When consumers think of your brand, what do you want them to remember? Maybe it’s your fun, youthful vibe, or your environmental approach. How your company portrays itself often creates an impression in the minds of consumers well before they’re considering making a purchase.
The decisions you make for your company’s logo, brand messaging, and visuals all contribute to how consumers perceive your brand. As a result, consumers begin to connect your brand with specific feelings and ideas, known as brand association.
Read on to learn more about why brand association is crucial and how to create positive associations for your business.
What is brand association?
Brand association refers to specific ideas customers connect to your brand. One of the goals of marketing and design teams is to create strong and positive associations to attach to your brand name using ads, logos, tag lines, visuals, and other marketing materials.
Customers may associate a brand with a location, characteristics, or the results they promise to deliver. For example, when asked what they associate with Nike, consumers may think of its swoosh logo, its slogan (“Just do it”), its association with Michael Jordan and other famous athletes, and characteristics such as “competitive” or “sporty.”
Why is brand association important for your business?
Your brand associations can affect your reputation and brand equity. Here are some of the benefits of building a strong, positive brand association:
Builds brand loyalty
Brand loyalty means your customers have an attachment to your company and will continually choose your product over a competitor’s. Brand loyalty blooms from the customer’s experience with the product and brand. A strong, positive brand association can lead to loyal customers over time. For example, if your customers think of your jewelry line as one embodying effortless chic and a commitment to sustainability, they may turn to it for repeat purchases because it matches both their style and values.
Drives sales
Consumers who have a positive image of your company are more likely to frequent your business. How consumers perceive your brand and its reputation significantly impacts their purchase decisions. Over half of adults surveyed in the US agreed that a brand’s reputation is critical in deciding whether to buy a product.
Sets you apart from competitors
In a crowded field, a strong brand association can be a crucial differentiator. If consumers know what your brand is about—whether it’s your bold, brutalist aesthetic, your endorsement by their favorite actor, or your innovative scents inspired by the natural world—they’ll know why to choose it.
Types of brand associations
Consumers may associate your brand with emotions, words, images, and more. Here are some of the common types of brand associations:
Personality-based
You can build a strong, positive brand association based around personality—either real or fictional. Think Michael Jordan for Nike, a drum-playing Energizer bunny, or any number of mascots in the cereal aisle. Brands founded by famous celebrities may also capitalize on the connection, such as Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty or Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS.
Benefit-based
Creating benefit-based associations involves highlighting what a product does and how it can make your life better, whether it’s showing how your detergent cleans stains better than competitors or how the organic cotton of your t-shirts feels on your skin.
Interest-based
To create brand associations based on interests, your company can employ a brand strategy that piques the target audience’s interest. Think about what will resonate with your target audience—you can try secret product drops, pop-ups, parties, and other kinds of special offers and events that will help cement positive associations in the minds of consumers.
Attitude-based
You may want your customers to connect to intangible characteristics and attributes. Customers can think your brand is cool and aspirational, stately and luxurious, or dynamic and athletic. You can use your actual product and advertising to create attitude-based associations, but also your customer service, website user experience, and packaging.
Attribute-based
Attribute-based brand association relates to the actual characteristics of your products or services. Maybe your sunglasses are known to have the highest quality lenses, or your furniture line is 100% burnished steel, or maybe all your dolls have accessories in a trademark color.
How to build positive brand associations
- Establish a clear brand identity
- Make a list of associations you’d like to develop
- Create a brand association map
- Build a consistent marketing strategy
- Develop partnerships to cement your associations
- Have a plan to combat negative associations
Building positive brand associations requires developing a clear marketing and branding strategy. Here’s how:
1. Establish a clear brand identity
You need a clear brand identity to stand out from the competition. This includes logos, packaging, brand voice, and typography. For people to have strong ideas about your brand, they must first be able to pick it out of a crowd.
2. Make a list of associations you’d like to develop
This is when you get innovative—think of the associations you’d like your target audience to make with your brand. Try to use both specific and general associations. General associations could be attributes like luxurious or expensive, and specific ones could be hand-sewn, floral, or your memorable logo. Pick a lane—it’s hard to be too many things at once, and you don’t want to muddle your messaging.
3. Create a brand association map
A brand association map can help you visualize the various associations consumers have with your brand. You put your company name in the center of the diagram, and the associations in the circular space around it. The closer an association is to the center, the stronger its connection to your brand.
If your brand is new or you don’t have the data from consumers, you can brainstorm to come up with likely connections. These can include competitors, celebrity endorsements, and attributes like “efficient,” “affordable,” or “hot pink.” By first understanding how customers perceive you, you can work toward either refining or altering those associations.
4. Build a consistent marketing strategy
Develop a marketing strategy to highlight your desired brand associations. Be consistent across all brand assets—your website, packaging, logo, celebrity endorsements, social media reels, and TV ads should all reinforce the same strong brand associations.
5. Develop partnerships to cement your associations
Partner up with people relevant to your brand, who can highlight your desired brand associations. You could contract social media influencers for promotional videos, pay a famous musician to sing in your commercial, or recruit young buyers to become brand ambassadors at their universities.
6. Have a plan to combat negative associations
Not all associations are positive—bad press and negative reviews, whether founded or unfounded, can impact how customers perceive your company. Have a crisis management plan in place to deal with bad press, as well as a long-term policy on how to move the needle on less urgent but often more stubborn associations you’d like to change.
Brand association FAQ
What are the different types of brand associations?
Consumers may associate your brand with attributes of your product (silver, handmade), benefits (energy-saving, waterproof), interesting promotions (pop-ups, secret drops), attitudes (glamorous, family-friendly, celebratory), or personalities (a celebrity partnership or a famous mascot).
What is a good example of a brand association?
As a brand, the Walt Disney Company markets itself as a family company, and positive brand association is built through storytelling. Consumers might associate Disney with “magic,” “childhood,” or feelings such as “nostalgia” or “happiness.” These associations are cemented through its brand assets, including its movie offerings, theme parks, merchandise, and ads.
Is there such a thing as a negative brand association?
Negative brand associations can occur when a brand’s products or company leaders fail or disappoint consumers. A bad reputation goes hand in hand with negative brand associations. Some consumers have a negative brand association with Chipotle due to the company’s multiple E. coli outbreaks in past years. This negative association could deter a potential customer from the restaurant, thus affecting sales and brand equity.
