Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

GAINING AND MAINTAINING RELEVANCE 311
Energy Relevance
Losing energy relevance is also a threat to established brands,
even those that are market leaders with a surplus of trust, perceived
quality, and customer loyalty. A brand can lose energy
and become tired, old fashioned, and bland. It might still be a
great offering and an excellent choice for your father or grandfather,
but not contemporary enough for you. It no longer fi ts.
Further, visibility goes down with energy. The brand is no longer
among those that come to mind when considering a purchase. It
is lost in the noise of the environment. It is no longer relevant.
As noted earlier, the Y & R Brand Asset Valuator database has
shown empirically that relevance and differentiation are the bases
for a brand ’ s success. But recent studies of the entire database
found that another component is needed: energy. 10 An analysis
of the total database, including over forty thousand brands and
over forty countries from 1993 to 2007, showed that brand equities
as measured by trustworthiness, esteem, perceived quality, and
awareness have been falling sharply over the years. For example,
in the last twelve years trustworthiness dropped nearly 50 percent;
esteem fell by 12 percent; brand quality perceptions fell by 24 percent;
and, remarkably, even awareness fell by 24 percent. A significant
exception were those brands with energy, which remained
healthy and retained their ability to drive financial returns.
The energy relevance challenge might be made worse by
competitors who introduce new entries or applications or have
succeeded in smothering the brand ’ s visibility with heavy advertising
or market presence. In any case the brand with inadequate
energy, although familiar and trusted, is no longer being thought
of at the time of purchase or use.
When a brand lacks energy and visibility, it can move into
the “ graveyard, ” a concept introduced in Chapter Two . A graveyard
brand is one the customer has heard of and probably is very
familiar with but one that is not recalled easily and cannot get
into the consideration set. Being a graveyard brand is a substantial