Halo Brands and Help-me Brands —strategies for BUILDING BRAND VALUE

4,466 Comments / Uncategorized / By David Laufer

The design of products is a process that starts factually: taking into account the human needs (size, shape, utility, cost). Yet, product development, like product purchase, is essentially an intuitive process. Is the emotional attraction of a Tesla paying 4X the cost of a Nissan Leaf? The answer is non-numerical: It depends on what the buyer wants. True, Tesla has a waiting list and Leafs are readily available, but the point is that perceptions about economy, social responsibility, luxury, prestige, preference, and exclusivity—all powerful drivers in brand selection—ineffable and arise largely from subconscious and emotional processes. We chose brands to be reflections of our values. The important thing that we enjoy brands for their features, but we love them for how they make us look and what they say about us.

So, there is something important to differentiate here. There are brands that we use in a public way, which reflect our values and from which we derive a ‘brand halo’ Other brands we consume more privately, so the decision to purchase is much more about functionality and benefits than social standing.

HALO BRANDS

I have friends who will go into debt to buy a luxury automobile and live in a lesser dwelling. It’s a rational choice; they feel they get more halo benefit from the public visibility of their car in their particular station in life. Later in their career, the halo effect may shift to their neighborhood, or to the college where their children go. I know a young tween who talked his grandma into buying him a Fender Stratocaster guitar. He could barely hold the guitar, why did he want the top of the line? So that his buddies—who couldn’t play their instruments either—would let him be in their band! Brands are about belonging. Grandma happily stumped up for the Fender—she knew what was going on and Wish fulfillment made it an easy purchase.. Halo. Personal aspiration and personal peace.

HELP-ME BRANDS:

So what of the brands we consume more privately? No halo, but they sure handy. They solve a particular problem. They make us willing to trade some money to get back a chunk of our own time. I must have owned a dozen electric hand drills in my life. Each one I bought because it did something better. Drill number one was powerful, drilled wood and steel. Drill #2 had a switch which made it possible to reverse the direction. #3 was cordless. #4 went from NiCad batteries to Lithium Ion. #5 required no chuck key, you could change bits on the fly with one hand. Waiting now for one that straightens out your tool box and does your bookkeeping too.

CREATIVE STRATEGIES:

Even with products like the electric drill, there is a sort of half-halo that comes from knowing you are working so much more efficiently than before, knowing that your grandfather would marvel at your speed if he could see it. It’s a ‘Joy of ownership factor- internal rather than external halo.

So it follows that one way to add value to a brand is to find ways to make give it a halo. Strategy 1’ figure out a way to make its use more public, so that its use adds stature to the user. Strategy 2, amply the joy of ownership in terms of personal effectiveness. Call it External Halo vs Internal Glow?

ASK, AND YE SHALL RECEIVE

For creative agencies like ours, designing brand and experiences, this idea of how people ‘measure’ their experience is vital. While numerical ratings fall short of a full review, they are useful for helping us evaluate and decide. I am always surprised, when we do a brand consultation, how many business owners fail to see the value of their brand from the customer’s side.

Some don’t realize they have a brand-able offering, some have created the brand but don’t recognize the halo they could own. As a creative agency, we get hired for our creativity, but where we earn our money is by expanding the value of the brands we analyze, design, and promote. While this is largely an imperical and subjective process, we have developed a point rating scale to identify under exploited brand value.

Numerical scales are also really useful in discovering where an owner’s satisfaction level settles in, post purchase. All brands that succeed do so because a certain number of people love the brand and chat it up. I have a desktop printer that occasionally pulls the finished sheet back into the mechanism and chews it up. I curse a blue streak at it when this ‘backfeeding’ happens, yet overall I am always enthusiastic about the product—I give it at least a 9, because it so many great features for such a moderate price. In such a case, having the qualitative description of why it’s not a 10, paired with my numerical ranking of 9, helps communicate the relative magnitude of my discontent.

So bottom line, make time to do qualitative interviews with your most successful accounts. Offer them whatever it takes to get their participation. Listen carefully to what they like, what problems they are trying to solve with their purchases, and of course, what drives them bonkers. Most important, listen for halo & functionality insights. It’s good to ask 1-10 ranking type questions, of course. Often, though the un-asked questions are the most telling. “What important question did we forget to ask you?” A favorite of mine in a live interview: “please complete the sentence “I’d upgrade (or change brands) today if I could get ________ extra functionality/features.” In the 2000’s the mantra was “Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.” Post Covid 19, the mantra emerges “Don’t describe the product, evoke the halo.”

You may also be interested in our blog post “BrandEquity and Non-Numerical Knowing”