Brand Recall

This article covers meaning, importance, types & example of Brand Recall from marketing perspective.

Published by MBA Skool Team in Marketing and Strategy Terms Last Updated: May 26, 2024Read time:

What is Brand Recall?

Brand Recall is the degree or likelihood of instantly remembering the name of the brand if a product/service or any other kind of brand association comes up. Brand Recall can be aided or unaided.


Importance of Brand Recall

To increase their brand exposure, companies want their brand to come under unaided recall in relation to their competitors. The first brand name which is recalled (often known as "top of mind") has a distinct advantage in brand space over others competitors, as it has the first chance of evaluation for purchase by the consumer.

If a company has high brand recall, this would mean there are more chances that while buying the customer will remember it more often and would end up buying more of the brand.

If this cycle continues, repeat purchases would be more.

Hence Brand Recall is very important for a brand manager. Brand recall is a part of brand awareness, which along with parameters like brand recognition and top of the mind brand help a brand establish in the minds of the consumer.


Types of Brand Recall

Brand Recall

There are primarily two types of brand recall i.e. aided brand recall and unaided brand recall.

a. Unaided Brand Recall

Unaided recall is where a person can recall or remember the name of the brand without any cue or hint. Lets understand more about it. As per common market research pure brand recall requires "unaided recall". Unaided recall means that no help or aid is given to consumer to recall the brand. It was already in the mind of the consumer under a product category. For example when a respondent is asked to recall the names of any phone brands he may know, or any beer brands he may know & the brands which he is able to recall without any help will come under unaided recall.

b. Aided Brand Recall

Aided recall on the other hand requires an external cue or hint of this recall. Aided brand recall tells you the level to which a brand name is recognized when the actual brand name is prompted. An example of such a question is "Are you aware of "Apple" brand?" In this case the Brand name is told to the respondent. One of the few brand recall test includes day-after recall test, which tests are consumers feedback after 24 hours.


Brand Recall Calculation

Brand Recall can be estimated as percentage based on how many people were able to recognize or recall the brand as compared to the total people.

Brand Recall Percentage = (People able to recall/Total people in the experiment or survey)*100

This can be also done for aided and unaided brand recall separately. Higher percentages show that the brand is well recognized and has good recall value. value above 50% is good and above 70-80 is very good but if the value is below 50 then there has to be clear strategy to recover or improve the brand recall.


Strategy to Increase Brand Recall

Companies give a lot of importance in ensuring that the brand recall for their products are high. Having a high brand recall requires a lot of time, money and patience. Some steps to increase brand recall are:

1. Maintain high quality of the product or the service as eventually customer needs have to be fulfilled.

2. Ensure good brand visibility through advertising, packaging etc.

3. Brand recall can be enhanced by making sure people see the brand all the time.

4. Engaging customers through contests, events etc. can help build a strong brand recall.

5. A unique brand name, logo, tagline etc. can help connect with customers to increase brand recall.


Examples of Brand Recall

Brand recall happens on the basis of the association or perception of a brand in our minds. Here are some examples of brand recall which have been created in our minds:

1. Whenever you see a Yellow “M”, it is recognized as McDonald’s as the logo helps in its brand recall.

2. A tickmark “Swoosh” symbol always connects us with the Nike brand.

3. Whenever some talks about a premium or expensive watch, brand recall of companies like Omega, Rolex, Swatch happens in our mind.

Hence, this concludes the definition of Brand Recall along with its overview.

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team which comprises of MBA students, management professionals, and industry experts. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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