Brand Core · Brand Value · Module
Associations
What comes to mind with the brand, how strongly, how favourably and how uniquely — the part of brand value that does the actual work.
The idea
How it works
Associations are judged on three things: how readily they come to mind, whether they are positive, and whether anyone else could claim them. A strong, favourable, entirely generic association adds nothing.
The associations that matter most are frequently the ones nobody intended — a price impression, a memory of one bad experience, an association with a former owner. They are only findable by asking openly rather than by rating a prepared list.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Elicit before you rate
Ask what comes to mind first, unprompted. A rating scale only measures the associations you already thought of.
- 02
Score on all three dimensions
Strength, favourability and uniqueness. An association scoring well on two is common and does no work.
- 03
Record the unintended ones
These are the finding. They are also the ones an internal team will argue are unfair rather than record.
- 04
Compare against the intended set
The distance between what you meant to be associated with and what you actually are is the actionable output.
One level in
The components of associations
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Elicit unprompted before rating. A prepared list can only measure the associations you already knew about.
The other modules in brand value
Awareness
Whether the brand is known, and whether it comes to mind at the moment a choice is being made — which is the harder and more useful question.
LearnLoyalty
Whether people come back, and whether they would defend the choice if a cheaper option appeared — behaviour and attitude, measured separately because they diverge.
LearnValuation
What the brand is worth financially, on a stated method, with the assumptions visible — because the number is entirely a function of them.
Learn