Brand Transference

By Tommy Leung on 08/25/2010 in Marketing

I’ve grown to really like FreshDirect–possibly even love. They are like the Amazon of supermarkets. I am a native to the digital world. I am generally more comfortable shopping online than I am in a brick and mortar store.

There’s no way to search by keyword at a store. I don’t see what other people also bought or what they bought instead. I can’t read reviews.

When it comes to the supermarket, packages of meat and vegetables don’t come with descriptions. I can tell the difference between beef, chicken, and pork. I have little knowledge of what each cut means.

It’s even worse in the vegetables section. I know lettuce, spinach, and that’s about it. Everything else is just more green stuff. And how to cook it? I have no idea! I eat my vegetables as a salad.

Reinventing Food Shopping

FreshDirect changes all of that–as well as ensuring I get fresh food and delivering it to my door. I can read about different cuts of meat, types of vegetables, what goes good with them, how they can be eaten, and how they should be cooked.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a foodie or an aspiring master chef. I just want my food to be relatively easy to prepare, taste good, and be nutritious. That’s really it.

FreshDirect is more than just the supermarket that delivers to me even though I do love that part. They also help me with what I do after I get the food. I’ve used FreshDirect for well over a month and it’s been great and I can say that I trust them; their brand is in good standing with me.

Because the FreshDirect brand is in good standing with me, I have tried new foods that I wouldn’t otherwise try and new brands that I wouldn’t otherwise try.

I am going to refer to this as brand transference. There might be another term for this but, I don’t remember any from marketing classes. The idea is as simple as the concept of guilty by association. Except, this is a positive association.

A Tea Story

I drink tea once in a while. Mostly because the only brand I am aware of is Lipton. My local supermarket does sell other brands but, I don’t know them from a hole in the wall. All I have to go by is price and their boxes–none of which is that appealing.

And since I can’t see reviews or get recommendations of which tea is good, I just go with the least worst choice price wise. I can’t even recall the name of the brand of tea I had bought last from the supermarket. It took me months to finish it and it wasn’t that good. I just assumed tea wasn’t that good–Lipton surely isn’t.

It wasn’t until I did a search for “organic tea” at FreshDirect that I found Yogi Tea. I trust FreshDirect to carry good products and there aren’t that many organic teas to choose from. Yogi had the largest selection and each type of tea was marketed for a different goal–detox, anti-oxidants, immune boost, etc.

I had never heard of Yogi Tea until I found them on FreshDirect. I bought a box. It was a simple and painless decision unlike when I’m standing in a supermarket aisle trying to choose between 10 different types of teas that all look similar with little descriptive differences.

I have tried 3 different boxes of Yogi Tea and even gifted one. I like their product. I may have very well seen Yogi Tea at my local supermarket or CVS and didn’t pick it up. There is too much clutter at the supermarket and I don’t trust my local supermarket to only carry good products.

My local supermarket has a neutral brand standing. I don’t love them and I don’t hate them. They are like a stranger and we don’t give much weight to suggestions from strangers. It’s our friends who we trust. They could be wrong but, we’ll trust them.

Word of mouth is a form of brand transference. The trust you have in your friend–the brand–is transferred to the product they recommend. If someone you dislike recommends a product, a negative feeling will be transferred to that product. Brand transference applies to the positive and negative.

Using Brand Transference

Word of mouth is no easy thing to bring about. You need to do something worthy of being talked about. And even then, when you think you’ve got something amazing, a lot of other people need to as well. Otherwise, no one is going to talk about it.

Why do cute cat videos go viral on YouTube? Is it really that amazing? Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. There really is no reliable way to make something go viral–it’ll happen for all kinds of reasons, few of which are completely predictable.

Simple brand transference can be created reliably. Brands do it all the time. When a brand decides to sponsor a charity or a cause, that’s using brand transference. The positive feelings people have for the charity’s cause is transfered to the brand that is sponsoring.

Brand transference can also be used for brands that want to establish a certain image to associate with existing brands that already have that image. Partner with, co-sponsor, or otherwise cooperate publicly in some way.

Brand transference is a simple and easy means for any brand to adjust or build their brand image quickly and effectively.