Brand Halo

 

Knowing the true strength of your brand may require an additional step in your analysis  – the result will be better information.  Brand Halo is something you might already account for in your brand imagery research, but if you don’t, and your brand equity is strong amongst your target, it is muddying the waters of your analysis.

Edward Thorndike was the first researcher to empirically measure the Halo Effect – “a cognitive bias in which one’s judgments of a person’s character can be influenced by one’s overall impression of him or her”.  Since the early 20^th century quantitative evidence has grown continuously and extended to marketing, where we affectionately refer to this “cognitive bias” as Brand Halo.

Brand Halo is very real.  As we discuss in detail in Brand Halo – The Elephant in the Room – this effect cannot be ignored and is critical to address.   Fortunately a variety of techniques are available and have been tested.  In the article above we recommend that, at the very least, a Structural Equation Model (SEM) be incorporated into your analysis.  Without charging into nomenclature that would send even the most ardent statistician into a deep sleep – we can sum up the issue like this – accounting for Brand Halo in your analysis of Brand Imagery measures will dramatically alter the results and in turn recommendations and action.   Would you like to know what your brand really stands for, and more importantly, the true drivers of purchase? – without addressing Brand Halo the truth will be less and possibly very unclear.

Check out Macro’s ImageMax here, a technique to address Brand Halo, as well as other brand measurement issues.