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Brand Building Brand Differentiation Brand Management Brand Positioning Brand Promise Brand Strategy Brand Strategy for Start-Ups Branding Psychology Consumer Psychology Marketing Psychology

How to Evoke Consumer Motivation Through Strategic Delivery of the Brand Story and Promise

White clock with words Time to Buy on its face

“Marketers sell the drill. Consumers buy the hole.”

No matter how great a product is, it will never sell itself. People never buy the product itself – nor do they buy the brand. People buy the benefits and solutions that the product or brand will provide. Their motivation to buy comes primarily from the expected benefits and solutions.

Throughout my marketing consulting experience, there have been too many incidences where I have seen companies with well-established, iconic brands, forget that today’s consumers are generally well-informed and won’t give in to buying a common product with a recognizable name attached to it. Most business owners still think that they’re just selling a product or service.  When business owners attempt to sell just products or services, they focus on portraying facts and informing.

Facts and information rarely motivate us. People aren’t prospects when they’re not motivated. Especially with the social media boom, where there is constant communication between brands and their consumers, people are looking for brands that embody human traits and are more receptive to their emotions.

What do I mean when I say that people don’t want to buy products, services, and brands? When businesses and marketers try to sell products, services, and brands, they focus on selling the features and the results, not the benefits and the solution.

When you tell me your new ab workout product will help me get six-pack abs, that’s a fantastic result… just what I want – except that’s what every other ab workout product is telling me. What differentiates you? The new instructional online video feature that comes with your product? That’s great, I’ll think about it. The result you provided, nor the feature you told me, hit me on an emotional level. I don’t feel an internal motivation to buy your product. If my logical mind convinces me, I MIGHT buy it. Now how would a strategic brand marketer sell an ab workout product? By emphasizing the SOLUTION and the BENEFITS. The solution that I will FEEL the enjoyment and confidence from being more attractive as a result of having the six packs abs. The solution that I will be relieved from feeling unattractive. The solution that I will feel healthier and more energetic. The benefit that by having six-pack abs, I will attract more girls, impress my friends, and feel worthy in my own eyes.

As a consumer, when I hear the benefits and solutions, when you make me feel the solution of buying your brand or product, you’re not longer selling me something, you’re making a promise to me. Now I’m emotionally connected to your brand and product, now I can hold you accountable, and holding you accountable gives me a sense of security in buying from you.

So how can brand marketers strategically and successfully portray the benefits and solutions of their brands to motivate their consumers? As consumers, our motivation comes from the brand promise, which conveys the satisfaction and the avoidance of our pain that we’ll feel when buying a particular brand or product. And one of the major ways that brand promise is communicated, is through the brand story.

The Brand Story

Essentially, what people pay for when they buy your brand, is the story.  Brands that are successful in today’s world, are those that are embodying human characteristics. Just as how every human has a story behind them, a story that makes them who they are and who they are going to be, a brand is no different.

When we first meet someone who we’re genuinely interested in connecting with, what is the main thing that we’re trying to learn about them? When we ask each other ‘what do you do’ or ‘where are you from’ or ‘what got you into…’ or ‘tell me about…’, what are we trying to find out? We’re trying to figure out their story– because that helps us evaluate whether we can connect with them. And on a more superficial level, or even when company’s interview and hire, understanding people’s story tells us if that individual can be of value to us now or in the future.

Understanding people’s story can tell us, on a deeper level, how connecting with them will move us towards a solution or benefit that we want. In the same way, understanding your brand’s story gives consumers a sense of who your brand is, what you value, what they can expect from your brand in the future, and how your brand will help them reach the solutions and benefits they desire. If done right, you create a connection with the consumer, which is what successful brand strategy is all about.

The Life of the Party

We’ve all noticed that those individuals who seem to be the most interesting, most entertaining, most engaging, are usually those that are great storytellers. Your brand should be no different. The successful brand engages, entertains, intrigues, and connects with its consumer through storytelling. The successful brand is the “life of the party”.

