Branding Strategy Insider

Identifying Emotional Benefits For Your Brand

To be truly effective at brand marketing we need to understand which concrete features and functional benefits of our brand (as well as the brand as a whole) evoke feelings most strongly and which do so without simultaneously creating emotional anti-benefits (aversive feelings).

This is not a new concept. "Laddering" is a term used to refer to a technique wherein a focus group moderator begins with a specific product feature and continues to ask the respondent 'what is good about that' until a specific emotional benefit that supports the respondent's self esteem is unearthed. The essential concept is that every functional benefit or feature which is sought after, is sought after for an emotional reason.

Even a completed price based benefit (e.g. 'costs less') is understood to be emotionally motivated because people in different categories may desire that benefit for different reasons. (Saving money in the automobile category may be found to lead to 'I am safe' or 'I am financially secure' whereas saving money on a package of gum may more likely lead to 'I feel wise' or 'I am a smart shopper'). Even brand choices can be 'laddered on' to determine the key emotional benefits which are associated with them. One limitation of laddering however, is that in reality there are MANY emotional benefits associated with each product or service feature (laddering tends to assume just one). To craft an effective marketing strategy we wish to know the extent to which each product feature supports EACH of the desired emotional benefits in the human spectrum. (We also need to know where the competition is in this emotional terrain, what the multivariate emotional field looks like -- what SETS of product features are most associated with desired emotions or desired SETS of emotions)

Brands Must Be Built On Emotional Benefits

Emotional and psychodynamic factors are long known to drive brand selection and loyalty. Even in today's price-sensitive economy, the imagery attached to brands goes far beyond product attributes, functional benefits and price.

All products and brands develop personas in consumers' minds. All project varying user images, which differ by audience. Members of one audience may buy a product because it makes them feel affluent. Members of another, which values thrift, buy a brand because it makes them feel like smart shoppers.

More generally, consumers buy products with imagery that is either consistent with their positive view of themselves ("I'm sophisticated and therefore buy this type of wine to complete my image") or which conveys a plausible aspirational model - something they would like to be and believe they could conceivably achieve ("I can be a real ladies' man if I drive a sports car.")

In fact, we have discovered that the essential component of Brand Character goes far beyond advertising slogans and packaging. The most powerful influencing factor in purchasing habits is the subtle, often-overlooked product/consumer relationship. A vital brand has a "relationship" with loyal users not unlike a healthy relationship between two people.

Brand Building: Is ‘Function’ The New ‘Emotion’?

The ‘emotional’ revolution that has engulfed the marketing world is undeniable: brands are constantly seeking to win our wallets by way of our hearts.  The mythmakers of Madison Ave did so by crafting poignant stores that masked products’ imperfections or downright uselessness.  Though today’s marketers are forced to meet a slightly higher standard of credibility, their goal is still to teach us how their brand is supposed to make us feel.  It seems it’s not enough for soap to clean and moisturize – it must also compel us to philosophize about what it means to be beautiful. 

Psychology, and more recently, Cognitive Neuroscience, have elucidated the critical role emotional plays in our day-to-day existence.  We have entire brain regions dedicated to expressing, perceiving, and processing emotions, and so it is no surprise that emotions lie at the core of many of our decisions and behaviors.  But marketers have, for the most part, misinterpreted the implications of our biology for their brand-building activities.  

The most successful companies in the world understand that brand and business growth don’t result from the kind of emotion that is manufactured in an advertisement.  Instead, these companies channel all of their energy into creating magnificent products that add true, tangible value to people’s lives.  Emotion – and the financial commitment it inspires – actually emerges as an organic side-effect of satisfied functional needs.

Brands And The Feelings They Evoke

How does your brand make people feel? Does it make them feel safer or more secure? Is it reassuring? Does it make them feel more in control? More confident? Does your brand make them feel sophisticated or sexy? Do they feel as though they are making a difference in the world by purchasing and using your brand? Does your brand put a smile on their faces? Does it harken back to a simpler time, a time of innocence and playfulness? Does using your brand make them feel as though they have status? Does it reinforce who they perceive themselves to be? Does it make them feel smart? Does it make them feel uninhibited and free? Does it amuse them? Does it make them feel as though they have arrived in society? Does it give them a sense of belonging? Does it take them back to an earlier time in their lives? Does it take them back to their childhood? Does it help them fanaticize about their future? Does it make them feel romantic? Stylish? Giddy? Does it make them want to sing or dance?

Brands can do all of these things and more. Don’t forget about how your brand could make people feel.  People are much more likely to respond to feelings than a laundry list of attributes and features.

For each of the feelings that I have listed above, can you think of at least one brand that evokes those feelings?

Sponsored By: The Emotional Connection Workshop

Brand Messaging For A Strong Emotional Response

Recent breakthroughs in neuro-science confirm what we marketers know in our guts, but sometimes forget in the day-to-day rush of preparing the next ad campaign launch. Namely, everybody feels (emotions) before they think (rational decision), and without generating the appropriate emotional response, no ad campaign can succeed.

Here are some guidelines to help avoid that fate.

Get Physical

Sight and sound are fine, but over-used. Leverage the sensory dimensions of feel, touch and taste to create more intimacy and differentiation. Remember: the brain originated with the sense of smell. So Descartes got it wrong: it's more like, I can smell, therefore I feel/think and will buy your product.

Keep It Simple

You've got three seconds to connect. The joke that has to be explained is never as funny as the joke you just get. The frustration of "huh" (message-itis) is marketing's hidden emotional cancer. Consumers feel lost more often than anybody wants to admit.

