We’re all familiar with word association exercises. One person says a word and then the other party replies with the first word that enters her/his mind. The immediacy of the response is essential to what the exercise is meant to uncover ……an unconscious or unvoiced reaction, memory, or emotion. In marketing, you want customers and prospects to have an immediate, positive reaction (and emotion) when experiencing your brand (through any or all of the five senses) so that it creates a lasting positive experiential memory.
As part of a university course that I teach on Marketing and Communications, I conduct a variation of a word association exercise in the first session as a way to elicit communication styles of the students, learn about their perspectives on the subject, and set a reference point for class discussions. Each time I facilitate the exercise, I am struck by the observation that the students’ associated word responses not only reflect the underpinnings of the subject matter but also share the first letter of the word pair. The most common ‘word association’ responses have been as follows:
Marketing: memorable, message, momentum, mission, media, meaningful, mirror (or match), muscle (as in having substance), method (an approach), multicultural, measurement.
Communications: customized, culture, comprehension, context, conviction, consistency, completeness, channel, creative, clarity, compelling, content.
What words and/or images come to the minds of your customers and prospects when they see your company’s name or otherwise experience your brand? How do these responses match your intended word association/message? Send me your word associations.
Stephanie Leibowitz, MA, Anthropologist At Work
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