If you think of your product’s category as a never-ending party, all brands in that category are essentially competing for attention. They’re competing to be the life of the party. The life of the party is the vortex that draws everything towards it. The life of the party connects with everyone – and the more it connects, the more it stands out to others.  Make your brand the life of the party!

When the brand story rings true for the consumer, it contributes to how they feel. This gives your brand authenticity, and it ignites engagement and strong emotion. This is where the motivation to purchase rises from. Ultimately, you shift your consumer’s demand… and your brand equity rises.

Lastly, remember that as a storyteller you’re also being held accountable for your promise. Sure great story tellers get hired. Sure great story tellers make a lot of connections. It’s clear that they have communicated their ‘promise’ successfully to a company where they got the job, or on a social psychological level, to their friends and connections. However, you will find that sometimes even the greatest of story tellers only deliver stories, nothing more. They don’t deliver on their promise. And at the end of it all, they fall faster than they escalated.

If your brand tells a story, makes a promise, connects emotionally with your consumer, but doesn’t deliver… your story becomes compromised and your brand plummets. Without delivery and evidence, your story is nothing but a fairy-tale.

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Brand Building Brand Differentiation Brand Management Brand Positioning Brand Promise Brand Strategy Branding Psychology Emotional Branding

Emotional Branding Psychology: Creating Brand Trust in the Mind of Your Consumer

Brand Love Emotion is the most powerful motivational force known to humans. Emotions stem from the subconscious mind and they are the real reason why brands exist, and will continue to do so.

The previous post emphasized the importance of drawing emotion from your consumers for your brand. When trying to connect with your consumer, it’s essential to build a relationship between your brand and your consumer that fosters high love and high respect – i.e. it’s essential to make your brand a ‘LoveMark‘.

Every relationship comes with obligations which require both parties to take some form of effort-based action. Maintaining your friendships, family relations, and spousal relations, require effort on both parts. Maintaining the relationship between the brand and the consumer, requires effort on both parts. The moment the emotions disappear, the desire to fulfill obligations and to take action also disappears. And that’s when the relationship starts to deteriorate.

Brand’s live in the mind, but they cause ACTION from the heart.

As brand owners, you want your consumers to make the effort to take action towards your brand. You want them to buy your product or service. You want them to speak of your brand. You want them seek out your brand wherever they go. In the same way, your consumer expects your brand to fulfill its own obligations as well. Why? Because the relationship can’t be one-sided. Because at the end of the day, your consumers will only take action towards your product or service if they’re driven by emotion.

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So what are the obligations that are expected of your brand, by your consumer?

A quick psychology lesson:

In evolutionary psychology, one of the fundamental human needs that we have developed is the need for a sense of control. This need is perhaps the deepest need people have. It’s related to survival and is sustained by the need to predict and have a sense of certainty. From an evolutionary standpoint, if we are in control of our environment, then we have a better chance of survival. One of the ways we acquire a sense of control, is by giving it to others who we TRUST. Trust and control support one another. Not only does trust give control, but the need for a sense of control drives us to seek trust. If you trust a close friend with your car keys, your need for a sense of control is satisfied because you can comfortably predict and know that your car is safe and will be returned to you.

Now what does this mean for your consumer’s relationship with your brand? Through our close relationships, we are able to satisfy this need of a sense of control because we tend to highly trust those individuals whom we LOVE and RESPECT, the LoveMark’s of our lives. Thus, the way to create love and respect for your brand, the way to create a LoveMark brand, is through maintaining and creating TRUST for your brand in your consumer’s mind. 

Consumers want to be able to know with great conviction, what will be the outcome for them if they take the action that you are requesting. “What will happen after I buy your product?” “How can I believe you?” “Why should I believe you?”

Brands need to communicate these things to their consumers. Your brand needs to communicate what consumers can expect if they choose your brand. Answering these questions is the opportunity for a brand to build trust with its consumers, because trust enables prediction.

