Chapter 7 : Importance of secondary association for enhancing brand equity.

Creating a strong brand is not enough for the companies, but at the same time companies need to leverage it with some external associations. The possible outcome of secondary association is that they generate greater loyalty. Companies can create a substantial competitive advantage through these strategies. The main purpose of using these associations is to create a new brand association.

The first kind of association is people where you endorse your brand through celebrities and sports personalities. The best example is Rolex and Roger Federer. Since an elite watch company is endorsed by a sports person, as Wimbledon is an elite event where top-notch celebrity and royal families come to see this sports. So  Rolex has created an association with this sport.

 The second type of association is through things, events are the first type where you do public relation and organize events like charities. The second type is the third-party endorsements. Where you get yourself endorsed by an external third party to gain more trust, for example, Bahria University is endorsed by Higher education commission of Pakistan.

The third type is Places, where we endorse our product by using the name of the country or the origin of that product. For example, Loreal Paris, the major emphasis is on Paris because of its fashion and cosmetic heritage. Plus you can advertise a country by endorsing its place or a monument. When I talk about Eiffel tower, the first place comes to your mind is Paris and same goes with Statue of Liberty, we can easily recall New York.

One of the most common ways to endorse your brand is co-branding. This concept holds a good position in today's market as well. In this concept, we actually make a small duration partnership with two companies. Sony and Ericson, two different companies combined there resources and expertise for some amount of time and developed a new product, Sony Ericson. Why companies do Co-branding?. The main reasons are they needed some expertise from the other brand. More market expansion, Reduce the cost of production and combined marketing with both names combined create a huge impact. But it is not that easy as it sounds, co-branding has their de-merits as well, for example, loss of control of the power between both entities or the ambiguities of profit sharing

A special case of co-branding is the ingredient branding where a certain part is installed and is marketed with the brand. For example, Intel and Centrino created a mobile technology which was installed in PCs.