Get emotional about your branding

For years now advertisers have moved away from presenting product functionality in advertising to appealing more directly to consumers’ ideals. In a Frontline video series called The Persuaders the authors state that advertising has became less about what a product “did” and more about what it “meant”. According to Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising, this is crucial in today’s advertising because:

“ What consumers want now is an emotional connection—they want to be able to connect with what's behind the brand, what's behind the promise. Brands that can move to that emotional level, that can create loyalty beyond reason, are going to be the brands where premium profits lie."

The essence of emotional branding is for a company’s advertising to go beyond the product or service and to create advocacy and loyalty among their consumers in a way that transcends the product itself. According to Douglas Atkin, a partner at advertising agency Merkley + Partners, this loyalty is similar to the passionate zeal once enjoyed only by cultists and religious fanatics.

Justification for Emotional Branding

Emotional branding can be very effective and can lead directly to increased brand equity for a company. According to K.L. Keller, customer based brand equity (CBBE) occurs when the consumer has a high level of awareness and familiarity with the brand and holds some strong, favorable, and unique brand associations in memory.

An excellent example of successful emotional branding is the advertising strategy of Red Bull.

From the beginning, Red Bull took an innovative, grass roots approach to their marketing. Specifically, their marketing tactics focus on creating a “cult” or “tribe” around Red Bull drinkers. They succeeded in doing this by enlisting the cultural elite and opinion makers who turned Red Bull’s “buzz” and word of mouth into a sought after emotional brand. Red Bull’s marketing teams understood that as globalism removes barriers, people erect new ones. They create Tribes where they can belong, and brand names can function as sign posts for these tribes.  Check out Neumeier's slide share:

            While Red Bull was successful in developing an emotional brand with consumers, a company that failed in their attempt at emotional brandingis Song Airlines. This new airline tried to use emotional branding to engineer everything from the brand look and feel to the flight attendants, plane amenities, even the gates at the airport. While this seems to make sense, the effort fails in 2 major ways;
1. LACK OF AUTHENTICITY
2. LACK OF CONNECTION BETWEEN THE BRAND AND THE PRODUCT
 The entire marketing and advertising effort seems over engineered and disingenuous. Consumers are very savvy and sophisticated, and “have never been more resistant to marketing  messages” according to Frontline in the Persuaders. Unlike Southwest Airlines, who have created an emotional connection to their brand, and in doing so continues to be one of the only airlines to reap profits, Song seems to forget that they are an airline.

Emotional branding can be successful, but it needs to still be relevant to the product it is trying to sell. While an airline can be emotionally connected to bringing families together in a friendly and warm environment, at the end of the day it must also satisfy the functional requirements of the consumer such as safety and timeliness. Based on a recent Colloquy study of loyalty marketers, “It may be an all-time classic business cliché, but it’s quite true that an average strategy with great execution trumps the best strategy with poor execution”. Song’s strategy may not have been wrong, but their execution fell flat. They would have been more successful creating a true emotional branding experience if they had tied their engaging staff and warm environment to the efficient functioning of the airline itself.

Implications for Public Relations, Marketing and Communications

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted;
the trouble is I don't know which half.”              
 John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922)

            This quote had been attributed to many business leaders from the 19^th and early 20^th century including Henry Ford, however; it is generally accepted to have been spoken by John Wannamaker. It illustrates that while emotional branding may be clever, engaging and the latest trend, marketers and brand managers must be able to quantify, measure, and justify their investments. This means being able to tie their branding and advertising efforts to measureable outcomes including;

1.      Return on marketing investment
2.      Increase in company and product revenues
3.      Increase in marketshare
4.      Increase in brand equity

For consumers to follow a company on the journey to loyalty, their marketers and public relations professionals need to develop meaningful and relevant communications that drive consumer engagement. From engagement comes a sense of belonging, and from that sense of belonging becomes the emotional connection that companies are striving for. This will require product, public relations and brand managers to “create meaning systems” and become “community communicators” using social media, event marketing, and other marketing tactics effectively.

Loyalty marketing professionals face a challenge in developing programs that reward consumers effectively while also providing results that prove the effectiveness of loyalty in driving increased customer retention and revenues. According to a recent Colloquy study, the following table summarizes the top concerns and challenges facing loyalty marketers today.

Loyalty Marketers Top Concerns:

1. Too many competing priorities
2. Perception of poor ROI
3. Inadequate staffing to implement well
4. Inadequate customer focus

So what's the bottom line on Emotional Branding?
Marketers and communications professionals can effectively engage consumers with emotional branding by combining an effective engagement strategy with a focused integrated marketing communications plan. Emotional branding can also create customer loyalty and increase a company’s revenues and profits as long as the emotional branding is authentic and relevant to the consumer. Emotional branding will be most effective when combined with communications that reinforce both the brand’s positioning and specific product attributes for the consumer.