Uncovering the 3 elements of effective brand building
Date: August 9, 2023
Time Reading: 4 min.
By: The BlueOcean Team
Humans are social animals. We are wired from birth to form associations and attachments that help us build and foster relationships with our family, friends, and communities. Along with these associations and attachments come a wide range of thoughts and emotions that color how we feel about them. Maybe a song, a smell, or a special meal take you back to a person you love? The same is true for how we create relationships with brands, which can be as varied – and sometimes complex – as the relationships we have with people in our lives.
It follows, that the most essential elements of building successful brands can borrow several critical elements from human psychology. Research has shown that the elements of brands that best correlate with brand preference and loyalty are brand awareness, brand attachment, and brand attitude strength.
Assessing the effectiveness of brand construction requires us to look both broadly and deeply across a wide swath of data sources. It requires a finely tuned ability to assess not only consumers’ awareness of the brand but also the deeper associations, attachments, and attitudes they have formed with it – and how those attitudes are changing in real time.
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these critical elements of brand construction.
Brand Awareness
Assessing brand awareness is not a simple, binary equation. From the moment of first introduction to a brand, consumers begin building their awareness. Degrees of awareness of a brand – and the prominence of it in a consumer’s consciousness – can be measured distinctly from their personal attachment to a brand. The level of brand awareness is itself correlated with brand selection and preference, so when measuring a brand’s strength and its ability to motivate human behavior, it is essential to include brand awareness as a critical element.
Brand Attachment
Brand attachment is defined as the strength of the bond connecting the brand with a person’s self. This can be highly related to the brand’s prominence: the ease and fluency with which brand-related thoughts and concepts arise in the mind of the consumer. By nature, brand attachment is highly emotional. It can be seen in an individual’s happiness and comfort when in close proximity to the brand, their sadness and anxiety when separated from the brand, and the level of pride they self-display around the brand. With the proliferation of high-attachment online communities – often built by brands – the field of brand attachment has become a prominent area of 21st-century research. This is a boon for marketers who can transform that research into action.
Brand Attitude
Simply put, this is the positivity or negativity of a person’s attitude toward a brand. To be actionable, it is often weighted by the confidence or certainty with which those attitudes are held. Brand attitude strength has been, and continues to be, a popular measurement in evaluating a brand, as it is shown to predict consumer behaviors of interest like brand consideration, intention to purchase, purchase behavior, and brand choice. Brand attitude strength has a natural, understandable, and demonstrated relationship to brand strength and its ability to motivate desirable actions, which makes it a strong methodology for brand evaluation.
Across all these elements, researchers and brand marketers alike have established best practices for the development of effective brands. Cognitive research has shown that the strength of mental and emotional associations people make with a brand correlate strongly to the frequency and consistency with which they encounter the brand. This speaks to the importance of repetition and consistency in the delivery of successful brand content.
