Association Principle

So the last night of 2020 perfectly summarised the entire year. At around 8 PM, I got a message from a woman saying ‘Drinks tonight?’. If a girl sends you this as her first message, you naturally get suspicious. But this time, I knew she was real—she had taught at my school and joined during my final years.

Now I am someone who would never say no to such an offer due to the high expected NPV in terms of dopamine. I replied, ‘Definitely’. She called me right away and just asked how long I’d take to reach her.

She shared her address, and I was there within an hour. I took some liquor along post the learning from the wine date incident that had happened years back. The night was quite memorable in a new aspect.

Anyway, coming to the MBA concept of the ‘Association Principle ‘. It is a concept taught in the marketing courses at a b-school. It is a type of advertising technique that “associates a product with a positive cultural value or image”. The association principle links a brand to a specific attitude to persuade consumers.

Firms commonly use it to better position their product in the minds of their target market. (TG). A well-known example is the age-old Cadbury’s India tagline of ‘Kuch meetha ho jaye’.

In India, every occasion of celebration or festival is accompanied by the exchange of sweet delicacies. Cadbury tapped into the adult market by positioning Dairy Milk as a substitute for traditional Indian sweets.

The association principle has interesting insight into the context of modern-day dating. People, especially in India associate a certain positive correlation with dating/matrimonial matches. They have a pre-conceived notion that guys from these college brands are the best matches in every sense. They just focus on the competency part and ignore the other three quadrants in KF4D (Experiences, Drivers, Traits). This leads to a huge expectation mismatch at later stages. If a guy is from a certain pedigree, it doesn’t warrant that he’ll act in a particular way or will be the best match. ‘Correlation doesn’t mean causation‘.

That brings me to the date with my school teacher. Was this the tutoring I’d been waiting for? Post-accident, my balance was off, and when I showed up, she assumed I was drunk. She made up a story about her flatmate’s boyfriend having an accident, but the flatmate’s stifled laughter gave it away. I guessed she didn’t want to third-wheel and was swiping through matches—I’d just reached first. Sensing I wasn’t sober, she moved on, still in time to save her New Year’s. I left the liquor bottle and her last words, “I’ll get back to you,” summed up every HR mail of 2020.

Later,

Sidhant