Although branding experts have yet to reach perfect agreement on the definitions of some of these concepts, media professionals and media journalists have been the worst offenders. They often use the following branding terms interchangeably. Here is a brief clarification of some common terms.

By depicting a program as a product and an audience member or advertiser as a consumer, most branding concepts can be adapted readily to broadcasting.

6.1          BRANDING

Branding is the process of naming a product or service in order to distinguish it from its category competitors. In broadcasting a brand name would be the name of a network, station, or program. For example, Eyewitness News is a branded local newscast. However, true branding is more than attaching a name to a product or service. The intent of branding is to make the brand name something unique, memorable, and valuable in the minds of consumers.

6.2          BRAND EXTENSION

Brand extension is the process of branding a new product with an already established brand name. The marketing premise for this action is that the established brand has valuable branding assets that can be transferred to the new product. Positive thoughts and feelings that consumers have about the original product will hopefully carry over to the new product.

An example would be Ford creating a new type of automobile or truck but still identifying it as a Ford product. For electronic media, some examples of a brand extension would be creation of an additional prime-time news magazine on CBS called 60 Minutes II or the creation of a cable channel called MSNBC that capitalizes on the reputations of two familiar corporations. On the local level, extending the Eyewitness News brand name to all newscasts airing on a station would be considered a brand extension.

The one note of caution when dealing with brand extensions is that the two products must have something in common. Adding the Ford brand name to a new kitty litter product doesn’t make sense, nor would adding the Eyewitness News brand name to a new half-hour game show. There are many case studies in which a poorly conceived brand extension has actually hurt the stature of the original brand. In this era of ownership duopolies (and triopolies!) and extended digital channels (multicasting), this notion of brand extension will become a vital issue for station management.

6.3          BRAND AWARENESS

Brand awareness (or brand identity) is the first rung on the brand equity ladder. It refers to the simple familiarity (recall or recognition) of a brand relative to its product category. In electronic media terms, this could be the simple recall or recognition of a network, station, or program name or logo.

When all brands under consideration are thought to be equally satisfying, top-of-mind awareness becomes extremely important in brand marketing. This narrower view of awareness looks only at the brands that are recalled first by a consumer (or audience member). Experimental studies have confirmed that simple top-of-mind brand awareness can be the deciding factor in choosing a brand. Top-of-mind recall is sometimes measured by what researchers call accessibility from memory, meaning that in a purchase situation, some brand names are more likely to be “accessed” than are other brands. This heightened awareness of certain brands is often the result of heavy exposure to advertising.

6.4          BRAND INVOLVEMENT

Brand involvement is the degree of “consumer energy” invested in a purchase decision. Some product purchases are more involving than are others. For instance, buying an expensive new car is far more involving than is buying a cheap tube of toothpaste. Branding is extremely important in low involvement situations because the consumer is unwilling to invest a lot of time and energy in evaluating all the available brands.

Most television viewing is considered a low involvement activity, in which the media consumer seldom agonizes over what network or program to watch. Consequently, our prior concept of top-of-mind awareness becomes a critical branding consideration. If the viewer is not motivated to do a thorough analysis of each brand (low involvement) and if, on the surface, all available brands appear to offer the same level of satisfaction, top-of-mind awareness can drive the channel “purchase.”

6.5          BRAND IMAGE

Brand image goes beyond awareness and deals with the meaning or reputation of the brand, where the consumer describes a cluster of thoughts and feelings. These different meanings are often referred to by brand researchers as brand associations. Some researchers compare brand associations in terms of their relative favorability, strength, and uniqueness.

From an electronic media perspective, audiences can be asked what thoughts and feelings come to mind when a particular network, station, program or on-air talent is mentioned. Once analyzed properly, this qualitative information can be distilled into specific brand dimensions that can used in positioning the relationship of our target brand to its direct competitors.

6.6          BRAND ATTITUDE

Brand attitude can be viewed as an extension of brand image in that the term refers not only to thoughts and feelings about the brand but evaluations and, most importantly, predispositions to respond (purchase). In other words, although brand image asks what you know and feel about the brand, brand attitude asks what is your appraisal of the brand. How strong are your intentions to buy the brand? Some brand researchers merge brand image with brand attitude and use either term.

Television audiences can evaluate a program and develop a predisposition to watch or not. Later, we will see how stubborn consumer brand attitudes can be. Rarely can a television program reinvent itself after bombing during its first few episodes. “Once a turkey, always a turkey” is in the minds of most media consumers.

