Distinctive brand assets explained
Why people recognise some brands without reading a word, and what a small company can actually do about it.
A distinctive asset is anything that triggers your brand's name in someone's head without the name being there: a colour with a shape, a pack, a character, a sentence, a sound. The term comes from Jenni Romaniuk's work at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, notably Building Distinctive Brand Assets (2018).
Why it matters more than being different
Studies by Romaniuk, Sharp and Ehrenberg found that buyers perceive little difference between competing brands, and buy them anyway. Being distinctive does not ask people to believe you are better. It asks them to know it is you. Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow (2010) calls the goal mental availability: the chance your brand comes to mind in a buying situation.
Fame and uniqueness
Romaniuk measures an asset on two things, among buyers of the category and not only your customers. Fame: how many people link it to your brand. Uniqueness: how many of those links go to you rather than a competitor. Famous and unique assets can be used alone. Unique ones nobody knows yet must be repeated without changing them. Known but shared ones must never be used alone.
Colour is the trap
A study by Ward, Yang, Romaniuk and Beal (2020) tested 1,281 real assets in 19 countries. Characters and logos had the strongest potential to be owned. Colour was the hardest, because it is shared across competitors. So do not stop at "our colour is blue". Tie it to a shape.
What a small company can do
- List what everybody in your category shows. That is what to leave.
- Look through what you already have. One unusual thing is often sitting there unused.
- Choose two or three assets, not ten.
- Put them in the first seconds of every film, on every page and every post, without redesigning them each season.
- Name the brand as well. Hartnett, Romaniuk and Kennedy (2016) found that naming it often helps memory, with no loss of liking.
- Test by showing the asset without the name to people who buy in your category.
The animation on the home page shows the idea, and VigoTrans shows it on a real client.
Tell me what should stay.
A brand to sort out, a film to shoot, or a session in Paris. A few lines are enough. Say what it is, when, and where you are.