What comes to mind spontaneously when you think of your own brand? And what do your customers answer to the same question? There is often a surprisingly large gap between these two answers – and precisely in this gap lies strategic potential. Because a brand is not what a company communicates about itself, but the image that forms in the minds of customers.

To make this image visible, we use the method of free association: Respondents spontaneously state what comes to mind about a brand – without guidelines, without answer categories. The typical question is simply: “What comes to mind spontaneously when you think of [Brand X]?” Possible answers range from concrete product features to diffuse feelings.

To transform these individual responses into reliable insights, we condense them into a structured brand space in three steps.

From Spontaneous Association to Structured Vergès Matrix

The result is the Vergès Matrix: It organizes all mentioned associations according to two dimensions – how frequently and how early they are mentioned. Associations that many respondents name spontaneously and first form the core of the brand. They are stable, defining, and difficult to change. Everything mentioned less frequently or later belongs to the periphery – more interchangeable and highly situation-dependent.

This structure makes brands comparable: Because the survey is standardized, it is possible to precisely determine how differentiated a brand is actually positioned – and which associations make it distinguishable from competitors.

Our analysis of 72 brand spaces from B2B and B2C reveals a clear pattern: Quality is the dominant top association – for 94% of the B2B brands examined, it is one of the two central core concepts. At first glance, this is reassuring, but at second glance, it’s a warning sign: If almost every brand primarily stands for quality, how distinguishable is it actually from the competition?

B2C brands show a more heterogeneous picture: Only 10% of consumer brands can have their brand core described with just two associations. Here, industry-specific topics often matter – for hotels, for example, culinary offerings, location, and relaxation. Overall, the most important core associations can be condensed into four categories: Quality, Price, Service/Consulting, and Design.

The analysis becomes particularly insightful when linked to the Net Promoter Score®. Brands with a high NPS® have a significantly more dominant top association (average 47% relative frequency) than brands with a low NPS® (36%). A clear, widely shared positioning demonstrably increases the willingness to recommend.

The effect is even clearer with negative associations: They appear in only 14% of brand spaces with a high NPS®, but in 82% of brand spaces with a low NPS®. And even between promoters and critics of the same brand, the mentioned associations differ noticeably – critics more often perceive the brand as interchangeable, while promoters significantly more often name a concrete benefit.

Brand associations are not a gut feeling, but measurable – and they provide concrete starting points for brand management: Where is our brand core clear enough? Where do we rely too much on interchangeable attributes like “good quality”? And how do the images in the minds of our most loyal customers differ from those of our critics?

Those who answer these questions with reliable data instead of assumptions can steer positioning, communication, and product development much more precisely – and consciously sharpen their own brand core instead of leaving it to chance.