The power of brand assets: Rudi ist zurück!

Heineken has planted this well-known brand asset seed to give us the right push on April 28. They want to see as many happy patio-goers as possible, obviously associated with Heineken. Consumers need to start celebrating #heteerstebier by ordering it en masse, photographing it and sharing it on social media. For now, we may only enjoy refreshments on the terrace until six o'clock but what the heck: "Just give me one of those nice beers!"

How Brands Grow

What does Heineken do so well here? It all comes together. The right moment (the terraces reopen), the two old brand assets (the slogan Biertje? and der Rudi) and a clear call-to-action. Order, enjoy and above all share, in other words create social proof: everyone is doing it, including you. They do make it very easy for us to buy. Byron Sharp would be pleased. Make it easy to buy is his theory.

If you want people to think of your brand more often, consider you more often and buy more often, you have to build on the mental availability of the brand: mental availability. You claim a relevant situation in the consumer's daily life and link this to a strong brand asset. Finally, the beer must also be available to order: physical availability. If the total picture is relevant to the large group(mainstreamness), then everyone can think of you, consider you and buy you. Ergo: brand growth. The theory of How Brands Grow in a nutshell.

What are brand assets?

Once they are etched in the mind, Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs) - the meaningless, perceptual elements that remind consumers of a brand - are indelible. The red star, the green letters, a moving "e," Rudi's famous entrance and cry: they can only represent one brand. Without context or the user and need moments (a.k.a. Category Entry Points CEPs), they don't say much. Coupled with the right situation - the first snow, a Champions League match, or a first patio order after a year of no hospitality - makes the brand asset a perfect trigger to activate the Heineken mental network.

Because the brain is primarily focused on efficiency and avoiding choice stress - and it is bombarded daily with thousands of commercial messages - your brand must be quickly and intuitively recognizable. Things like a payoff, a spokesperson, a jingle or even scent can strongly and automatically activate a brand. Are there assets that work better than others? Jenni Romaniuk describes them in the 3rd How Brands Grow book: Building Distinctive Brand Assets.

A brand has a higher chance of being spotted if you cover more senses and in unique ways. Think communication styles (RedBull's cartoon characters) or caricatures (Fido Dido from 7Up). Or a sound (the "plop" of the Grolsch longline bottle) and product shapes (the toilet duck neck or Tony's Chocolonely asymmetrical chocolate chunks). And incredibly powerful and implicit are scents. Ever been in at Abercrombie & Fitch? You walk out of the store there with musk reek and are unintentionally and live A&F signboard. These types of assets work much more distinctively than, say, logos or brand colors. They are independent of a category or culture and are therefore universally applicable.

Colors and logo elements are often confused with category codes: generic assets of which there are only a limited number, or they are synonymous with a trend in a particular industry. Think green, windmills and the sun in the energy market. Besides having a (temporary) meaning, everyone uses them. So think out of the box!

Stick to your best racehorse

Most major brands have only two, at most three really strong brand assets. These DBAs are effective because they are widely known(Fame), uniquely reminiscent of one brand(Uniqueness) and (can) last a long time. Yet brand assets are changed often enough. A new marketer or creative wants to put his stamp on the brand. Brand assets become embellished, tweaked, forgotten or downright unrecognizable. Mistakes that cost companies millions.

The fruit juice brand Tropicana made such a blunder in 2009. The brand had been around since 1947 and was ready for something new. The orange on the pack with the red-with-white straw was starting to get a little corny, so it was scrapped. An entirely new packaging came with an elaborate story. The operation was reversed within a month. Tropicana had not sufficiently realized the importance of consistency and how recognizable the "old-fashioned" packaging was. People could no longer find "their" suit and were missing out too often: $65 million in lost sales.

To measure is to know

Heineken and brands like Ohra and Duracel - which harkened back to the purple crocodile (a.k.a. no administrative "red tape") and the energy bunny - know the power of well-chosen brand assets. Still, there is much to learn.

For example, from our own research among 35 brands, we saw that the asset brand sound is in poor shape in the Netherlands. Only 3 sounds are correctly linked to the right brand by less than half of the consumers (n=1000). For as many as 20 sounds, a wrong brand was activated more often than the right brand during 3 seconds of listening. We also saw that brand assets are sometimes unfairly 'forgotten'. Take the 'plop' of Grolsch. Our research shows that this is still well linked to the brand, even very strongly. Why is it no longer used? Isn't this ideal comeback material?

Like Romaniuk, with sound we see that some assets work better than others. From 5 variants tested - jingles, audio logos, sound, tune and song - we see that jingles and audio logos enjoy the highest recognition. A jingle is an advertising song composed specifically for the brand with lyrics sung. Think Kruidvat with "Always surprising always advantageous" or I'm loving it from McDonalds. An audio logo is the sound version of the visual logo: 'Jammajajajippiejippiejee' ... The best scoring brand out of 35 sounds.

To make assets work for the brand, you need to know well which assets you own, which are distinctive and consciously (or rather unconsciously) engrained in the consumer brain. Heineken chose opportunely with Rudi and the reopening of the terraces. An opportunity like this doesn't come along every day. And Heineken obviously brooded on that for a while. You can also get ahead of the market. By measuring which brand assets are already strongly linked to your brand (or perhaps to competitors), you can make strategic choices about when and where to deploy which asset. In short: Get to know your winning team (and it's best horse) and stick with it.

Do you also want to know how impactful your assets are? Read more in the white paper 'Boost your brand with Distinctive Brand Assets'.‍