Communication is tricky.

It’s easier to market something people can see and understand immediately.A cabin. A car. A chair.

I’m a little jealous of people who sell physical products. Marketing services and technology is harder. How do you showcase something that isn’t tangible? And how do you do it in a way that feels clear, relevant, and a little different from everyone else?

That’s a question we spend a lot of time working on at Lyll. And it’s difficult.

Every brand needs to be associated with something in order to be remembered. We need to attach our brand to a mental hook in people’s minds. “Marketing” is a broad hook, so it would be much better for Lyll if we could build an association with “newspaper advertising.”

A brand association is everything people feel, believe, know, and think about our brand. Our goal is for Lyll to come to mind when marketing managers want to advertise in an online newspaper in Europe.

As part of our effort to solve this challenge, we asked designer Jonatan Herlig to create Addly. Addly will serve as our communication carrier, a visual symbol that makes it easier to recognize Lyll across channels and touchpoints.

In brand management, people often talk about brand associations: the thoughts, feelings, and images people connect with a brand. According to the authors of the book Brand Management (Samuelsen, Peretz and Olsen), the strongest brands are built on associations that are strong, positive, and unique.

For companies that sell services and technology, creating these mental connections can be difficult because the product itself is not physical. That is why many brands use visual devices such as characters, symbols, or mascots.

Addly is our attempt to do exactly that. He can wave, grab a coffee, or be playful, and he wears a suit patterned with newspaper print to create a clear connection to online newspapers as a channel. The goal is to build recognizable associations with what Lyll stands for: simple and affordable advertising in online newspapers.

When people quickly recognize a character, the associations they have with the brand are activated as well. That is one reason why many strong brands invest in distinctive visual assets. Which brands use mascots in your country?

Lyll is still a young company focused on building brand awareness. However, the hundreds of customers who have already used our service have moved one step higher in the hierarchy and gained knowledge about us.

Knowledge associations are formed when customers have experience with your service. They know what it is like to use it, and some may feel they have an ace up their sleeve, a hack not every marketer knows about yet.

Communication is tricky, and there is no single right answer. How do you build a strong liking for your brand?