Brand association: complete mental pre-sale

People often pay attention to brand effects when buying things, but how do brands provide value to companies and customers? This article talks about brand association and brand value creation.

1. Help consumers process or retrieve information

2. Differentiate your brand

3. Create reasons to buy and create positive attitudes or emotions

4. Provide a basis for brand expansion. More importantly, brand association completes the pre-sale of the product in the minds of customers.

1. Help consumers process or retrieve information

1. Brand association can serve to summarize facts and product parameters

Under normal circumstances, it is difficult for customers to obtain and process this information. If companies want to convey this information to customers, they have to pay high costs and prices. For example, if a brand finds a big anchor to promote its products, the anchor's slot fee ranges from a few hundred thousand to millions. In addition to the slot fee, the brand owner also has to give a commission of more than 30%. Such high costs are unsustainable for companies. Brand association provides customers with dense information blocks, making it easier for customers to process information. Many brands that have been promoted through Focus Media have gained popularity on Focus Media, and one of the important reasons is that Focus Media helps brands establish brand associations.

Brand association can influence people's perception of facts. After we see and hear the advertisement of Meiji Landou cheese sticks, we see the image of children and think that children should supplement more protein. Other things are unhealthy for children. However, eating cheese sticks is not only healthy, but also helps children's bone development. So we can't help but buy them online. With such brand association, Meiji Landou can achieve considerable sales even without big anchors promoting the products.

Brand association can influence customers' information recall. Especially when purchasing products, information recall is particularly important. For example, Sanjin has made its blue bottle a brand association. When buying children's or adult OTC drugs, as long as you see the blue bottle, you will think of it as effective and delicious. Such association plays a very good role in the pharmaceutical industry, which is also ignored by many pharmaceutical brands.

2. Differentiate your brand

Brand association is an important prerequisite for brand differentiation. In categories such as red wine, perfume, and clothing, most consumers cannot distinguish between various brands. However, brand association plays a vital role in distinguishing different brands. For example, Chanel's perfume will make women associate it with the unique characteristic of sexiness. Such differentiated association can be said to be a key competitive advantage.

If a brand has a better positioning than its competitors in terms of the core characteristics of its products or in terms of the specific uses of its products, it will be difficult for competitors to attack it. It turns out that both Wanglaoji and Red Bull have conveyed great brand associations through advertising. Wanglaoji can make you think that if you drink Wanglaoji when eating hot pot, you may not get angry. And Red Bull is the functional drink that you think of first when you are sleepy or tired. This brand association has not been destroyed even though Jiaduobao has spent tens of billions of advertising fees. However, after Red Bull was not allowed to run the advertisement "When you are sleepy or tired, drink Red Bull", the brand association was suddenly snatched away by Dongpeng Special Drink's "When you are tired or sleepy, drink Dongpeng Special Drink". Red Bull's position as the number one brand of functional drinks in China has thus collapsed. If a company wants to attack a competitor's market share, the best way is to attack the brand association of this brand. Destroying the brand association means destroying the market.

3. Create a reason to buy

Many brand associations are about product features or customer benefits, which provide specific reasons for customers to choose and use brands. Brand associations are the basis of purchase decisions and brand loyalty. For example, Colgate is an anti-caries toothpaste that makes teeth clean and white; while Yunnan Baiyao toothpaste is made because of the association that Baiyao stops bleeding, and Yunnan Baiyao toothpaste is made to prevent gum bleeding. This association has quickly made Yunnan Baiyao the number one toothpaste brand in the Chinese market in terms of sales and profits.

Some brand associations can also increase the credibility of the brand and the confidence of customers, thus influencing purchasing decisions. In the marketing of sports brands, domestic brands have basically caught up with international brands. For example, Li Ning sponsored the Wuxi Marathon on a large scale, and various domestic sports brands "crazed" for runners who could break three in the full marathon, and asked them to wear branded equipment. These brand operation behaviors are currently aimed at enhancing brand associations and making consumers feel good about domestic sports brands. For example, if pizza uses an Italian name and an Italian head portrait, it is easier to increase people's reputation for this pizza brand. This is where brand association plays a role.

4. Create positive associations

Positioning factions, including Trout, look down on Nike's slogan "just do it" and think it would be better for them to directly position their brand as "the brand that superstar athletes wear." But they overlook that, in fact, it is not the so-called positioning that is working, but the brand associations that consumers have after hearing the brand. Slogans like "just do it" can make consumers have positive associations, and they can be associated with the Nike brand, and seeing the Nike hook can also generate positive associations. These positive associations are much sexier than a dry "brand that superstar athletes wear."

Therefore, whether it is a logo, a slogan, or a design, the key to evaluating its quality is whether it creates a positive and beautiful brand association for the brand. When a company builds a brand, it should not be trapped in how to position itself, but should think about how to spread its brand and obtain positive brand associations, and help consumers make decisions through beautiful brand associations.

Author: Liu Yichun, WeChat official account: "Liu Yichun's brand product innovation"