Emotional Brand Stories (1 of 3)

Last week, Afaqs had covered the Asia Brand Congress 2008, which throws some light on how marketers and agencies view brands and their relationships with consumers. You can read a few reports here. The first link is the rationale behind the campaigns of Zapak and Dainik Bhaskar, both using 360 degree media – one for its launch, and the other for repositioning, with a new brand ambassador. While Zapak’s execution certainly seems to be better, neither are earth shattering revelations.

The second link is a discussion on how brands need to understand the psyche of consumers, and use ideas that would engage and inspire them. The example of ‘Idea’ brand was taken in this discussion, and as I have written before, I fully agree with the thought. The subtle thought that was communicated in this discussion was that brands should go with the flow, and go easy on the rigid structures that they build around themselves.

The third link has discussions on different communication for brands at different steps of their lifecycle, and takes examples of Naukri, Cadburys and Coke. The last link explores Saatchi’s concept of Lovemarks,a nd speaks of a paradigm shift – from “You->Your Brand->Consumer” to “You->Consumer->Their Brand”. I found this the most interesting of all the concepts I came across (read), since it also talks of the fallacy of the 360 degree approach and the advertising wars to get the consumers’ attention.

Before we start on the relationship between brands and consumers, here’s a long, but interesting read on the mind of the consumer. It talks about how the brain uses different structures for different brands, and is the beginning of a research in the field of neuromarketing. It is well known that the emotional relationship with a brand affects the rational purchase decision of a user. Usually brands dwell on the positive perspective of this and try to ‘attract’ consumers. What if the mind relies on the negative perspective, and is more tuned to avoid brands that it hates? Wouldn’t it be more profitable to channel campaign money into making consumers hate rival brands? The brain apparently demarcates the loved and hated brands very clearly. Should marketers be rewarded for shifting the relative position of their brands in this mental make up? Such are the interesting questions this article throws up. 

Chris Brogan recently wrote about the book “Branding only Works on cattle” by Jonathan Salem Baskin, and his major take outs from the book. One good point that came up was how the core idea of the brand and its context (Starbucks – third place) was more important than the consumer remembering the logo. As this article correctly points out, brands should be great story tellers that weave themselves into the context of our daily lives, at consious and sub conscious levels. After all, the major portion of our ‘story’ is a sum of the brands we use. 

Amidst the multi crore advertising blitzkreigs that brands continually unleash on their consumers, it is important for them to understand the importance of the emotional connect of consumers that affect their purchase behaviour, and perhaps dwell a little more on the core value they offer to consumers, and how they can bring it into the context of the consumers’ lives. This is specially important in an increasingly connected world, in which WOM plays an important part.

until next time, show me some emotion, you big brand 😉

PS. Have two more posts that take this thought forward – shall post that on Wednesday and Friday.