Normally, when writing an article of this kind, I’d keep the punchline to the end.

But I’ll tell you upfront what the secret is: it’s having the right focused message. What’s interesting is why this is so important.

If you think to some of the most successful brands, how would you characterise them? In behavioural terms I think the brands that have achieved the most are the ones that most people would be keen to investigate if they heard they were launching something new.

At a psychological level, I would say the most successful brands are the ones that consistently influence how people behave when they’re subliminally exposed to them: that’s clear evidence that they’ve imprinted themselves on people’s unconscious minds.

One of the challenges brands face is from within the companies that own them. Often new marketing personnel are keen to make their mark and that means doing something new.

The problem is that what seems interesting to a group of people who spend all their time thinking about a brand within the company isn’t processed the same way by customers outside that business who only interact with the brand occasionally.

Now, this isn’t an argument not to change branding or packaging: evolution is important to stay relevant and interesting. But what matters is how clear and focused the thought behind the brand is.

When that thought gets broadened out or becomes mixed the chances are that, rather than increasing your potential target market by providing new messages, you’ll lose impact with the customers you already have.

Researchers recently set about exploring whether it was better to create a brand and connect it with a smaller number of associations, or to aim wider with the expectation that a wider target audience might find an aspect that resonated with them or to link the product to lots of different consumption occasions.

To test this a number of studies were conducted. In the first test participants’ speed of recall of messages linked to one of two invented shampoos were tested to gauge the strength of association.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when people had been given a more focused message they were much quicker to link a relevant property trait to the shampoo.

In the next stage the same people were introduced to a new shampoo that was designed to compete directly with the first products. People who had the stronger associations – those who had been given a more focused message – were more likely to reject the new competitor and to consider it inferior than those who’d heard the less focused one.

In the next experiment, after hearing either a focused or broad brand proposition, participants were introduced to a brand extension; a sunscreen. Again, it was those who had heard the more focused message that were more positive about the new product.

The final test looked at two existing confectionary products and compared the relative strength of association with their brand propositions (again, by measuring speed of response). Participants were then introduced to a new brand of chocolate from the two brands.

As predicted, the brand with the stronger associations was more likely to have its new product accepted.

This study shines a useful light on the importance of creating and gauging the nature and strength of associations with any brand. When conducted in the right way, this isn’t a conscious evaluation, but a test of the unconscious (or implicit) processes going on in the brain.

Going on one step further, perhaps the ultimate challenge for any brand proposition being developed is whether you could tell if someone was taking on the brand’s characteristics? If not, or if there’s a wide spectrum of possibilities, perhaps it’s not a sufficiently focused proposition.

Source: BI Norwegian Business School (2011, May 3). Narrow brands make you want to buy. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 27, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­  /releases/2011/05/110503081149.htm

Image courtesy: Megan Trace