The Emotional Connection Workshop

The Blake Project offers a unique workshop that is designed to dial up your customers’ emotional connection to your brand.  Here’s how it works. First, we talk with your customers to understand what emotional connection currently exists and to what degree and then we gain your consensus on what types of emotional connection you would like to increase. Next, we lead you in a series of ideation sessions in which we design sources of increased emotional connection against your objectives. Finally, we prioritize the ideas generated in the ideation sessions and pull it all together in a written report of recommended actions.

In the research, we seek to understand how your brand connects with its customers and with which customer attitudes and values it is best aligned. We will conduct this exploration by customer segment if required. In our consensus building session with you, we also probe to understand by what values your organization strives to live and with what personality attributes. The ideation sessions are highly facilitated. They include a broad array of creativity exercises and ideation techniques and are always energizing for its participants.

We will often organize the sessions by customer touch point and will explore how different behaviors, processes and senses could affect your customers’ emotional connection to your brand. We apply a specific set of evaluation criteria to the ideas generated at the ideation sessions to insure that the ones you choose have the highest impact and ROI possible.

Building Emotional Connections To Your Brand

 

If a brand is able to consistently connect with its customers on an emotional level, it is much more likely to achieve strong customer loyalty. So, how then does a brand create this emotional connection? We have created a process that enables organizations to understand how emotionally connected their customers are to their brands, and based on that insight, to develop ways to create stronger emotional connections. The first part of the process is research-based and seeks to understand the ways in which customers connect emotionally to the product or service category and then to the brand itself. The second part of the process generates hundreds of ideas for strengthening that emotional connection based on the insights from the research. Next, the ideas are culled down to those that can be implemented quickly and that have the highest potential for success at the lowest possible investment. Finally, we develop a plan to implement these ideas.

So, what have we learned from using this process with our clients? First and foremost, a brand must be trustworthy. It must consistently deliver on all of its promises. All customer touch points must be in alignment on this. Related to this, an organization should never oversell its capabilities. Set customer expectations realistically.

Next, organizations would do well to be customer-centric. That is, they should be driven by meeting and exceeding customer expectations rather than squeezing one more cent of profit out of each “transaction.” In a related manner, organizations should strive to treat every one of its customers as it would a beloved friend or family member, with that same level of caring and respect.

Organizations should try to be as transparent as possible in their interactions with customers so that customers don’t feel as though the organization is “hiding something from them,” or worse, lying to them or cheating them. It is always helpful for an organization’s managers and its other employees to “live the brand” with their customers or to at least “walk a day in their customer’s shoes.” The simplest way to do this is by monitoring customer service calls for at least one day each quarter. Better yet, people could experience the brand directly with their customers much as Harley-Davidson executives do as they ride and interact with their customers on H.O.G. (Harley Owners Group) rallies. Another strategy is to surprise and delight customers with extraordinary service as often as possible so that the customers themselves become the brand’s biggest evangelists. Create some brand legends. And the realization that happy employees make for happy customers cannot be overemphasized.

How does an organization achieve these ends? Through hiring criteria that includes ways of interacting with customers, balanced scorecards that include customer-centric measures, rewarding employees for treating customers well, designing specific brand proof points into each point of customer contact, developing new points of customer contact, simplifying and externally communicating customer processes and customer service policies, training customer facing employees in the art and science of superior customer service, designing ways for employees to experience the brand as their customers do, establishing a set of “guiding principles” by which employees should live and treating employees with the same caring and respect with which they should treat their organization’s customers.

These are just some of the insights from our “emotional connection” projects. We can help you create stronger emotional connections with your customers. You can learn about about our Emotional Connection Workshop here.

Sponsored By: The Emotional Connection Workshop

Building Emotional Connections with Research

 
The most compelling brands usually connect with consumers at an emotional level. Their benefits are often experiential, emotional or self-expressive.  Certain types of research can help marketers understand which benefits will have the greatest emotional impact.

Following are some of the types of research that one could use to identify these sources of emotional connection:

Laddering – this helps one understand the following links: product or service features and attributes → functional benefits → emotional benefits → underlying consumer attitudes and values →  self-image → self esteem (“I feel good about myself.”). The researcher leads the research participant from brand or product features and attributes to self-esteem through a series of “why” questions. The most powerful levels at which to communicate with the consumer are at the emotional benefit, attitudes/values and self-image levels.

Projective techniques – these help the marketer uncover brand associations that the average person cannot or will not articulate unless asked indirectly. Typical projective techniques include:

o    Sorting (into two piles: “This is the brand,” and “This isn’t the brand” or “This is the brand’s consumer” and “This isn’t the brand’s consumer”) – can be done with the products themselves, images, colors, flavors, textures, sounds, etc.
o    Analogies, including “If the brand were an animal, what kind of animal would it be and why?” or “If the brand were a car, what kind of car would it be and why?”

Building an Emotional Connection

 
To achieve brand insistence 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.

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.

It is especially important to ensure that all of your employees with front line customer contact are Boy Scouts –that is, that they are trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind and cheerful.  Add to that list empathetic, good listeners and reassuring.  Accomplish this by establishing the appropriate hiring criteria, training and organization culture.  Remember, good service is all about creating positive feelings, treating people well and solving people’s problems.

Ultimately, emotional connection will come from positive shared experiences with the brand over time.  While this trust is built over time, offering an unconditional guarantee is a quick way to reduce the risk of a new unknown brand and to generate some minimum level of trust immediately.