By Stan Roach
“Consumers still buy products whose advertising promises them value for money, beauty, nutrition, relief from suffering, social status and so on.” ― David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising
These words from David Ogilvy are as important today, as they were when they were first written. The world of branding hasn’t changed all that much through the ages, although we would like to believe otherwise. Persuasive copy still sells, creativity is appreciated, consumers expect to be charmed, and astute brands continue to pull on the emotional strings of consumers to make a sale.
This emotional targeting of consumers should also be seen from the perspective of sustainable branding. Emotional branding appears credible, conversational, impressive, and impactful. It also has the innate ability to ensure a brand’s core business resonates with the consumer. This is why it is sustainable.
The practice of leveraging emotions to strengthen brand value is based on the fact that humans are emotional creatures. Press the right buttons and you elicit the reactions you want.
So why do marketers still shy away from tapping into emotions. On reason is the sheer number of human emotions that they believe exist and the difficulties involved in zeroing on the right emotions to target.
Well, these marketers are wrong, at least that’s what scientists at the University of Glasgow seem to suggest in a recent study. According to the study, humans have four distinct emotions. These biological based emotions include happy, sad, afraid/surprised and angry/disgusted. So, conventional thinking suggests, tap into any of these emotions from the branding perspective and you are home free.
Branding and Websites
To see emotional targeting as a subset of sustainable branding let’s take a look at a few websites that have turned this into an art form.
Why websites? As contemporary branding tools that help spread brand messages, these websites have no equal. In fact, if you want the perfect blend of emotions and sustainability in your brand messaging, there is no better medium than a website.
Let’s take a look:
Credit: Nike, Inc.
Nike does emotional targeting brilliantly and it’s been doing this for quite some time now. The brand inspires customer loyalty through the use of images displaying emotions -- passion, energy, happiness, assertiveness, contentment, and seeking -- and aligning these emotions with its brand strategy. In doing so, it captures the essence of the brand in all its glory. It’s telling its customers, “Use Nike products to stretch the limits of endurance and win against all odds, that too in style.” The company keeps making this point again and again.
This is sustainable brand messaging at its best.
Another example:
Credit: Exxon Mobil Corp.
Here you have a company selling gasoline and diesel using emotional targeting to spread its brand message. Exxon Mobil has a website that talks about energy efficiency, the transformational power of energy, and it has emotional imagery to back it up. The use of emotions humanizes the brand and lends it with a bit of positivity; this is necessary for a brand that belongs to a domain, which as a matter of course has to regularly battle charges of pollution.
In this particular case, emotional branding staves off the negative reputation that companies operating in the oil domain usually generate, when it comes to environmental pollution.
And from oil to fast food:
Credit: Yum! Brands, Inc.
KFC uses emotions to tell its target audience that the fast food chain is "worth eating at." The web page talks about the hard work that goes into the making of a KFC meal; you don’t really associate effort with the preparation of fast food do you?
But when you read about it and you see these images of people busily rustling up KFC grub, you get this feeling that eating at KFC is a decision worth your money. The company has stuck to this brand messaging for quite some time now; it picked a sustainable idea for branding and it has run with it.
If a branding idea works, why not keep using it?
Decisions Are Emotional
At their most basic level, all decisions are emotional. We make an emotional decision and then begin to find some logic for them. You make an emotional decision to do business with a company (buy a product/hire its services) and then start to rationalize this decision.
This is why you need to “hit” people with emotional branding, the kind of branding that causes a reaction, creates the right sentiments in their minds, and generates the right kind of mood that helps them think positively about your band.
An emotional response once triggered by your brand stays put in the subconscious of your target audience. As you keep fanning this response, you will find the messaging achieving a sustainability of its own.
Loyalty and Fighting for the Brand
I read this article on Forbes about a majority of iPhone users having "blind loyalty" for the device. While the purpose of this article was to discuss why it was bad news for Apple, the fact that you have diehard Apple fans means they are emotionally vested in the device.
Where does this emotional investment come from? You guessed it – emotional targeting. More than selling product benefits, Apple typically makes it a point to sell the emotional benefits of its products.
Remember Apple’s 1997 slogan “Think Different”? That was a slogan with immense emotional heft. Since then, Apple’s brand marketing has continued along similar lines and the company has built a customer base that is emotionally tied in with its products, so much so that many customers will fight for the brand. "Three Important Marketing Lessons from Apple’s iPhone’s Latest Advert" is a great read about the company’s incomparable marketing strategy.
Apple has used emotions to create a sustainable branding strategy that has a life of its own. It doesn’t have to try too hard to make an impression on its intended audience.
Emotions Are Sustainable
Think about it for a second, every brand under the sun is sparing no effort to advertise the benefits of its product or services. So here’s a question: how will your brand compete in a saturated niche; where will it get its competitive edge from? This is where emotional branding enters the picture. Think of it as the sustainable X factor that helps your brand outpace its competitors.
I’ve talked about Nike earlier in the article. The brand faces some tough competition from Adidas, Puma, Rebook, and newer entrants like Under Armour. But, the brand is growing at a strong pace, and there is every chance that it will emerge as the leading player in the sports apparel market.
One “small” reason why this is happening is the sustainable nature of its branding efforts, courtesy emotions. While there is no study that gives irrefutable proof of direct connection between a brand’s ability to compete via emotional targeting and brand sustainability, the association is hard to deny.
The fact is, you ignore emotional targeting at your own risk. Sometimes, the difference between a great brand whose marketing is defined by its sustainability and one that fails to make an impression is just one word: emotion.
