AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Brand relevance theory by David Aaker (2011) was used to set up a cookie brand called Kim’s Cookies. The main objective for this cookie brand is to challenge the rigid market that is dominated by the big brands, by starting a new category. According to Aaker (2011), brands can reach relevance by following 4 steps: (1) create a new category, (2) market analysis to find competitors, (3) create differentiation for preference, (4) evaluation­. These steps were visualized in Figure 1, on page 10. A step 0 was added to the process, since the theory requires a brand and market that had not yet been created. In step 0, a setup for the Kim’s Cookies brand was made, including a logo, brand description and a kind of cookie. The brand was focused on the values ‘homemade’ and ‘happiness’ and on a young female target group. The first setup of the brand was assessed in four different tests, resulting in useful recommendations for the redesign of the cookies, logo and the brand. This information was used to optimize the brand story and the logo in step 3. Another part of this step was the creating of an extended brand relevance model based on theory of brand relevance. This model includes 8 criteria used to evaluate the final concept: visibility, time, emotion, people, risky, original, value and winner. The criteria from the extended relevance model were also used in a creative way in step 1, where the model provided input for generating 13 possible new categories for creating brand relevance. In the second step, the list of criteria was finalized by the addition of criteria set by the vision and the market analysis. In the vision, the most important aspects found were a passion for baking, homemade, personal, sharing and stories. One of the most important aspects of the market analysis was that brand relevance is not reached by selling cookies that are good for environment, people and/or animals. It is still important to sell products that have those qualities, but not as a main point of relevance. Another important conclusion from the market analysis was that the big supermarket brands have a very strong position and do not allow any competitors to enter the shelves. Other cookie brands are trying to grow using different channels in order to be able to compete. In the third step, the final category for relevance is chosen to be sharing homemade happiness. This category is strong, because no other cookies in the market are truly homemade, nor provide actual happiness by connecting people. Sharing homemade happiness is realized by the concept of Kim’s Cookies Kitchen: a place where people can come to bake together in workshops and real homemade cookies are sold. The brand was redesigned to communicate 5 important elements: happy baking by sharing smiles, perfect by imperfections, fresh = better recipes, the power of the personal touch and unique stories. The logo of Kim’s Cookies was changed to match the homemade look, within the boundaries provided by the research in step 0. In the last step, the concept and category were…