I 😃😂😇😢🤪 therefore I am! When emotion makes a brand
10 September 2020These days, a brand can’t just be about appearances, it has to epitomise something. It has to be about its product, its employees and its clients. It has to bring a story to life rather than just tell stories. It has to be an experience that triggers emotions.
"The message and the messenger should have the same distance between each other. The same distance as between the brand and its audience."
Many brands use neuroscience to steer their advertising messages towards a particular area of consumers’ brains and arouse interest or stimulate a desire to buy or to engage. By just focusing on the message, they have forgotten the basics, the messenger, thus creating an element of vagueness. Arousing an element of doubt about the brand’s sincerity. But the message and the messenger should have the same distance between each other. The same distance as between the brand and its audience.
In order to exist, the brand itself needs to speak to our emotions and forge a connection between us using shared values, generating affection and engagement. This stimulation can of course be more or less intense depending on who it’s aimed at, but it must always remain faithful to its own personality.
So this personality is the first thing that needs to be defined, because it’s the unique feature that gives rise to the identity and emotions that it is trying to awaken.
"There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for this, which is lucky for creativity, but with experience it does become easier to recognise which ingredients are worth cultivating."
The brand identity, that je ne sais quoi deep down inside that makes its way up to the surface via a visual, olfactory or sound signature, as well as via an attitude. That je ne sais quoi that arouses our senses and creates a landscape. That je ne sais quoi that makes us feel an urgent need to start a conversation with it. That je ne sais quoi that makes me feel that I mean something to it.
There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for this, which is lucky for creativity, but with experience it does become easier to recognise which ingredients are worth cultivating. They are usually mixed up with the brand’s own history, that of its founder, and of the men and women who bring it to life, but also that of its audience. That becomes clear when a brand’s personality is intrinsically linked to the individuals who make it, and the individuals at whom it is aimed, and not just the only product or service that it offers. It is their emotions that you need to speak to. 100%.
"Appealing to emotions isn’t just the domain of BtoC businesses, it’s also important for any organisation, because a brand’s purpose these days is much less about selling to a target audience than it is about interacting with them."
Responding to the needs of its audience is what makes the brand useful; responding to their aspirations is what makes it unique. That is the role of emotions when it comes to creating a brand identity. Allowing people to see and to believe. Letting the brand express something that goes beyond "logos" (logic), as far as "pathos" (empathy). The brand’s unique personality, which stands out thanks to its role and its graphic attributes, exists precisely because it makes sense to the other person I am talking to through the emotion that I am trying to share.
So appealing to emptions isn’t just the domain of BtoC businesses, it’s also important for any organisation, because a brand’s purpose these days is much less about selling to a target audience than it is about interacting with them. Sales are just a source of energy, not the engine itself. Lots of companies anchor their ROI not just in a pie chart of profit and loss, but also in functional, emotional and societal gains.
"They have these unique ingredients of an extraordinary personality within them…"
We are only in the early days of the concept of the emotional brand, and I am sure that there are lots of strong brands that don’t realise it. They have these unique ingredients of an extraordinary personality within them, providing fertile ground for the expression of their own emotions. Sometimes all you need to do is change perspective, and look at things from the point of view of the people you are talking to for a bit.