Free Association

All of us know about brands. They are created for us. We are the ones who value them for their popularity or image. This means we are the sources for brand equity.

How do we really measure it?

We do it in the same way as we do for our performance or while analyzing anything – in a qualitative or a quantitative manner

Let us start with the qualitative aspect.

What makes us to get associated with a brand? Mostly, it happens subconsciously. It just seeps in our mind and creates a mind set based on awareness, attitude and an attachment towards the brand.

For example, let’s talk about a brand which has a specific musical jingle. Every time you see the product or use that service, you mind goes plays it within.

The journey of branding first takes place in people’s mind where it gets imprinted then gets encoded and finally gets stored in the mind forever!

There was once an incident, where I was talking to a vendor manager for the very first time on an RFP. Somehow, our discussion took a turn and we started discussing on services or solutions for banks. Though, he wasn’t even remotely connected with banks.

After few minutes, he said “there is a company, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, they have developed good solution and it’s been accepted in many other banks as well”. In my mind, I was thinking that hope it's my company he is talking about. I asked him “Do you know what sort of solution it is? “And he started telling. I immediately understood that I was right.

To be very sure, I asked him the key personnel’s name or the brand name. He couldn’t recall it. That certainly left me disappointed. Still, I was also happy that at least he knows us through our work! Of course we landed up having a long conversation and he was indeed happy to know more about us.

So, the point I am making is that, when a person associates with a brand, there are few factors that influence the recall.

For example:

Repetition of ads, promos, GTMs etc. build on the association with the brand

Whereas, interference of similar brands does the opposite.

Also, the time between exposure and encoding to storage does matter.

Finally, the retrieval cues encircle back to the repetition.

To have a better hold on these factors, a consumer’s mental-map is quintessential. It can be built upon simple questions like foresaid example;  What does your mind say when you hear a brand. 

For getting an insight, it has to be probed further with a thoughtful questionnaire to let the consumer speak their mind. 

Questions like enlisted ones does help -

What do you like best about the brand?

How is it different from others?

In what way, it is similar to other brands?

Before even getting to this, a brand audit needs to be done to identify the buyer, decision maker, influencer, want/need and the demography.

In a nutshell, this is all about one of the qualitative research techniques for measuring sources of brand equity - Free Association

- Saranya