Another area you can leverage the BAV model is in rebranding. Rebranding is the process of changing the brand identity of your company or product. This can involve changing the logo, tagline, messaging, or overall brand aesthetic.
Here’s how you can use the BAV model to change how people see your brand:
- Knowing When to Change – BAV signals to the brand when the time has come to rebrand. Based on your survey and market research conducted using the BAV model, you will be able to determine when it is time to rebrand to stay relevant in the market.
- Figuring Out What to Change – BAV shows what people like and don’t like about the brand. Using this information, you tweak your brand identity to appeal to your existing and even new target markets.
- Making a New Costume – With BAV’s help, the brand creates a new look that people will love. It’s like making a brand-new superhero outfit that’s super cool.
Real-World Examples
Here’s a compilation of popular brands benefiting from the BAV Model:
- Apple: This brand used the BAV model to understand how people feel about their brand and its products. After learning what makes people like Apple products, they made their gadgets even better and more appealing.
- Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola wanted to know why people love their drinks so much. Using the BAV model, they found out that the feeling of happiness is linked to their brand. So, they used this information to create ads and events that spread happiness, making people associate happiness with Coca-Cola even more.
- Nike: Nike used the BAV model to find out what people think when they see their logo. They discovered that the swoosh makes people think of achievement and success. So, Nike uses this idea in their ads to encourage people to be active and achieve their goals while wearing Nike gear.
Limitations and Critiques
The BAV model has a lot of advantages, but it also has limitations that some branding and marketing experts are pretty vocal about. Here’s a list of some of the most common BAV model drawbacks:
- Not a One-Size-Fits-All: The BAV model as valuable and flexible as it sounds, doesn’t necessarily work perfectly for all brands. Here’s why:
- Brand Complexity
Every brand is unique, like how every person is unique. The BAV model tries to understand and measure all the different parts of a brand, but it might not capture all the unique attributes that make a brand special. It’s a bit like trying to describe a rainbow with just a few colors; you miss out on some beautiful details.
- Critiques and Controversies
Some branding/marketing experts often point out that the BAV model isn’t the best way to measure how well your brand is doing. Here’s why:
- Simplifying Things Too Much – Experts often argue that the BAV model is like trying to understand a whole story by just reading a few sentences. Brands have lots of stories, and BAV may not accurately capture them, which can mislead the brand’s product optimization or development actions.
- Different Brands, Different Needs – Experts also argue that the BAV treats all brands the same. But what makes a car brand great might not be the same thing that makes a food brand great. Instead, each brand should use a brand performance evaluator model that’s tailored specifically to their industry.
Conclusion
Using the BAV model you can figure out what people like about your brand and how to leverage these qualities to make your products and marketing even better.
Survey and market research is the most challenging part of the BAV model. It takes a lot of effort and a great survey tool that lets you measure how people perceive your brand and their expectations of you.
Using a user-friendly survey tool like Formplus allows you to effortlessly gather customer feedback and analyze it to build and enhance your brand value. Ready to see how your valuable people think your brand is? Sign up with Formplus to get started!