BETTY Analysis One of the unhappy ironies of custom survey research is that large brands can afford it readily, but small brands are hard-pressed. When a smaller brand does manage to be measured in a study, the results on imagery often show that the smaller brand is "losing" on all measures, even based on those aware of the respective brands. Well, that makes perfect sense, in a way: fewer of those aware have given much thought to the smaller brand. But even a smaller brand ought to stand for something in the consumer mind. How do we isolate and measure that "stand-out" benefit, attribute, or message? Some try to address this by looking at each brand's respective users, but that glosses over a key point -- we're mostly interested in converting Prospects to try a smaller brand, not affirming current users. First, let's consider other key measurements of brand imagery "strength": Advantage/Disadvantage: This addresses the question of "is your brand's image the size of a giant or of a midget?" It is a direct comparison among brands based on everyone aware of each brand, respectively. And it is in this kind of analysis that smaller brands often lose across all the various measured imagery benefits, attributes or messages. Relative Strength/Weakness: This is a measurement that looks at just one brand, regardless of competition. "Strong'" messages get higher scores than "weak" messages for that brand. Even if the brand is a "midget," some of the buttons on its shirt are above the belt buckle, the rest below the buckle. How high up is this particular button (the message)? This tell us the "Top 3" or "Top 5" messages for a brand, but it doesn't measure if those '"Top" messages are unusually strong for our smaller brand compared to the other brands in the category. Better-Than-Expected-for-You [BETTY Analysis] (OK we admit to "torturing" the acronym. but insist that "Betty" is a lovely name.) The BETTY Analysis® captures the idea expressed by the phrase, "For a midget, Pat jumps amazingly high." It is an analysis that recognizes that Pat's "norm" is lower than most people's, but, given that norm, the measured "jump" is beyond expectation. We can make a similar calculation for brand imagery: we know how "high" a particular message gets compared to a typical message in the category. When we look at that relationship in our brand's ratings, is it better than the expectation set by the category overall?
When we add the BETTY Analysis® into the more typical Advantage/Disadvantage and Strength/Weakness analyses, we gain some excellent benefits. All analysese are based on Total Aware of the brand, so information from Prospects is retained. And yet we also, from the BETTY Analysis®, have an excellent read on the messages that are outstanding performers for the smaller brand. (Even if you manage the larger brand, you'll want to know which brand is up-and-coming at you!)
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