Building Winning Brands - 7 of 16

The seventh most important thing to know about building winning brands is that ultimately every brand should strive to evoke emotions and create sensory experiences. 

If your brand can achieve emotional connection, it can gain customer loyalty. The customer first must know your brand and then he or she must like your brand. Finally, the consumer must trust your brand and feel an emotional connection to it.

People become emotionally connected to a brand for a number of reasons:

•The brand stands for something important to them.
•The brand is intense and vibrant.  It connects with people on multiple levels across several senses.
•The brand is unique.
•The brand is admirable.
•The brand consistently interacts with them.  It never disappoints them.
•The brand makes them feel good.

Does you brand achieve any or all of the following:

•Make people feel more in control?
•Is it nostalgic of something from their childhood?
•Does it make them feel warm and safe?
•Does it offer a sensual experience?
•Does it make them feel smart or frugal or important when they use it?
•Does it help them play out unfulfilled fantasies?
•Does it make them feel as though they have become the people that they had always wanted to be?
•Does it make them feel more connected to the group they most admire?

There are many innovative ways to achieve this emotional connection – from advertising and the quality of front line consumer contact to consumer membership organizations and company-sponsored consumer events.  Think about Hallmark’s two-minute Hall of Fame commercials and the stories that they tell and the tears that they evoke.  Think about how Harley-Davidson stands for “freedom of the road” and “the comradeship of kindred spirits” more than it stands for quality motorcycles.  Think about the aroma that wafts out of Cinnabon stores in malls. 

Comments

[Doug Karr]

What's interesting about your post (and I agree with it) is that the consumer is who determines the definition of the brand, not the company.

The Marketer can make changes to their brand - but they must check with the consumer to see whether or not those changes had the desired impact.

Would you agree?

So, in this world of blogs, YouTube, piracy, etc... who actually owns the brand? The company or the consumer?

[Derrick Daye]

Doug,

Thanks for stopping by. Still celebrating the Colt's Super Bowl win?

Let me begin to share by quoting Wal*Mart founder Sam Walton:

"The customer has all of the answers...and all of the money."

When you detect brands loosing sight of this - sell the stock.

What I'm getting at is brands only exist to meet human needs. Customer needs.

Products are made in factories. Brands are made in the minds of consumers. Daily they take the sum of all experiences with a brand and measure it versus other brand experiences and expectations and then classify it somewhere above the neck.

From its very first customer every brand is classified. Successful brands greatly influence this system of touch with their brands. Those that do not are at the mercy of imagination and hearsay.

So who owns the brand? As in most things in life: The one with the (most) money.

[Nancy Adams]

I agree that brands, like most things we attach ourselves to, evoke some sort of emotional response in us and this it what causes the attachment. If it's a positive reaction, you've found success.
Unfortunately, this also applies to negative emotions/reactions.
Sometimes, the real challenge is in reversing the negative image.