BRAND
A strong brand just pops up in your mind.
We know how to measure in detail what makes a brand strong. And we will help you stand out.
How can Behavio help you?
Brand audit
Compare the salience, awareness, emotions or fast associations of your brand with your 5 competitors.
Where is the room for growth?
Brand Symbols
Map the brand assets in your category. Which are the strongest ones? Which symbols to strengthen via campaigns? Which should you get rid of?
Brand concept testing
Test out and compare your brand concepts or new symbols. Do they use the rules of the subconscious mind?
Example: Why is IKEA a strong brand?
Usually, people answer: “because they sell quality, nice furniture for a good price”. They’re just about right. The correct answer is: because their minds subconsciously believe that IKEA sell quality, nice furniture for a good price. The difference is fundamental. Plenty of brands make quality, nice and affordable furniture, and yet few people buy from them. IKEA is a successful brand because all they do is very appealing for subconscious processes of human brain. Not only in ads, but also when designing products and stores. Let’s take a deeper look.
Salience or "Where should we go get that? Maybe IKEA?"
Our mind makes hundreds of decisions daily, while consciously we are only able to compare around three alternatives. And even that is done at the expense of a lot of glucose. That is why our minds are constantly preparing decisions. When a need arises, the brand that can meet that need instantly comes to mind. When you need a new mobile phone, you go straight to Alza. When you make a pit stop before going on a long drive at night, you reach for a Red Bull, while the other cans on the shelf seem blurred out of focus. This phenomenon of “a product just popping into your mind” is called brand salience.
Salience is not a coincidence. The brand that first comes to mind is the one we most strongly associate with our needs in a given situation. When it comes to buying furniture, for example, we’re looking for quality and a good price. What helps the brain connect a brand to a need?
A brand is strong thanks to good symbols
Unfortunately, for the human brain, we don’t consider IKEA to be well-priced because it did well when compared with other prices and quality, or because it performed well in stress tests. Even if someone was to figure this out, the brain still has a hard time recalling rational arguments.
Maybe our subconscious believes IKEA is well-priced because we have the shape of Allen wrenches burned into our memory, and we have these wrenches associated with assembling something ourselves. We then have assembling something ourselves associated with something cheap or low-priced. Next comes quality, which we have associated with the colours of the Swedish flag, Swedish meatballs, and the Scandinavian food at the checkout counter. Seeing these items opens our association to Scandinavia, which we have associated with quality.
Only certain symbols work. So, which ones?
Strong brands know how to create new ideas and thoroughly utilize symbols that contain all of the following attributes. Their symbols are/they:
- simple, easy to understand for the brain,
- unique,
- induce positive emotions and
- symbolize the given need.
If you would like to understand the relationship between a brand and its symbols better, you can check out our data breakfast video Practical Brand Symbols. We are also happy to prepare a practical workshop for your team using your own brand and symbols.
Join our satisfied clients:
We helped Finlandia find new brand symbols
We tested which symbols strengthen the Finlandia brand. Traditional Scandinavia proved to be easy to understand and attribute, however, it does not affect people’s positive emotions. Based on our research, we discovered different, much more unique symbols, that evoke stronger emotions and have the potential to improve brand awareness.
Fast and reliable professionals. They were always able to push us forward.
Iryna Kasumava
Jaroslav Malina
Chief Digital Officer
It’s great to see behavioral science applied so practically when building a brand and improving a campaign.
Behavio does great research work, plus they offer truly favourable prices, because they were able to automate routine operations.
Tomáš Hrivnák
