How to Make B2B Brand Assets Visible—Taking Stock of Names, Trust, and Systems as Management Resources

Looking only at awareness and logo evaluations when measuring brand assets will not capture the full picture of a B2B company. Trust earned through years of business, employees’ technical expertise, processes that deliver consistent quality, and product names customers remember are also management resources that underpin why a company is chosen.

The key is to create a register of “what creates value, for whom, how, and with what evidence” before trying to force all brand assets into a single monetary figure.

What Is Brand Equity? explains the concept of brand assets and the metrics used to assess them. This article focuses specifically on the practical work of taking stock for use in management meetings.

Divide Brand Assets into Four Groups

1. Customer Perceptions

These include the situations in which customers think of your company, their reasons for choosing it, the quality they expect, and how they see it as different from competitors.

Use customer interviews, branded searches, comments made during inquiries, and reasons for winning or losing business as evidence. Do not rely solely on management’s self-assessment.

2. Relationships

These include ongoing business relationships, referrals, collaboration partners, distribution networks, and coordination with suppliers. Check not only how long a business relationship has lasted, but also whom it is with and whether it would continue if the people responsible changed.

3. Repeatable Capabilities

These are capabilities that enable you to deliver value repeatedly, such as technical expertise, know-how, standard processes, training methods, quality control, and proposal procedures. Capabilities held by a single individual may be important, but in that form they are assets that are difficult to transfer.

4. Names, Expressions, and Rights

These include company names, product names, logos, domains, content, trademarks, and patents. Being “known” and being “legally protected” are different things, so avoid confusing them.

Seven Items to Include in the Asset Register

Record the following in one row for each asset.

1. Asset name
2. Value created for customers or stakeholders
3. Evidence of that value
4. Connection to revenue, gross profit, retention, referrals, and other outcomes
5. Owner or person responsible for management
6. Risks of impairment
7. Next action to maintain or strengthen the asset

For example, if you consider “short lead-time delivery” an asset, check standard lead times, your track record, the conditions under which you can deliver, the impact on gross profit, and dependence on particular employees. If there is no track record and delivery depends on excessive overtime, it may be a future liability rather than a brand asset.

Connect Assets to Business Metrics

Examine not just whether brand assets exist, but how they relate to outcomes.

• Customer perceptions: share of inquiries that specifically seek out your company, reasons for selection
• Relationships: retention rate, referral share, concentration of business relationships
• Repeatable capabilities: quality, lead times, rework, variation between employees
• Names and rights: branded searches, revenue by name, status of rights

The important point here is not to confuse correlation with causation. Even if you changed your logo around the time referral-generated orders increased, the logo was not necessarily the cause of that increase. Use Designing KPIs for B2B Branding to record execution, responses, and business outcomes separately.

What the White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises Tells Us

The Small and Medium Enterprise Agency’s 2022 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises defines a brand as “the totality of images of a company, its products and services, and other elements as perceived by customers.” The survey in the white paper shows that companies working to build and maintain their brands engage in activities such as communicating messages to customers and society, understanding their brand’s position, and clarifying their brand concept.

It also explains that attention to intellectual property, including trademarks, is necessary not only to enhance brand value but also to manage risk. However, these survey findings do not guarantee that a particular company’s initiatives will generate profit. You need to cross-check customer, operational, and financial evidence within your own company.

How to Conduct a Quarterly Review

1. Add newly accumulated assets
2. Reclassify items with weak evidence as hypotheses
3. Identify assets concentrated in particular individuals
4. Reassess assets that no longer create customer value
5. Choose no more than three assets to protect in the next quarter

Keeping the register updated during normal operations, rather than only before business succession or M&A, can reduce the risk of recognizing an asset’s value only after losing it.

Limitations of This Method

This register is not intended for recognizing assets on the balance sheet or determining a brand’s monetary value. The legal status of trademarks and patents, business valuation, and tax and accounting treatment require professional review. Customer perceptions also change as markets and the people involved change, so past performance cannot be treated as a permanent asset.

Conclusion

Making brand assets visible is not about assigning a value to a logo. It is about connecting customer perceptions, relationships, repeatable capabilities, and names and rights to value, evidence, and business metrics, then deciding which to protect first. Start by creating a register with the four groups, and distinguish unsupported items as hypotheses.

If you would like to take stock of your brand assets and connect them to your business strategy, see HUV DESIGN OFFICE’s Services.

References

• Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, “2022 White Paper on Small and Medium Enterprises, Part II, Chapter 2, Section 1: Initiatives to Build and Maintain Brands”
  https://www.chusho.meti.go.jp/pamflet/hakusyo/2022/chusho/b2_2_1.html

Author: Daisuke Irikura (Representative Director, HUV DESIGN OFFICE Co., Ltd.)