Brand association is one of the most significant psychological influences on a consumer’s purchase intent. Although it is often the difference between a consumer choosing one product over a competitor’s product, it is a relatively complex topic that few businesses understand well. Brand association describes the mental connection between a brand and a concept. Put another way, it is the thoughts that enter a consumer’s mind whenever they think about a brand.
Aspect
Explanation
Concept Overview
Brand Association is a fundamental element of brand identity and perception. It refers to the mental connections and associations that consumers make between a brand and various attributes, qualities, or symbols. These associations can be positive or negative and significantly influence how consumers perceive, trust, and relate to a brand. Brand associations often develop over time through marketing efforts, consumer experiences, and the brand’s overall presence in the marketplace. Effective brand association strategies help shape a brand’s image and build brand equity.
Types of Brand Associations
Brand associations can encompass a wide range of attributes and qualities: 1. Functional Attributes: These relate to the brand’s product or service features, performance, and capabilities. 2. Emotional Attributes: Emotional associations involve feelings and emotions evoked by the brand, such as trust, excitement, or nostalgia. 3. Symbolic Attributes: Brands may be associated with symbols, icons, or imagery that convey specific meanings or values. 4. Experiential Attributes: These relate to consumer experiences, such as the shopping experience or customer service, associated with the brand. 5. User Associations: Brands may be linked to certain user demographics or lifestyle characteristics. 6. Cultural or Societal Associations: Brands may be connected to cultural trends, social causes, or larger societal movements.
Building Brand Associations
Businesses employ various strategies to build and shape brand associations: 1. Brand Messaging: Consistent and compelling messaging that communicates desired brand attributes. 2. Visual Identity: Design elements, such as logos, color schemes, and typography, that reinforce brand associations. 3. Product Quality and Performance: Ensuring that the brand consistently delivers on its promises and meets customer expectations. 4. Marketing Campaigns: Strategic marketing campaigns that reinforce specific brand attributes and values. 5. Brand Storytelling: Crafting narratives that resonate with consumers and emphasize desired associations. 6. Sponsorships and Partnerships: Associating with events, causes, or other brands that align with desired associations.
Impact on Brand Equity
Brand associations have a profound impact on brand equity: 1. Positive Associations: Positive brand associations enhance brand equity by increasing consumer trust, loyalty, and willingness to pay premium prices. 2. Negative Associations: Negative associations can significantly harm brand equity by eroding trust and diminishing brand value. 3. Competitive Advantage: Strong, unique, and favorable brand associations provide a competitive advantage in the market. 4. Customer Loyalty: Brands with positive associations often enjoy higher levels of customer loyalty and advocacy.
Challenges
Challenges in managing brand associations include the need for consistent messaging and experiences, the potential for associations to change over time, and the risk of consumer backlash if brand associations are perceived as inauthentic or inconsistent with brand actions.
With that in mind, brand activation can simply be defined as the mental connection a consumer makes between a brand and some other factor, such as a concept, person, interest, experience, emotion, activity, or image.
Brand activation moves beyond traditional key performance indicators such as consideration, usage, and awareness. To that end, marketers strive to create mental connections that are favorable, robust, immediate, and link the brand with positive attributes to build value. Note that brand activation can also be negative when the associations consumers make with the brand are not in sync with its core identity, message, and values.
Foundational elements of brand association
Positive brand association is built on a few simple but very important elements:
Visuals
Since many advertising campaigns occur exclusively via visual mediums, businesses can position their brand using symbols, logos, designs, or any other visual element to induce positive associations.
Coca-Cola incorporated an image of Santa Claus at Christmas on its product labels including seasonally appropriate features such as falling snow. This meant consumers associated the company with the festive cheer and happy memories that occur once a year in December.
Language
When used correctly, the choice of words is also a powerful driver of brand association. Language should reflect the company’s industry, core message, brand persona, and use the correct tone and vocabulary to ensure brand consistency.
The phrase “taste the rainbow” by candy company Skittles allows its fans to associate the brand with a beautiful rainbow that can be eaten. Volkswagen’s famous Think Small ad campaign in the late 1950s created an association between its vehicles and a more convenient size.
Personification
Personification is used by brands to attribute human traits and characteristics to nonhuman, inanimate objects. The most oft-cited example is Wilson, the iconic volleyball that Tom Hanks befriends in the 2000 movie Cast Away.
Another notable example of personification can be seen in Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign. Here, the company ran a series of advertisements where two people represented personified versions of a Mac and PC. This allowed Apple to highlight the advantages of the Mac over its competitor by giving the product human qualities such as youth, intelligence, humor, and personality.
Key Principles of Brand Association
Consistency: Maintaining consistency in branding, messaging, and product or service quality reinforces and strengthens brand associations over time.
Relevance: Associations should be relevant to the brand’s positioning and the preferences and needs of the target audience.
Uniqueness: Distinctive and unique brand associations help a brand stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Emotional Resonance: Emotional connections and associations often have a more profound and lasting impact on consumer perceptions.
Reinforcement: Strong and consistent brand associations become deeply ingrained in consumers’ minds, reinforcing their loyalty and preference.
