How to Use Advertising to Build Strong Brands

Wolfgang Grassl (Professor of Marketing, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA)

Journal of Consumer Marketing

ISSN: 0736-3761

Article publication date: 1 February 2001

856

Keywords

Citation

Grassl, W. (2001), "How to Use Advertising to Build Strong Brands", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 75-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2001.18.1.75.2

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


This book is a welcome addition to the literature on branding, one of the growth areas within marketing. It is the third in a series of five handbooks on advertising theory and practice which are intended to present a state‐of‐the‐art overview of the field. The volume contains 28 relatively short contributions by 21 different authors, both marketing professors and practitioners, including reprints of texts that have already appeared elsewhere. All papers are stylistically and terminologically easy to read, eschew methodological excursions, avoid academic jargon, and emphasize applicability to marketing practice rather than conceptual, empirical or theoretical analysis. They are, it would seem, primarily written for practitioners interested in learning from insights of marketing science while at the same time giving marketing academics a state‐of‐the‐art overview of a field that has grown much beyond the sub‐chapter in a chapter on product policy as which textbooks still treated it only a few years ago. Consequently, the essays collected in this volume deal with a multitude of issues, from explanations of brand equity to the introduction of new brands, from value‐added strategies for mature brands to the extension of branding to unexpected “products” such as cable TV stations (chapter 23), politicians (chapter 22), collectibles (chapter 21), and art organizations (chapter 26). The 28 papers are quantitatively and qualitatively very different, ranging from brief “blurbs” on a Gestalt conception of brands (chapter 5) and on life‐cycle theory (chapter 16) to more substantial essays on brands and advertising (chapter 6) and new brand introduction (chapter 11). The widely diverse nature of contributions necessitates a selective discussion and precludes any more detailed analysis of the merits of individual parts.

At the core of the book the reader finds a number of papers elucidating the concept of brand equity and whether advertising can significantly influence it. One of the more controversial issues in marketing has recently been whether advertising is to be viewed as a strong force that can, through its influence on brand awareness, brand recognition and brand knowledge, decisively influence the degree to which a brand can be established as a strong brand, or whether it is rather a weak force that can at most nudge the position of brands in the perception of consumers (chapter 6). Roderick White advocates a position of compromise, conceding to the skeptics of advertising that “brands are real in the minds of consumers” (p. 65) and that advertising can therefore not produce just any intended effect while also admitting that consumers can evidently be “moved along the scale of commitment to a brand” (ibid.), which in turn permits us to predict brand share changes as a function of advertising. Consumers’ relationship with brands involve cognition, affect, and experience, and this relationship is two‐way.

The reprinted essay by Paul Feldwick, a British advertising executive, squarely denies the necessity of postulating an entity such as brand equity (chapter 7). Assuming that such equity actually exists and is not merely a more or less convenient fiction, would introduce a kind of essentialism that is dispensable in marketing. It is also ambiguous and, furthermore, cannot be explained as the result of a causal chain that leads from brand description via brand strength to the supposed equity value of strong brands. Financial valuation of brands as separate assets, which will always be based on variable assumptions, is fundamentally different from their “strength” relative to the consumer in the sense of an “objective reality” (p. 90). As a consequence, the short‐term effects of advertising on sales are limited, while it is more justified to assume impacts on long‐term earnings. Feldwick concedes immediate effects on sales but not the longer‐term ones on brand strength. In one word, advertising has a “defensive role” (chapter 17).

The contribution by Andy Farr, equally a British marketing practitioner, is, on the other hand, accommodative of the concept of brand equity and affirmative as to whether advertising can play a major role in brand building (chapter 15). However, he, too, distinguishes between the short‐term and long‐term effects of advertising and investigates how the former are precursors to the latter. In the short term, advertising can, through guiding expectations and “creating a halo of superiority around the brand” (p. 184), significantly impact perceptions of product performance while it cannot make a weak product strong. In the longer term, advertising can serve to build up “bonding” (p. 191) or customer loyalty, which the author regards as the basis of brand equity.

The most innovative essays in this book may be those that apply the branding concept to business cases and to “unexpected fields”. Carla V. Lloyd contributed an interesting case study of Campbell’s soup as “a picture of a brand” by analyzing the factors that have made for both its continuity and plasticity (chapter 20). Two chapters on university education for advertising in the USA (chapter 27) and on “Education for the creative process” (chapter 28) conclude the volume.

The strength of this book lies in the fact that it makes material accessible to the practitioner that is normally found in more obscure academic periodicals. In presenting an overview of the main issues in the field and in presenting applications, it makes for ideal reading for product managers and other marketing executives. The researcher, however, will find little new in the volume. Moreover, the articles are of considerably diverse quality. Many articles continue the questionable proliferation of constructs in the branding literature – from “brand vitality” and “brand stature” to “brand relevance”, “brand personality”, “brand presence” and, yes, to “brand magic” (chapter 14). It is conceded that many of these belong to the “softer side of branding” (p. 162) – they are not made operational, and one has the suspicion that some cannot be made operational. One still wonders about the cognitive value of ever‐new terms. How much do they really contribute to a deeper understanding of brand equity? But this is a foible of much of the recent literature on brands and should not detract from the virtue of the collection under review.

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