Manage Brand Equity.
The concept of high equity returns starts from the basic definitions - what kind of business has the highest value, and what does "value" mean. The answer is very simple: the highest returns are generated by the business, which creates meaning, putting the money making on the last place. As soon as business is able to create meaning for its stakeholders - society, consumers, staff, beneficiaries, shareholders, government, and numerous others, money come as a payoff for the created meaning. The backbone of every business its' brand equity, as a self-reflection of the meaning, which brings the highest investment returns. "Despite being a commodity product and having a wholesale price decrease of 33 percent between 1980 and 1990, Quaker Oats oatmeal's retail price was 3,000 percent higher than its basic ingredient in 1991." (Morgenson 1991). What drives businesses and consumers to pay such a high price for brand names? In short, brand names add value, which is known as 'brand equity'. Brand equity is the first element ultimately undervalued in the business valuation, whilst at least the one indicator - ROIC - allows to measure it quite precisely. The meaning, as a fundamental component of the brand equity, is the start of every business, and the number one in the agenda for the both - the company and its stakeholders. If you don't have a meaning-based business, you will never have a strong brand, thus, you will have a tiny brand equity. It does not matter, do you have a ready-to-use big story to visualize it in your brand, or you have to build it from scratch. It has to be a story behind your brand. “Brand strategists are encouraged to break out of that box by considering emotional and self-expressive benefits, organizational attributes, brand personality, and brand symbols as well. In taking the broader view of the brand, the likelihood of creating real differentiating value is enhanced.” (Aaker, 1996). That's why you have to match your brand identity and the visual symbols with the big story delivering the strong emotional component.
The big story behind the brand means something bigger than "We drank it yesterday, and when we woke up in the morning, one of us suggested why don't we use that picture? And since then it's been on our logo." So, it is a mistake to do not have big story behind your brand, attempting to build business "to generate profit." It is simply to copy-paste the picture and the brand-book fonts, but it is impossible to replicate the big story behind the brand identity. However, to have a big story is not enough to generate the highest returns. "When the consumer is acquainted with the brand and has favorable, strong, and distinctive brand associations in their memory, customer-based brand equity is formed." (Keller, 1993). The highest value has a brand equity which is impossible, requires much time and money, or difficult to replicate. Now, it is a time to tell about a stupid rabbit on the pink logo of the global alternative investments firm, whilst in-group "normal people" apply kinda traditional blue or green colors, financial symbolics, and other standard elements of the the "normal investment company."
According to Robert Sapolsky, a human is a unique specie which allows and welcome violence based on the context. This trick of context, represent the trap into which humanity has fallen for itself, forgetting the most important commandment: "Tho do not kill." There are only four words in this commandment, but humanity is constantly trying to add to it that what will turn the commandment "Do not kill" into the option "Do not kill these, but you can kill those." Or, for example: "Murder is considered to be anything except the murder in this way." This cunning in relation to the simplest formula of the basics of natural law, which is the basis of all other laws of the state and the legal society, has led to an ugly deformation of morality and norms of behavior to such an extent that even norms appear that allow murder not to be considered as murder. Putting the violence in the context, humankind voluntary agreed to allow the ongoing presence of nazism in our lives.
The BOOST has on the logo the image of the Black Rabbit, whose eye in a form of solar eclipse is a part of the BOOST name, used by us since very start. The image of the Black Rabbit is applied as a symbol of the last one dynast staying alive after the ongoing chasing by the criminal activity known by the laymen as kinda the 3rd Reich crimes. This image of the Rabbit was taken to address the hares hunting story occurred in the Mauthausen death camps, and we told it on the website. The slogan "Who Framed Black Rabbit?" addressing the story of Hermann Göring, who shared for many years ago the fate of the both famous rabbits - Rabbit Harvey and Rabbit Roger, taking the name John Bogle. As long as the discovery showed the series of the aggravated crimes, we uses the cinema slogan, and the symbolics of film making to associate the events which we describe in the story with 'Who Framed Black Rabbit?' with the serial crimes, exposing for a many epochs, when the WWII was just a one page in this sad calendar. The eye of the Black Rabbit, is the solar eclipse from the poster Oświęzim Ostrzega (en. Auschwitz Warns) by Krzysztów Wrzesiński. The Auschwitz was the monstrous death corporation containing dozens of branches which main business was a business of death camps. Millions of people were murdered here with a monstrous painful death as a result of serial ritual mass killings. As the headline project of the BOOST is the Nüremberg ring, the death camps is the key episode in the Nazi Germany activity, which the only that can bring light to answer the question "Why?" all these murders occurred.
The "Cruelty-free Investments" mantra, that BOOST has, addresses the Black Rabbit as well. The science of Biology studies life, which includes every living object. For centuries, the humankind has been improving the quality of own life at the cost of other species. The road of the doubtful scientific achievements, escapades of the modern neurophysiology, pseudoscience of psychiatry, industries of pharmacology, cosmetics, home chemicals is made of the billions of corpses of rabbits, cats, monkeys, dogs, hamsters, rats, birds, owls, sharks, whales, dolphins, frogs, and other animals who went through such a terrible, blood chilling deaths in the vivaries of the pseudoscientific institutes, whose professors made a such kind of experiments, comparing to which, the exercises of Mengele would seems like an innocent joke. That sadism and monstrous atrocities towards animals, which occur daily in thousands of laboratories around the world, have no scientific value to humans, but it is considered the norm. Our mantra means, that we do not support cruelty in any form against any kind of life, and do not create or invest into such types of businesses. In our opinion, life in any form, with regards to humans, or animals, or plants shall be treated with the equal respect and attitude.
According to Choi & Winterich (2013), "Activating moral identity in an advertisement can improve the attitude towards the out-group brands. The moral identity allows to short the distance between the customer's self-identification, and improve the brand attitude attempting to expand its presence beyond the market. The moral identity is the way for the customers to consider the brand as a member of the "in-group," and identify themselves with the brand." Thus, the story of the BOOST's meaning which is underlying for the brand identity is the strategy of reverse direction to fight against violence against life in any form, whilst the whole market does in contrast the contradictory things. The positioning in the "out-group" is based on the strong moral identity, supported by the elements of visual concept of our brand. There are no sudden symbols, or colors, or visual images which we apply, and the strategy, story, and marketing that we have, address the moral component as a substantial unchangeable basis.“To manage the brand identity, one must develop a brand position (the part of the identity that must be actively communicated) and an execution program. The process involves balancing the need to adapt to changing environments with the power of consistent messages and symbols. Sometimes it is necessary to resist the powerful forces of change." (Aaker, 1996).
Written by Meggi Göring. All rights reserved. 2023. Copyright by the BOOST.
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Credits:
1. Choi, W. J., & Winterich, K. P. (2013). Can Brands Move In from the Outside? How Moral Identity Enhances Out-Group Brand Attitudes. Journal of Marketing, 77(2), 96–111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23487415
2. Aaker, D. A. (1996). Building Strong Brands. New York: Free Press.
3. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.2307/1252054