Strategic Brand Management: Building,

Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity

Fifth Edition

Chapter 8
Leveraging Secondary Brand
Associations to Build Brand
Equity

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Learning Objectives
8.1 Outline the eight main ways to leverage secondary
associations
8.2 Explain the process by which a brand can leverage
secondary associations
8.3 Describe some of the key tactical issues in leveraging
secondary associations from different entities

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Figure 8.1
Secondary Sources of Brand Knowledge

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Effects on Existing Brand Knowledge
• Three important factors in predicting the extent of leverage
from linking the brand to another entity:
1. Awareness and knowledge of the entity
2. Meaningfulness of the knowledge of the entity
3. Transferability of the knowledge of the entity

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Figure 8.2
Understanding Transfer of Brand Knowledge

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Guidelines
• Leveraging secondary brand associations may allow marketers
to
– Create or reinforce an important point-of-difference or
– Create or reinforce a necessary or competitive point-of-
parity versus competitors
• Commonality leveraging strategy
– Makes sense when consumers have associations to another
entity that are congruent with the brand
• Complementarity branding strategy
– Makes sense when entities represent a departure for the
brand because there are few if any common or similar
associations

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Company
• Existing brands can be related to a corporate or family
brand
• Corporate or family brand can be a source of brand equity
• Leveraging a corporate brand may or may not be useful
• Three main branding options exist for a new product
– Create a new brand
– Adopt or modify an existing brand
– Combine an existing and a new brand

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Country of Origin and Other
Geographic Areas (1 of 2)
• A country of geographic location from which a product
originates may
– Become linked to the brand
– May generate secondary associations
• Consumers choose brands originating in different countries
based on:
– Their beliefs about the quality of certain types of
products from certain countries
– The image that these brands or products communicate

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Country of Origin and Other
Geographic Areas (2 of 2)
• Other geographic associations besides country of origin
are possible
– States, regions, cities
• Classic U.S. tourism slogans
– “I Love New York”
– “Virginia Is for Lovers”
– Las Vegas’s “What Happens Here, Stays Here”

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Channels of Distribution
• Channels of distribution can directly affect the equity of the
brands they sell
• Retail stores can indirectly affect brand equity through an
“image transfer” process
• Retailers have their own brand images in consumers’
minds due to the following associations
– Product assortment
– Pricing and credit policy
– Quality of service

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Co-Branding (1 of 2)
• When two or more existing brands are combined into a
joint product or are marketed together in some fashion
– Also called brand bundling or brand alliances
– Example: Betty Crocker paired with Sunkist Growers to
market a lemon chiffon cake mix
• Interest in co-branding as a means of building brand equity
has increased

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Co-Branding (2 of 2)
• Brand alliances, such as co-branding, require marketers to
ask themselves questions such as:
– What capabilities do we not have?
– What resource constraints do we face (people, time,
money)?
– What growth goals or revenue needs do we have?

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Ingredient Branding
• Creates brand equity for materials, components, or parts
that are contained within other branded products
• Branded ingredients are often a signal of quality
• Uniformity and predictability of ingredient brands can
reduce risks and reassure consumers

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Licensing (1 of 3)
• Creates contractual arrangements whereby firms can use:
– Names, logos, and characters of other brands to
market their own brands for some fixed fee
• Can also provide legal protection for trademarks

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Licensing (2 of 3)
• One danger in licensing
– Manufacturers can get caught up in licensing a brand
that might be popular at the moment but is only a fad
▪ May produce short-lived sales
• Corporate trademark licensing
– Licensing of company names, logos, or brands
– For use on various, often unrelated products

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Licensing (3 of 3)
• Firms may license corporate trademarks to:
– Generate extra revenue and profits
– Protect their trademarks
– Increase their brand exposure
– Enhance their image
• Risk
– Product may not live up to the reputation established by the
brand
– Inappropriate licensing can delete brand meaning
– Consumers don’t care about the financial arrangements
behind a particular product or service
▪ If the brand is used, the brand promise must be upheld

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Celebrity Endorsement (1 of 2)
• Using well-known and admired people to promote products
– Widespread phenomenon with a long marketing history
• Rationale
– A famous person can:
▪ Draw attention to a brand
▪ Shape brand perceptions, by virtue of consumers
perceptions of the famous person

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Celebrity Endorsement (2 of 2)
• Celebrity endorsers should have
– High level of visibility
– Rich set of potentially useful associations, judgments,
and feelings
• Potential problems
– Celebrity endorsers can endorse so many products that
they lack any specific product meaning
▪ Or are seen as opportunistic or insincere
– Must be a reasonable match between celebrity and
product
– Celebrity endorsers can get in trouble or lose popularity

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Social Influencers as the New
Celebrities
• Rapid growth in the use of social media celebrities for
advertising brands
• Also noncelebrity or micro-influencers who have
considerable sway on social media

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Sporting Cultural or Other Events
• Events have their own set of associations
– May become linked to a sponsoring brand under
certain conditions
• Contribute to brand equity by
– Becoming associated to the brand and improving brand
awareness
– Adding new associations
– Improving the strength, favorability, and uniqueness of
existing associations

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Third-Party Sources
• Marketers can create secondary associations in a number
of different ways
– By linking the brand to various third-party sources
• Third-party sources can be especially credible sources
– Marketers often feature them in advertising campaigns
and selling effort

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