Brand Recall

Tiger Woods swings his club to be at Par and here appears the name “Accenture” or the red cloth goes off without revealing the object inside and appears a tagline “What makes you special?” for IBM Global Services, another is HSBC Gobal Solutions for that matter. Difficult to understand for a normal person sitting in front of TV what does these companies do? And so is for us.

They sell neither car nor mobiles and they are connected to the general public only in indirect ways. Their single deal goes in millions of dollars. Here I am talking about companies who provide consulting services or others into outsourcing and off-shoring. Why their advertisements appears on television as most of the viewers have nothing to do with their businesses.

The answer lies in the term BRAND RECALL. Brand Recall is the extent, to which a brand name is recalled as a member of a brand, product or service class. Common market research usage is that pure brand recall requires "unaided recall". For example a respondent may be asked to recall the names of any cars he may know, or any whisky brands he may know.

Some researchers divide recall into both "unaided" and "aided" recall. "Aided recall" measures the extent to which a brand name is remembered when the actual brand name is prompted. An example of such a question is "Do you know of the "Honda" brand?"

In terms of brand exposure, companies want to look for high levels of unaided recall in relation to their competitors. The first recalled brand name (often called "top of mind") has a distinct competitive advantage in brand space, as it has the first chance of evaluation for purchase.

TCS is looking forward to project its image of biggest Indian IT Company to overtake Infosys whose brand recall tops the list among Indian players. And what about HCL whose ad has beautifully left its mark on our mind?