When a Strong Brand Holds You Back

What do you do when the thing that made you a loved brand is the very thing that's holding you back?

Most marketers spend their time trying to build stronger brand associations. But sometimes the challenge is having associations that are almost too strong.

Brains are great things.

They make connections all the time. Building up a collection of feelings, experiences and memories that are associated with a person, a thing, a place. Or a brand.

When brands are strong there are any number of positive associations that communications can build on or reignite.

But sometimes those associations are so strong they hold a brand back, stopping them from staying relevant or being able to drive reappraisal.

Because brains are also lazy.

Once those connections are made, everything a person sees, hears or experiences about a brand is filtered through that lens.

That could be a feeling of cosy nostalgia that’s stopping your brand from seeming modern. Or, as in the case of our recent campaign to reposition teaching for the Department for Education, it’s the very strong associations teaching has as a selfless vocation. A career that’s not about what you get, but what you give the children you’ll teach.

For decades, this idea of teaching has been so successfully embedded in our minds that it’s created what we called ‘an altruism eclipse’. Any time the more ‘self-directed’ benefits of being a teacher were communicated they fell into a literal blind spot and failed to change the perceptions of teaching.

Which might not have mattered if the number of young people saying teaching was ‘a career for people like me’ wasn’t on a consistent decline.

So, what did we do about it, and what can other brands do when they’re facing their own eclipse?

The first step is knowing what the problem is, discovering what your brand associations are and how deep they go. These things are often subconscious, so it’s not just a case of asking people what they think. Plan for good research that gets instinctive responses.

Then, you need to find your triggers. Anything that inadvertently reinforces the associations you are looking to shift. For example, for teaching, there were some specific words we had to avoid and we had to be particularly careful about how and when children would appear within the campaign, so they didn’t prevent the teacher from being the lead.

Finally, find your credible new connections. What new associations can you build that overcome the eclipse while still feeling believable to your audience? In our case we looked at the top factors that young graduates were seeking in a career and homed in on those that were both ‘self-directed’, and true of teaching. Embrace these new connections with the messages you create, the people that deliver them and the places you show up in.

Now the campaign is live, we will be tracking how it’s landing in culture and whether we’ve changed the way teaching feels in the minds of the next generation. Ultimately, we’ll see if we’ve broken through the altruism eclipse.

Every brand benefits from strong associations. The challenge is recognising when those associations stop acting as a spotlight and start acting as an eclipse.