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The majority of marketing framework tools address techniques that helpimprove marketing effectiveness for established brands. These tools helpmarketing managers conceptualize project plans in order to predict projectoutcomes before implementation. Common industry tools include the 4 P’s(product, price, promotion, place), 5 C’s (company, context, collaborators,customers, competitors) and Brand Equity Models, (Aaker, Kopp, etc), all ofwhich attempt to analyze marketing issues of established company/productconfigurations. However, during startup, entrepreneurial ideas will be hardpressed to “fit” their marketing efforts into one of these standardizedmodels. Startups experience a myriad of challenges leading up to the launchof the first product that are fundamental to the branding of the company andwhich are not adequately addressed by the existing models. This hands-onworking-paper discusses one of the foundation-forming marketing techniquesthat this author has found useful to improving the chances of startupsuccess—Secondary Brand Associations.Before introducing the secondary brand association (SBA) technique thatwill frame this paper, it is important to first understand the nature of themarketing challenges that confront startup brand managers. In general,startups are constrained by lack of resources—financial resources, humanresources (time and manpower) and track record resources (experience,credibility, working relationships) Startups attempt to compete with muchlarger companies on the attributes of their ideas and of their people, ratherthan on the product attributes that established companies focus on. The goalof marketing efforts during startup formation is to pool sufficient resourcesupon which the company can launch its product or service with enough strengthto earn an early foothold in the marketplace against established competitors.Without first marshalling this resource pool, the startup will have no chanceto compete against larger, stronger companies that have established brandsand experienced marketing teams.To many marketing managers the startup scenario appears to be adaunting task. The marketer assumes he/she is being asked to create a brandidentity both for the startup and the company’s first product (product),establish a pricing mechanism to enter the marketplace (pricing), establishdistribution channels (place) and communicate the message to customers(promotion). With limited resources during startup, this task is nearlyimpossible. The goal of this paper is to help entrepreneurs understand thatthe true challenge to establishing a successful startup brand doesn’tnecessarily lie in marketing the product or service the company willintroduce to the market, but rather in the packaging of the company itself tothe entities who will become facilitators of the product/service launch.Therefore, the marketing techniques used during this stage ofdevelopment cannot be placed into common frameworks because the existingmarketing frameworks assume the presence of resources. In this paper,secondary brand associations will be introduced as an alternative method toaddress this shortcoming. According to professor Ross Petty, secondary brandassociations (SBA) are, “links between brands and other entities that havepre-existing perceived qualities or attributes in the minds of consumers”,that “can establish a connection between the brand and the customer”
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Petty, 2007 (Chapter 9, page 3)
. Inaddition to the connection formed between the brand and the customer, thisauthor feels it’s equally important that the startup establish connection
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