Lessons of Branding and Mental Availability...

A brand needs to own one thing. It’s advice I’ve heard throughout my career.

At Tesco, we were constantly told a retailer had to be either the lowest price, the best quality, the largest assortment, the best service, or the easiest shopping trip. Yet Tesco powered to the largest retailer in the UK by offering a mix across all of these, backed by an approach of doing every little thing it could to improve customer lives.

In their classic book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout argued that the only way brands could win the battle was to stand for just one concept, as it was almost impossible to link more concepts in people’s minds. But in customer research, I’ve yet to find a brand that’s only associated with one concept. What surfaces instead is a network of memories and associations, a bundle of facts, opinions, experiences, and emotions associated with the brand.

What’s in people’s minds is certainly critical. As Daniel Kahneman has taught us, our conscious brain, which Kahneman termed System 2, doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to deal with the many decisions we need to make every day. Instead, we use a different system for most of them (System 1), which relies on engrained memories to make quick intuitive decisions.

So rather than a single concept, it’s the network of associations in our memories that defines our view of a brand. It determines whether the brand automatically comes to mind and is purchased in a buying situation. The likelihood of this happening is what has become known as a brand’s mental availability.

This then gives branding a very specific objective: to build and shape the network of associations in people’s memories so that the brand becomes an automatic choice.

An effective network needs strong, consistent, and positive associations

To work effectively, the network needs to be strong, both in terms of how tight the links are to the brand and the sheer quantity of associations it has. It also needs to be consistent from person to person, as shared associations are what define the brand. And the associations need to be overwhelmingly positive.

For example, when I was researching H&M and Uniqlo here in California, the H&M logo triggered a strongly developed network of associations which was fairly consistent from person to person. But Uniqlo surfaced few associations, as most people had limited experience of it. Uniqlo may be a strong brand in many countries, but it’s certainly not going to come to mind automatically among fashion shoppers here.

In contrast, when researching Trader Joe’s, Ralph’s (part of Kroger), and Walmart, all three surfaced strongly developed memory networks. However, while Trader Joe’s was overwhelming positive, Ralph’s was more neutral, and Walmart’s more negative. This explains why their Net Promoter Scores showed a similar pattern.

Thinking about networks also gives more insight into the success of Tesco I mentioned earlier. Since it focused on multiple concepts rather than just one, it was able to build a more extensive network of positive associations.

Three key types of associations

To create and shape a robust network, the start point is to ensure that the brand has some distinctive elements (logo, color, etc) which can memorized, to enable the brand to be recognized. These then form a kind of hashtag in our minds to which memories can be linked.

However, not all associations are born equal. An effective network needs to be shaped around three types of associations:

The core promises of the brand

These together convey the value that the brand offers.

The job it can do or the problem it can solve for people. The meaning it has to offer. How easy is it to use. And so on.

relevant usage occasions

While distinctive elements will trigger the network when noticed, you also want the brand to come to mind in relevant situations, even when it’s not in the room. So it needs to be linked to all relevant usage occasions.

Take Coca Cola. It doesn’t just come to mind when we’re hot and thirsty. Also, when we’re in a movie theatre, eating a burger or pizza, or shopping in a supermarket.

Intrinsic goals

Just coming to mind though, is not enough. We also need to be motivated to purchase. While this can be done through external triggers (e.g., promotions, impactful displays, etc.), building links to our subconscious motivators creates more chance of automatic purchase.

These are goals that we perpetually seek, which drive much of our behavior without us being aware of them. As described in Phil Barden’s excellent book Decoded, these can be thought of as our desire for security, autonomy, and excitement.

If you link one of these goals to the brand, then it will increase our motivation to purchase.

Building associations is a long-term endeavor

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Nor are brand networks.

Associations take time for us to learn

Take John Lewis, a Department store in the UK. Today, you can’t think about Xmas and gifts there without immediately considering John Lewis. However, it started building this positive association more than a decade ago, with a campaign that illustrated the joys of gift giving at Xmas. It’s still going today.

Our minds constantly evolve

Furthermore, our minds don’t just stand still. They are constantly learning and evolving from the latest experiences. Even when a strong, consistent, and positive network has been formed, it needs to be continually refreshed.

We learn through experience

Finally, we can’t just absorb a network through advertising. Rather, we learn from our experiences with the brand. The associations you want to build have to be threaded through the brand experience.

How to do that though, is a subject for another day…