So how can a brand build long-lasting trust with its consumers? As a brand owner, how can you ensure that the fulfillment of your consumer’s deepest evolutionary need is associated with your brand? The answer is through the BRAND PROMISE.

A company’s brand is a promise. Successful brands consistently deliver on their promises which is how they create brand value and brand trust. Just like with any relationship, trust is stable as long as promises aren’t broken. If you break a promise, you are cutting into the ‘evolutionary’ needs of an individual, which will naturally lead to STRONG negative emotional reactions.

Examples of successful promises kept:

FedEx – Your package will get there overnight. Guaranteed.

Apple – You can own the coolest, easiest-to-use cutting-edge computers and electronics.

Coors Light – “The World’s Most Refreshing Beer”

Geico – “15 Minutes of Less can save you 15% or More on Car Insurance”

coke1

Examples of false promises: Just checkout this blog called Alphaila, where brands have made numerous false promises to their consumers. Although these promises are visual-based advertisements, I don’t get how fast food companies don’t realize that creating such fantasy based ads is more detrimental than beneficial. Promises matter to consumers.

It’s amazing when once in a while, a brand like Volkswagen releases an honest, genuine, and sometimes even self-deprecating ad. Is it really surprising that those are the ads that effectively gain our trust? Is it really surprising that when we actually try their product or service, we realize it’s actually pretty good? Authentic ads demonstrate the brand’s self-confidence. Consumer’s recognize this on a deeper level – there must be a reason for someone to be so confident.

How do you deliver on your brand promise?

In the next few posts I will write on creating effective brand promises and brand promise strategy.

For now, it’s important to realize that brands need to build trust through minor promises. This is one strategy that is sure to work. Trust is built through reliability – this is extremely true for consumers. The more reliable a brand is, the more confidence consumer’s will have in it, and the more trust will be built in the brand-consumer relationship. As promises are consistently and repeatedly kept, over time trust is guaranteed to increase.

Feel free to contact me with your thoughts, questions, and ideas.

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Brand Building Brand Management Brand Positioning Brand Strategy Branding Psychology

Brand Positioning Psychology: How to Maintain Brand Growth in a Changing Market

Only when a brand stands for something, can it establish itself in your audience’s mind.

You’ve done a great job if your brand has taken up some form of mental real estate of your consumer. This is a commendable feat because it takes great effort and time (years usually) to build a brand and to concretely embed a characteristic of a brand, in your consumer’s mind. One thing you need to remember however, is that there is always the likelihood of the market changing. As a marketer, it is not wise to change your brands positioning with the changing market.

As tempting as it may be, you’ve worked way too hard to create the brand positioning that you already have! Too many times, companies have tried to follow a new trend and have damaged their brand…

Just take a look at this list of “10 of the Worst Product Flops Ever”. Notice how with every product failure, the idea pretty much stemmed from ‘trying to go with the trend’, and deviating from CORE characteristics for which the brands are known for.

One of my favorite examples of a company who has fallen victim to this idea, over and over again, is McDonalds. Ever since I can remember, McDonald’s has been known for being a family burger place that appeals mainly to children. Whereas their competitors, Wendy’s and Burger King, have always appealed to the adult market. So obviously, McDonald’s began questioning why they were limiting their products to just children.

They began thinking that they’re capable of changing with the adult burger trend and competing in other territories. This triggered the release of products like the McLobster, the Arch Deluxe, the McPizza, the McHotDog,…and the list continues. Do you remember of any of these? If you do, can you still go and get any of these from a McDonald’s?

They all failed because McDonald’s didn’t stay consistent in their brand’s image. They spent over a 100 million dollars on the Arch Deluxe’s advertising campaigns in attempts to display it as a burger ‘for adults’, but even a 100 million dollars later, their consumers were unwilling to allow a deviation in what the original McDonald’s brand had already implanted in their mind over years and years of branding – that it WAS and IS a kid-oriented brand.