Here again, the idea of reputation works well. You can know a lot about a person and have certain emotions associated with this knowledge. Consequently, you probably have formed an attitude based on what you have experienced; all of which are the ingredients of a reputation. It seems plausible that we can also assign a reputation to a television network or program.

6.7          BRAND PREFERENCE

Brand Preference is synonymous with a positive brand attitude. Based on their thoughts, feelings, and resultant evaluation of competing brands, consumers will, hopefully, have one they prefer over all others. Again, satisfaction drives preference. For many low-involvement consumer goods, including television programs, we know that there is often no strong brand preference. In these ambivalent situations, “brand promiscuity” takes over in which the final brand choice is driven by factors other than the brands’ stellar reputation.

Within a broadcasting context, we can imagine a situation in which a program is not necessarily preferred but is the lucky recipient of a huge lead-in. Is the viewer’s decision to watch a matter of preference or mere chance? An exception to this behavior would be an “appointment program,” in which, despite being carried along within a huge lead-in, the viewer changes channels in order to watch a preferred brand of programming.

6.8          BRAND POSITIONING

Brand positioning lies at the heart of all brand marketing and is defined here as the image of a brand defined in relationship to its market competitors. Competing brands can be positioned according to any number of brand associations. By using quantitative survey data, researchers will often use “perceptual mapping” to graphically present the relative position of each competing brand. When a brand is analyzed from a more statistical point of view, such as perceptual mapping, brand associations are often called dimensions.

In most business situations, the goal for a brand manager is to “position” a brand so that it has a highly distinctive (differentiated) image in comparison to brands offered by competitors. However, there can be an opposite circumstance in which a new or struggling brand needs to be positioned as highly similar to “the leading brand.” A new brand may be priced much lower than the competition, and all the manufacturer wants is to have consumers believe that, in terms of benefits, the new brand is essentially the same as the leading brand—only cheaper. Similarly, the owner of a media brand, such as a new local television news franchise, may be more than happy to have news viewers believe that, compared with its established competitors, the new entry is equally satisfying. Conversely, more aggressive broadcasters may discover through research some vulnerability in the competition and accordingly position their new program as distinctive and more valuable than the old tried-and-true program already airing.

As with most brand terminology, brand positioning dimensions should be consumer-centered, meaning that what is most important is how customers think and feel about the brand. Remember, we are talking about psychological positioning, not a count of news vans, bureaus, helicopters, and weather radar units. This means getting outside the boardroom and investing in meaningful audience research. This research will be the foundation on which you will build the branding efforts.

6.9          BRAND TRIAL

Brand trial (or brand sampling) is the initial purchase or experience with a brand by a consumer. Manufacturers may offer incentives to try a new brand, such as free samples, discount pricing, coupons, or contests. Broadcasters have a number of incentive tools to accomplish the same goal. A growing debate within the industry is that broadcasters are exploiting promotional incentives, such as contests, to pump up Nielsen ratings during critical sweep weeks. Within the context of television branding, promotional “incentives” should encourage sampling, whereby these new viewers remain with the program after the incentives are withdrawn.

6.10          BRAND CHOICE

Brand choice is the measure of actual consumer behavior within the competitive marketplace. This behavior may or may not be connected to preference. For example, you may prefer to drive a new Lincoln Explorer to work, but instead you choose to drive a used Ford Fiesta because you cannot afford the payments on the Lincoln.

A brand may be chosen because it is the only brand available. This exclusivity is great for sales and market share but can be misleading when looking for genuine brand preference. Similarly, a television program may be chosen because it is the only one of its type available during a certain time period. In addition, a program may be chosen because it is on the receiving end of a big lead-in. In terms of true preference, the available audience may be completely indifferent but simple inertia keeps them on the same channel. Conversely, a program may be preferred but seldom chosen because of intervening factors, such as the availability to watch or group (family) pressure to watch something else.

6.11          BRAND LOYALTY

Brand loyalty can be defined in two ways. The first and more common definition merges psychological and behavioral factors to measure a consumer’s faithfulness to a brand in that mere repeat purchases are seen as an indicator of loyalty. The second approach, and the one selected for this book, makes a distinction between behavior and attitudes. Within this context, brand loyalty is a measure of consumer behavior only—the degree of repeat purchases to the exclusion of other brands.

Repeat purchases may or may not be a result of strong, positive attitudes or preference. As with our definition of brand choice, brand loyalty can also be coercion, in which the consumer has no options or is influenced by marketing mix factors that masquerade as faithfulness.

