Brand Equity, What Is It and How Do You Build It?

Recently Bob Newhart was on a late night talk show and the host asked him a question that had always bothered me and might have bothered you.

He asked why on earth was the show he created and stared in called “The Bob Newhart Show” when his character’s name was “Bob Hartley?”

Bob Newhart explained that he was becoming more and more famous from his standup comedy and appearances on TV and he was developing quite a following. He went on to say that when he created The Bob Newhart Show he wanted his fans to know that it was going to be him as the star of the show, so he named it after himself, so that they would tune in.

Learning about Building Brand Equity

He had realized, in building a fan base he was building an audience for his new show.  What he may not have realized, was that was actually building was, what is referred to within the marketing industry as brand equity.

Brand equity is the weight that your brand carries. For instance why would someone choose your brand over another within the same industry? In the supermarket why would a shopper choose Pepsi over a no-named soda brand, because the brand equity of Pepsi is higher than that over the no-named soda brand?

Even though that customer may not have ever even tried that other brand, their perception is, that Pepsi is better, that’s the brand equity. Brands spend billions of dollars each year on convincing you that their product is better through advertisements, logo design, product design, and even down to the brand.

Build Brand Equity into These Brand Names:

(more about Brand Equity after the break)

There is so much that goes into brand equity that we can’t get into it all in this blog but we welcome you to check out this article on Wikipedia which goes into quite a bit of detail and has a lot of interesting facts and statistics; it’s well worth a read.

On one last note about brand equity, it does not always work in your favor. Brand equity is not always positive, your brand could develop a bad reputation and that equity could really work against you.

What does your brand equity say about you?