Brand recognition v Brand recall

Often both 'brand recognition' and 'brand recall' are needed for brand awareness. But they are different. And you might do different things to boost either. Understanding the customer purchase decision will help.

If customers decide which brand to buy while in store, then brand recognition is pretty important. You want the consumer to make the link between the battery brand they saw on TV and the one on the shelf. Clearly, packaging, logos and cues from the TV campaign are worth sweating over here.

Brand recall is a tougher gig. You want consumers to think of your brand when they are thinking about the category. To recall from memory. If your customers make their decisions outside the store, then recall is the thing to focus on. First anyway.

Online stores and anybody selling a service generally need recall first and foremost. Which is why the advertising for comparison shopping websites focus a lot on their name and website address. They have failed if they expose you to an ad for moneysupermarket.com and you head over to confused.com.

Of course, all the ads for these comparison websites seem a bit the same, with no differentiation - with the exception of comparethemeerkat.com which is proving very popular.