What are some ways of measuring success for the design of brand assets, without linking it to channel metrics?
You haven’t specified which brand design assets, so we’ll assume that you refer to the most commonly understood brand assets:
- Identity assets like logo, colours, typography, secondary devices, audio signature, etc
- Communication assets like ads, brochures, website, etc.
How to Measure Success of Brand Design Assets
While channel metrics only measure the success of a specific channel, brand design assets are about creating a sum that is larger than the sum of its parts.
Brand assets are designed not in a vacuum, but to communicate a certain brand personality, which in turn is based on brand strategy. The best way to measure the success of brand assets is to check if the foundational brand personality has been communicated clearly to the target audience.
Take the instance where you set out to create a youth brand with a rebellious personality. Did the target audience understand that and play it back, in some form or the other? To determine this, you need customer research, which can be formal or informal. In our experience, even informal conversations with a handful of the right people can be very informative.
The key, of course, is NOT to ask idiotic questions like “Do you like this logo?” but to have a broad conversation where you can gauge the way the respondents are decoding the brand personality.
More Formal Measurement Systems
If you are looking for a more formal model, take a look at the Brand Equity model proposed by David Aaker in his book Managing Brand Equity. (Surprisingly, no more recent models have been formulated).
In the model, Aaker clearly sets out the relationship between the creative assets of a brand and its brand equity.
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