Grow your brand power with these 3 building blocks

These days, the marketing world is all too familiar with claiming "moments" (or Category Entry Points). But why is this not always acted upon in practice? And why is insufficient thought given to the emotional impact and desired behavior that branding should evoke?

Blauw offers a helping hand and examines the Brand Power of brands: the added value of the brand, not in the product or service itself, but in the consumer brain. Three all-important building blocks contribute to this: Salience, Affinity, Performance.

Byron Sharp & Daniel Kahneman

By the 1990s, scientists were already aware of marketing principles with underlying neuroscientific premises. However, this knowledge had not yet penetrated the marketing world. Byron Sharp, among others, changed that, consciously or unconsciously. Sharp showed that more laws exist in marketing than had always been recognized. He did not link this directly to knowledge from psychology; after all, he is a statistician not a psychologist. Still, his data and theory dovetailed with what we already know about consumer behavior.

Before the 1990s, the marketing focus was primarily on customer loyalty. Sharp, however, proved that growth comes primarily from market penetration. The art of marketing is to attract existing customers of competing brands to your products and services. Sharp added: even if you only do that once, with a very large group of category-indifferent buyers (the so-called light users). Daniel Kahneman also brought new knowledge to the marketing world in the 1990s. Kahneman brought insight into the decision-making and influencing processes of (consumer) behavior.

Slowly but surely the knowledge of Sharp and Kahneman is penetrating the contemporary marketer. Many companies now know the terms System 1 (fast more intuitively driven processes that influence behavior) and System 2 (slower, more consciously and rationally considered thought processes). But their practical application is often still lacking. Consumers are primarily presented with advertisements with informational or sales-focused messages, or complex high-over-purpose stories, while advertisements that respond very practically to the consumer's life with emotions and triggers that appeal to System 1 actually prove enormously effective for brand growth. This is because people process advertisements relatively passively and intuitively (or even completely subconsciously), so the brand names are henceforth automatically associated with various aspects of their daily lives (moments, certain emotions and a desired behavior).

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Association network in the brain

Brands are formed in the consumer's brain by association networks in memory. We call these the "memory structures" of brands. Those memory structures are "awakened," or "activated," when people are exposed to an external stimulus, such as a marketing statement. For example, when people see a bottle of Coca-Cola, it evokes all sorts of associations related to this brand. Red-with-white letters. Handsome, half-naked men mowing the grass. Bringing the bottle to your mouth and the result of the sip: 'Aaaaaaah!' The word and feeling "Happiness. Santa Claus. This associative network ensures that one does not see a bottle of glass with a brown drink, but immediately recognizes and experiences the Coca-Cola brand. The brand does not physically exist. It is a construct consisting of associations, deeply embedded in the consumer brain.

The more and the more often the associations around a brand are communicated, the more strongly embedded in the consumer brain. The more powerful your brand power. Do you want to better load this associative network with consumers? Then you will have to be patient as a company, because anchoring the brand in the brain takes time. You're in it for the long haul! But once you've managed that, it also takes time to erase the memories. Do you know when the last time you heard the "Plop!" of a Grolsch bottle passed in communication? Neither do we. Yet people spontaneously strongly associate this sound with the brand, and still exhibit the desired behavior: go to the movies, buy a Grolsch swing-top bottle, and only let it 'plop' open as soon as the lights go out.

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Brand Power research

Blauw recognizes the importance of neuroscientific developments in the marketing world. We therefore conduct brand research based on this knowledge, in addition to Byron Sharp's model (Mental and Physical Availability). But how does this translate into tools and insights that marketers can use to grow their Brand Power?

The three building blocks: Salience, Affinity, Performance

How strong is your brand? How do we measure your brand power? Blauw examines this using three all-important building blocks:

1. Salience: How well your brand is embedded in the lives of consumers

Salience is short for "context. Using well-chosen occasion and consumption moments in your category (also known as Category Entry Points) supported by the right perceptual signals (Distinctive Brand Assets), salience can be measured. The question you need to ask as a company is: When do you want the consumer to think of the brand and what is the brand identifiable as? When we have breakdown on the road we think of the ANWB. Which we recognize by the yellow and white-striped vans along the highway.

2. Affinity: The strength and direction of the emotions your brand evokes

Affinity represents the "emotional surplus value" that branding brings to the brand. What should consumers feel when they think of your brand? What perception does he/she have of the brand? Affinity examines how the brand translates into emotion and as identity (or personality) in the consumer's brain. With the first rainy fall day, we think of stew with Unox sausage, and long for warmth and the feeling of coming home. Do you feel that your bank account at Triodos contributes more to a better world? Then Triodos has struck the right chord with its branding.

3. Performance: How your brand performs at decisive moments of choice

Performance represents the added value that your branding adds to the product or service at the moment it matters: when the brand in the buying environment is to be found, considered and causes purchase. How often is your brand found and chosen in the buying process? Is there hesitation in choosing your product? How does the brand affect the price you charge? If you know how to quickly find the bag of Paprika chips from Lay's on the shelf and don't pay attention to the price difference with private-label varieties, then you are exhibiting the right behavior. If you pay for a cappuccino at Starbucks easily double that of a coffee at AH to-go, then Starbucks got it right. The coffee is not much tastier, perhaps less so.

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