Advantages of Brand Association
Enhanced Recognition: Strong brand associations contribute to increased brand recognition, making it easier for consumers to identify and choose the brand among competitors.
Consumer Loyalty: Positive brand associations foster brand loyalty, as consumers develop a preference for a brand that aligns with their values or needs.
Effective Marketing: Brands with well-defined associations can create more effective marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience.
Premium Pricing: Brands with positive associations often have the ability to command premium pricing for their products or services.
Resilience: Strong brand associations can help a brand weather challenges, maintain a loyal customer base, and rebound from setbacks.
Challenges of Brand Association
Negative Associations: Brands may inadvertently develop negative associations that can harm their reputation and sales, requiring extensive efforts to rectify.
Changing Perceptions: Altering existing brand associations or shifting consumer perceptions can be challenging and may necessitate significant time and resources.
Consistency Maintenance: Ensuring consistent brand associations across all touchpoints and over time can be demanding and requires diligent brand management.
Market Competition: In highly competitive markets, building unique and distinctive brand associations can be challenging, as competitors vie for consumers’ attention.
When to Use Brand Association
Brand Launch: Establishing and nurturing brand associations is critical during the brand launch phase to shape initial consumer perceptions.
Rebranding: When a brand undergoes a rebranding effort, creating new or refining existing associations can be a strategic move to signal change.
Product Introduction: When introducing new products or services, aligning their attributes with existing brand associations can enhance acceptance and recognition.
Emotion Elicitation: Brands seeking to evoke specific emotions or sentiments in consumers can strategically use brand association to achieve these emotional connections.
Expected Long-Term Impact of Brand Association
Brand Loyalty: Strong and positive brand associations can lead to long-term brand loyalty among consumers, resulting in repeat purchases and advocacy.
Market Leadership: Brands with well-established and deeply rooted associations often become leaders in their respective industries.
Resilience: Strong brand associations can help a brand navigate challenges, economic fluctuations, and market disruptions more effectively.
Brand Equity: Over time, effective brand association efforts contribute to increased brand equity and overall brand value.
Related Branding Strategies
Brand Identity: Brand identity elements, such as logos, design, and brand colors, contribute to and reinforce brand associations.
Brand Storytelling: Effective storytelling can help shape brand associations and create emotional connections with consumers.
Brand Positioning: Brand positioning defines how a brand wants to be perceived in the market and guides the development of associations that align with that positioning.
Brand Personality: Brand personality traits are often used to shape consumer perceptions and associations, humanizing the brand.
Brand Differentiation: Strategies to create unique and distinctive brand associations can set a brand apart from competitors and enhance its recognition.
Examples of brand association at work
Company
Brand Association Strategy
Case Study
Analysis
Apple Inc.
Innovation and Design Excellence
Apple’s product launches and sleek design
Apple’s brand association with innovation and design excellence is reinforced through groundbreaking product launches and iconic design.
Coca-Cola
Refreshment and Happiness
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign
Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign associates the brand with happiness and personal connections, strengthening emotional ties.
Volvo
Safety and Reliability
Volvo’s focus on safety and crash test videos
Volvo’s commitment to safety has solidified its brand association with reliability and vehicle protection.
McDonald’s
Fast Food and Consistency
McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” and uniform menu
McDonald’s consistent menu offerings and memorable jingles reinforce its brand association with fast food and convenience.
Nike
Athletic Excellence and Endorsements
Nike’s athlete endorsements and “Just Do It”
Nike’s partnerships with top athletes and the “Just Do It” slogan associate the brand with athletic excellence and motivation.
Ferrari
Luxury and Performance
Ferrari’s high-end sports car production
Ferrari’s exclusive sports cars are synonymous with luxury and high-performance, reinforcing its brand association.
Dove
Real Beauty and Self-Esteem
Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaigns and messaging
Dove’s emphasis on real beauty and self-esteem through advertising has created a strong brand association in personal care.
Starbucks
Premium Coffee and Third Place Experience
Starbucks’ coffee quality and cozy ambiance
Starbucks’ premium coffee and inviting atmosphere create a brand association with a premium coffee shop experience.
Disney
Family Entertainment and Magical Experiences
Disney’s theme parks and beloved characters
Disney’s theme parks and iconic characters are closely associated with family-friendly entertainment and magical experiences.
Harley-Davidson
Freedom and Rebellion
Harley-Davidson’s rebel image and lifestyle
Harley-Davidson’s brand association with freedom and rebellion appeals to motorcycle enthusiasts and riders.
Consider the following list of companies and the thoughts that spring to mind for most consumers:
Google – search engine, answers, information.
Microsoft – Windows, software, personal computers.
Nike – performance, athletes, victory, sport, the swoosh logo.
Tesla – electric vehicles, vision, the future.
Disney – family movies, imagination, fantasy, children’s characters.
BMW – driving performance, luxury, workmanship.
Budweiser – patriotism, hard work, resourcefulness.
Brand association describes the mental connection between a brand and a concept. In other words, it describes the thoughts that enter a consumer’s mind whenever they think about a brand.
Brand association is built on three core foundational elements: visuals, language, and personification.
Brand association is immediately apparent when thinking of companies such as Google, Microsoft, Tesla, Patagonia, and BMW.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
