Much of the positioning and brand development work I do with my clients consists of defining what associations a brand wants to have and what it does not.
Key Takeaways
- Brand association is the connection consumers make between a brand/product and another brand, product, or company due to marketing efforts, product attributes, or other factors.
- Brand associations can be positive or negative and can endure for varying durations.
- Deliberate brand association development shapes how people perceive and connect with your brand, influencing customer loyalty and advocacy.
What Is A Brand Association?
Brand association is when a consumer connects a certain product or brand with another brand, product, or company. This could be because of the marketing that the company does, the way that the product is made, or where it is sold.
Brand associations can be positive or negative, and they can last for a long time or a short time.
A brand association is created when a company or person has something in common with the associated brand, business, person, or location. This can be because of similarities in culture, interests, values, beliefs, styles, or backgrounds.
The importance of brand association
People connect other people, products, services, things, emotions, places, and brands with each other. It’s very important when you are creating your design brand and business, that you intentionally choose which associations you want people to have with your business, and which associations you do not want to have.
Brand association goes far deeper than just the external perception of your brand. It’s about your values, and what kind of mission your business has. But likewise, it’s about what kind of people you want to acknowledge your brand and become devoted fans, advocates, and customers.
All visibility is NOT good for your design brand
In business, it is often said that “there is no such thing as bad publicity”. However, when it comes to building a strong brand, this just is NOT the case.
If your company becomes associated with something negative, it can be difficult – if not impossible – to shake that stigma. Even if your company had nothing to do with the negative event, consumers may still associate you with it.
This can have a serious impact on your bottom line, as consumers may avoid doing business with you altogether. There are a few things you can do to try and mitigate the damage done by a negative brand association, but it’s important to act quickly and decisively.
Not necessarily harmful, but not helpful either…
A bad brand association does not necessarily mean it’s harmful, but it could also just mean that it’s not helping your brand to be associated with the brands that you actually want to associate with.
If you want your brand to associate with certain niches such as wellness, that might also attract people and brands from very or somewhat closely related niches such as sports, bodybuilding, or dieting niches. Maybe, you want to be associated with these niches too, but it could also repel the people in the wellness niche who are not or do to want to identify themselves with them.
Example: brand association gone bad
Working with design, wellness, and lifestyle brands and experts, I see many times a certain collaboration that was intended to build a stronger brand platform, actually harming the brand in the long run.
For example, a well-known home textile designer got approached by a retail chain to cooperate, where the designers licensed their original designs to the retail chain, which in turn manufactured products with much lower quality leveraging the designer’s brand and aesthetics.
The problem, though: since the designer’s original products were in the same category, but prices 10x compared to the retail chain product line, the designer lost their credibility and ultimately, revenue, even though the licensing deal was considered a successful one.
Brand Association Gone Good
For years ago, I helped a luxury home brand expand overseas. They had been positioned in a certain vertical for a long time, and all their marketing was leveraging mainstream marketing places, people & platforms that were natural for that segment.
Problem, though… it was a wrong segment; they wanted to position in the luxury segment whereas most competitors positioned in the mainstream segment. So, we had to rebuild the marketing strategy, change places, people, partnerships, and platforms for their visibility.
This change made the brand to become the #1 player in the luxury segment, and since their product was already exceptional, the strategy we built started to give results immediately.
Brand associations are not always rational
Remember: brand associations are memories or ideas that consumers associate with a product or company. They are not rational, however, as a brand owner, you can do a lot to form these associations.
You can choose to advertise in certain media outlets and ignore others, even if it means you need to 3x your advertising budget. But, in most niches there are brands at different price scales, so you can choose to work with the ones you can afford now, and then move upwards when you grow.
But if you choose the wrong association, just because it was low-hanging fruit, an opportunity, it’s hard to change the perception once it’s getting public.
How do you create your brand association strategy?
There are many different ways to create a brand association. You can do this by setting up cooperations with certain brands, using a celebrity spokespersons, or attending the right events, even if they’re not necessarily to sell more of your product or services.
You can contribute to industry associations, events, and media, to build a name for your brand. You can use certain elements in your marketing to give people a perception of what your brand is associated with. For example, you can shoot your product images at a certain location to build the location association.
Furthermore, brand associations are formed on the following basis:
- Customers’ contact with the company and its team: The level of customer service builds a brand association.
- Quality: the quality which the consumers associate the brand with.
- Products/services category: the type of products or services the brand carries.
- Advertisements: both the type of advertising and the placement of the advertisement create a brand association.
- Word of mouth: people who talk about a brand and identify themselves as loyal advocates, or alternatively, as brand antagonists.
- Pricing: a certain price-based association is created when a product or brand is aligned with a certain price tier.
- Celebrity endorsement: if some celebrities are promoting a brand, it creates an association with the person and their identity. If a celebrity does something that is not aligned with the brand’s values, the brand quickly needs to decide how to deal with it.
- Media: depending on the choice of media partners, a certain brand association can be created.
- POS ( Point of sales) displays: where the consumer buys the products/services.
Building a positive brand association is an important part of your overall marketing strategy. By developing a clear and consistent message, you can create associations that will help your customers remember your brand and what it represents. So be sure to spend time crafting a strong brand association for your business!
