Using new findings, market researcher Distinctive BAT clears up the common confusion between distinctive brand assets, messaging assets and category codes to give marketers more clarity.

Branding elements, for example, are often picked as distinctive brand assets (DBAs) because they appear to be highly relevant to the category, but they’re also likely to be used by competitors because of that very relevance, making the asset hard to own. 

Why clarity in brand messaging matters

Most category codes do not perform well across distinctive metrics because they are usually attributed to multiple brands, or they feel familiar to consumers, but they...