How can you spend YEARS positioning yourself as one thing, and expect to change that with one product, almost instantly, by unleashing loads of advertising at your audience? Temptation and especially boredom, can often take over, and make you feel like you need your brand to change. But remember, when you choose that path, chances are you will fail, because you’re stepping away from standing for something simple and focused in your consumer’s MIND.

When McDonald’s released the McLobster and the Arch Deluxe, it stepped away from standing for something simple and focused in the consumer’s mind. When Volvo, the car known for ‘safety’, launched a line of sports cars, including a convertible, it stepped away from standing for something simple and focused in the consumer’s mind.

Narrowing the focus of your brand and being consistent with it for years to come, is an important factor in the art of building and embedding your brand in the mind of your consumer.

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Brand Building Brand Differentiation Brand Management Brand Positioning Brand Strategy Brand Strategy for Start-Ups Branding Psychology Consumer Psychology Marketing Psychology

Brand Competition Psychology: How Consumer Choices Effect Demand and Why You Should Appreciate Your Competitors

pc vs mac

The goal of every brand marketer should be to build brand equity. What exactly is brand equity? It’s the ability of your brand to shift consumer demand. Consumers have a vast array of choices these days. Today, we walk into a supermarket and are actually confused by all the different choices we are bombarded with! Whereas not too long ago, we would be hoping for more products and as consumers, find ourselves disappointed with things that don’t really serve our needs. Today, brand strategy is not so much about creating demand than it is about shifting your consumer’s demand to YOUR brand.

Fact: Higher demand of your brand leads to higher market share.

Now logically, there are two ways to increase market share and become a market leader:

1)      Eliminate competition

“Well if I don’t have competition and I’m the only choice for my consumer, then I can have all or most of the market share.”

2)      Enhance brand equity

“I will make it so that my brand will shift consumer demand from my competitors to me.”

It’s surprising how the majority of companies today, choose Option 1.

Greed is not good, when your aim is to shift consumer demand.

The leading brand in a category habitually tries to stretch its appeal in order to seize every last bit of market share. What they fail to recognize is that when you stretch your brand, it deteriorates and weakens. The leading brand should endure competitors and also appreciate them. 

The entrance of Pepsi-Cola, was probably one the best things to have happened for Coca-Cola. Why? The competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola makes customers more aware of Cola. The Cola category has been growing ever since this rivalry erupted.

april-fool- ad

If you want to build market share, understand the consumer’s mind, where your brand lives, and leverage that beautiful asset to create a strong brand building strategy. How consumers respond to competition and choices is crucial for any brand marketer to understand.

Customers always have choices, even when no competition exists. They can make the decisions to choose beer, apple juice, or water to drink instead of cola. The reason is because increased competition grabs more attention of customers and has the habit of increasing sales in the category.

Choice fuels demand.

Choice is seen as a huge benefit. Without choice, customers begin questioning the category itself. For instance, customers begin questioning the price point, in wonder if they’re paying too much – “How can I judge the price if I don’t have anything to compare it with?”

The psychology of most brand marketers and companies is that they want to have an unfair advantage over their competitors. They can’t handle the idea of having an even playing field. So they come to the conclusion, that the only way to keep as much of the market share as possible, is to drive out the competition. That’s when they end up making horrible branding decisions and decide to expand, extend their line, etc., which only further weakens the brand.

Appreciate your competitors. Competition leads to increased choices.

There is however, a limit to how much choice there should be for a consumer in a particular category. Having too much choice can definitely be detrimental. Having too many brands can lead to having too much variety, which leads to greater confusion for the consumer.

What’s the right amount of competition? Two seems to be the best number – Coca Cola/Pepsi, Nintendo/PlayStation, Duracell/Energizer, etc. Too much choice leads to reduced consumption.

