Tapping the Power of Marketing Word Association

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

A Case of Mistaken Identity?

Have you ever seen a competitor’s print ad, brochure, or heard its salesperson pitch and wondered, “How can they say that, that’s my company’s line (image/positioning)”? When conversing with a prospect or someone in your social network, have you been asked “Aren’t you the people who [insert product or tag line]”? You respond “No, that’s our competitor. We……,” only to be the recipient of the follow-up slap “Oh, it’s hard to tell the difference, you seem so much alike.” After you recover your cool, do you just shrug it off and go back to business as usual? If you do, you’re missing a great opportunity to use this nugget to better differentiate your company.

While there have been a few cases of companies purposely using their branding to cause consumer confusion (or at least create uncertainty), cases of branding ‘mistaken identity’ are more often the result of companies operating in a default mode. With the shrinking global marketplace (and shrinking revenue pie), it’s up to you to build a powerful brand that is clear in its messages, intent and recognition by customers and prospects. It’s critical that your company’s brand, which includes its visual representation, messages, actions, needs to simultaneously accomplish two goals: convey what’s different about what your company can do for the customer, and communicate it consistently and clearly.

To protect its share of the market and grow, a company must be diligent about its brand and marketing strategies. It means that companies must actively engage in the systematic collection and analysis of data about its customers and prospects, competitors, and the socio-economic, political, and cultural environments in which it operates so that the brand remains relevant and valued.

What is your vote for companies with the best branding and why?

Stephanie Leibowitz, MA, Anthropologist At Work