Arguably, the most important aspects of a brand positioning are that it be relevant and credible. While ad agencies talk about "finding the white space" and "breaking through the clutter," if that unique message doesn’t matter to buyers, or if they do not believe it is true, the brand strategy will fail.

To understand what is relevant to a brand’s target audience(s), we must understand how decision makers make brand choices. The figure below depicts the brand decision process. (Note: This gating process applies to almost any type of decision.) While the specific value structures that are used by decision makers in various buying environments may differ significantly (e.g., the scientist purchasing a mass spectrometer versus a teenager purchasing a DVD), all decision makers utilize a remarkably consistent process.

The decision-making process

Gate 1: Awareness
Gate 1 is basic awareness of the brand. It addresses the question, "Has the buyer heard of you?" If the decision maker has never heard of your brand, it plays no role in the selection. This doesn’t mean your brand won’t be purchased. Your brand may be white-labeled or an invisible "ingredient" element that is not customer facing. Business-to-business brands often play this role and debate whether there would be a return on investment (ROI) in becoming a "household" name (e.g., BASF’s mass advertising campaign several years ago to make consumers aware that "we don’t make many of the things you use; we make many of the things you use better"). Or you may produce a classic commodity product (e.g., nails at the local hardware store) that one purchases just because it is what the local hardware store carries. I am a do-it-yourselfer at home, yet I could not tell you who manufactures the nails in my workshop if my life depended on it. Or, one may simply purchase your unknown brand because of the product’s appearance and/or its packaging at the point of purchase.

Lack of awareness simply means that the buyer is neither seeking your brand nor giving you an advantage because he/she has heard of you. Research consistently shows that consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a company they have heard of compared to the same product from a company they have not heard of, even if they know almost nothing about the first company other than its name.

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