Brand Associations in Advertising Campaigns with Celebrities

Brand associations are the critical component of brand equity. To create and strengthen brand associations marketers pair the brands with different meaning attributes, including people, places, events. It was argued that the strength of association, which is created during the conditioning procedure, depends on the number of unconditioned stimuli, which are presented with the brand. Three experiments were designed to test this hypothesis and to propose the procedure, which is the most effective for brand associations transfer. Time responses of testees during the priming test were measured. It was shown that the strength of the association between conditioned brand and celebrities is dependent from the number of unconditioned stimuli. The strongest effect can be examined in the condition with several meaning attributes which match the brand.