How Atria identified the brand cues that matter most

How do you make a strong brand even stronger — without a new logo or campaign stunts? Atria wanted to know which of its brand assets genuinely drive growth and which merely fill space. A Distinctive Brand Assets study delivered an evidence-based view of Atria’s strongest brand cues. It also produced a practical framework that enables brand, marketing and design teams to make better day-to-day decisions about how assets are used in campaigns, packaging and retail visibility.

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THE OVERVIEW

Atria

CLIENT
Atria

Year
1903

Industry
Food & FMCG

SOLUTIONS
Distinctive Brand Asset Audit

Founded in 1903, Atria is one of the Nordic region’s most recognised food brands and a strong player in a highly competitive chilled and fresh food category. To support the next wave of growth, Atria wanted to move beyond “are we well known?” to “which of our assets genuinely work hardest for us – and how do we use them to grow?”

Together with Nepa, Atria ran a Distinctive Brand Assets study to quantify the strength of its logos, colours, pack designs, origin cues, slogan and sonic branding. The result is a clear, evidence-based asset system that links Ehrenberg-Bass growth principles to everyday decisions in campaigns, packaging and retail.

THE CHALLENGE

From a strong brand to sharper mental availability

Atria already enjoys very high awareness and strong consideration. The focus was on how to prioritize its existing set of assets: how to maximize the impact of the strongest ones, and where it might make sense to deprioritize or phase out cues that are not pulling their weight

Atria had a good sense of which assets “felt” important, but lacked data-driven evidence on three questions:

• Which brand assets are uniquely and instinctively associated with Atria?

• Which are famous, but effectively shared with competitors?

• Which have untapped potential but need more consistent use to cut through?

The Approach

Aligning around Ehrenberg-Bass principles

To stay true to Ehrenberg-Bass, Atria wanted to focus on the assets that drive mental availability – the cues that people recognize quickly and automatically in buying situations and that are well known.. Clear and distinctive brand assets ensure that Atria is noticed and recognised instantly on shelf — and that it is top of mind at the moment of choice.

We connect Ehrenberg-Bass theory to asset-level decisions

Nepa applied a Distinctive Brand Assets methodology rooted in Ehrenberg-Bass Institute principles. Rather than relying on claimed recall alone, the Nepa approach captured how strongly and how effortlessly consumers linked different elements to Atria versus other brands. Two core metrics sat at the heart of the analysis:

• Uniqueness — the share of fast, correct responses for a given element.

• Fame (awareness) — the share of respondents linking an element to any brand at all.

Based on these dimensions, Atria gained a structured view of its brand asset portfolio: which assets it clearly owns, which it shares with competitors, and where there is a risk of spillover to rival brands.

THE RESULT

A shared brand asset playbook

The study confirmed that Atria already owns several of the strongest brand assets in the category. Key logo executions and core packaging designs stood out as widely recognized and uniquely linked to Atria.

The results gave Atria a quantified basis for three simple but powerful shifts:

• Elevate a focused set of primary brand signifiers to lead in campaigns, packaging and retail.

• Define supporting assets that amplify the brand when used alongside these primary cues.

• Put guardrails around more generic category codes, ensuring they are only used in ways that clearly build Atria, not the category or competitors.

All results were delivered in a clear structure that made it easy for teams to work with tiers such as “must use”, “supporting” and “use with care”.

One framework across teams and touchpoints

Brand, marketing, design and retail teams now share a common language for distinctive assets. New campaigns, redesigns and point-of-sale materials are checked against the asset tiers to ensure that the strongest signifiers show up consistently, while emerging assets are given room to grow in a controlled way.

No longer do all brand assets need to be treated as equal. Atria can focus its investment on the cues that do the heaviest lifting for mental availability — and design communication, packaging and retail visibility around them.

In practice, Atria has moved from “what looks good?” to “what builds Atria?” — with a direct line from asset-level choices to long-term brand growth.