In the consumer’s mind, if there isn’t any competition they often think that companies could take advantage of them and rip them off. This is why we usually see competing businesses clustered in one area. We’ve all seen it – how similar businesses are usually grouped together in one neighborhood. This is especially evident in large cities. These business clusters attract more customers because now customers have more than one store to shop at, in one trip. Time is limited these days for the average individual. Moreover, customers can now easily make comparisons.

Healthy competition is good. No brand can ever be capable of dominating the entire market. Anything greater than 50% is extremely rare. If your aim is to gain market share greater than 50%, it’s more efficient to consider creating several independent brands (not line extensions).

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Brand Building Brand Management Brand Strategy Brand Strategy for Start-Ups Branding Psychology

Luxury Branding Psychology: How to Implant “High-Quality” in the Mind of the Consumer

Is building a better quality product the same as building a better brand?

One would think so – and it’s not uncommon for new marketers to think so. But when creating a strong brand marketing strategy, this is not the case. There are almost no correlations between best quality and most successful brands. We’ve seen it many times –  where the most preferred brand, is not the leading one.

Why is the Pepsi Taste Challenge so successful? People enjoy Pepsi a lot more, yet Coca Cola is the leading brand. The reason is because the idea of quality is something that resides in the mind of the consumer. The idea of quality is something that is implanted in the mind of the consumer.

One of the surest ways to do this is through further constricting the focus of your brand. This is something I will cover in depth in a future article. For now, what you need to know is that by becoming an expert and by becoming focused on one thing as opposed to many, your brand becomes perceived as being of higher quality.

If you’re creating a soccer team, would you choose the athlete who plays every sport or would you choose the athlete who plays only soccer? Obviously the soccer player. That’s how consumers view brands.

A brand that claims to do everything is less trustworthy, than the brand who claims they are the best at one thing.

Be the best at one thing. 

Be a big fish in a small pond, not a small fish in a big one.

Another way to build the perception of the quality of your brand in your consumer’s mind is through high-pricing – something you may have already realized to some degree.

Below are examples of a few brands that the average individual would associate with being ‘high-quality’. These are also brands which profit immensely from their high price:

  • Mercedes
  • Montblanc
  • Jack Daniel’s
  • Rolex
  • Rolls-Royce

What often happens is that brand owners either feel that their brand should be a high-quality brand but are afraid to make the price equivalent to what they think their brand is worth… OR some brand owners feel that their brand is a high quality brand but in reality it isn’t, yet they still charge the higher price.

Before even considering charging a higher price, you need to be confident in the high quality of your brand. Quality comes first. 

If your brand has products and services with a high price but has a low or average quality perception of a brand, that will discourage consumers from sticking around for very long. That violates the idea of brand consistency. But if your quality is on higher level, don’t be afraid to charge a higher price for your brand. Having a higher price on your brand, can in fact be a benefit to the consumer. By buying a product of brand that is associated with high quality, consumers feel a certain level of satisfaction from the purchase.

The individual who purchases a Movado, doesn’t do so to tell time better, but to make others aware that he or she can afford it. There’s a quote I heard somewhere ; it goes something like… “if your watch costs more than $50,000, it’s no longer a time-telling device, it’s jewelry.” Also, don’t rely only on quality to develop a successful brand. At the end of the day, it is the brand with the better strategy that wins.

The other most important thing to think about when employing high quality strategy, is how you will justify the increase in price of your product or service? What can you emphasize? You need to pick one thing that you can be the best at and be a leader in – this comes back to the idea of constricting the focus of your brand.

Take a look at Whole Foods, who earns most of its profits in prepared foods, where the price premium is very high, with operating margins of approximately 7%. They justified their premium price by emphasizing luxury with organic food, sophisticated in store presentation, and knowledgeable staff. That was enough to convince customers to pay a higher price for prepared food.

Leverage the psychology of how consumers think to build your brand – that’s what Brand Marketing Psychology is all about.