Television is very much a repeat business, and as a result, habitual behavior is important to understand. Some brand researchers have looked to the world of physics to help explain this ritualistic behavior. They maintain that repeat purchases of a brand can be characterized as inertia. A typical definition of inertia is that it is the property of matter that manifests itself as a resistance to change in the motion of a body. Thus when no external force is acting, a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion continues moving in a straight line.

From a perspective of consumer behavior, we can define our consumer as the “body” and the forces of inertia as those marketing factors that encourage “resistance to change” or habit. To have the body change direction, there must be an adequate “external force,” which can be defined as a competing brand. The concept of inertia is referred to in several marketing and mass communication studies. Long ago, broadcasters realized that the reason people watch a program often depends simply on its lead-in program. This audience carryover effect is sometimes referred to as “tuning inertia” or “inheritance effects,” implying that much of a program’s loyalty is inherited rather than earned.

Long-term viewing habits can be based on factors other than a real love affair with the media product. Perhaps somebody is a “loyal” viewer of a 10:00 p.m. newscast not because it is deemed the best but because it is the only 10:00 p.m. newscast in the market! This loyalty in behavior may disguise a real dissatisfaction with the content of the program.

6.12          BRAND SATISFACTION

Brand satisfaction is associated directly with trial and usage in that it is the evaluative result of experiencing a brand. In this respect, the term resembles aspects of brand attitude, but satisfaction is grounded in the idea of consumer expectations, which lie at the heart of brand management. Brand satisfaction asks the following question: “Does this brand live up to its promises?” Logically, satisfaction drives commitment, which in turn drives loyalty.

Studies have found that Americans today are fairly satisfied with most consumer products. Brand managers continue to face the challenge of stopping customers from defecting to competing brands that are seen to be of similar function and value. Instead of investing time and mental effort seeking a specific brand, they select the product that is (1) most familiar, (2) most available, or (3) least expensive.

6.13          BRAND COMMITMENT

Brand commitment is the psychological bedrock of branding that addresses the underlying psychology of brand loyalty. Where loyalty is a measure of consumer behavior, brand commitment is a measure of the degree of faithfulness to a brand despite counter-programming, lead-ins, contests, or other competitive maneuvers designed to lure consumers away. For example, highly committed customers will be willing to pay a higher price for a brand that they truly believe is superior. In electronic media terms, a truly committed viewer will seek out a specific program. Later we will see that the fundamental cause of brand equity is this core psychological relationship of commitment for which repeat viewing (loyalty) is the desired outcome. Consumer inertia implies that there are non-committed consumers who can be motivated to choose a brand by simply controlling marketing mix factors that have little to do with a brand’s perceived value.

6.14          BRAND EQUITY

Brand equity is the power of a brand name. It is the added value a brand name brings to a product or service to motivate consumers to buy—or watch. An underlying assumption of any brand equity theory is that if you took the brand name away, consumers will behave differently. Imagine the changes in consumer purchasing if the brand name “Coke” were taken away from that cola product and substituted with “Go-Go Cola” or simply “generic cola drink.” Imagine the changes in retail sales if the name “Nike” and its distinctive swoosh logo were removed from all its sneakers. Imagine the golden arches being dismantled in favor of a neon sign that says “Hamburgers Sold Here.” From a media perspective, imagine informing the people at NBC that they must change the name of their ER to Medical Drama.

Brand equity takes a brand beyond its generic product category and makes it special by emphasizing its enduring reputation. Furthermore, this reputation should address consumer benefits that go beyond mere functional characteristics if for no other reason than functional characteristics are often so easy for competitors to copy; you buy a helicopter, so they buy a helicopter. You buy Doppler radar, so they buy Doppler radar. Because brand equity is the holy grail of brand management, we have given the concept its own chapter.

Again, what sets apart brand equity from other marketing concepts is that knowledge of the brand name alone is identified as the causal factor in altering consumer responses to marketing activities. In fact, many studies have found that the marketing mix strategies mentioned earlier are more effective when working with a strong brand name. In this respect, strong brands become shortcut devices for simplifying decision making. Brand-conscious consumers do not burden themselves with extensive cognitive effort. Instead, they rely on brand knowledge stored in memory to make quick, stress-free purchase decisions.

The enemy of brand equity is the notion of equivalent substitutes, wherein several competing brands are perceived by the consumer as equally satisfying. Under these conditions of no genuine brand differentiation, businesses often succumb to mutually destructive marketing battles, such as pricing wars, and extravagant but ineffectual advertising campaigns.