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Hearts & Minds |
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The Strength of Emotional-Branding
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In 2006, when consumer products giant P&G announced that earnings grew 33 percent (well beyond expectations), CEO A.G. Lafley credited marketing improvements as a key part of the reason.
P&G's marketing has
continued to embrace the concept of "emotional-branding." P&G's recent annual
report states that "Brand-building capability is increasingly
important to delivering sustainable growth.
In an environment in which consumers
and retailers have more choices than ever,
the capability to build lasting bonds
separates brands..."
Emotional-branding focuses on consumers as the driving force of the marketing strategy, not the product attributes or benefits.
In fact, emotional-branding challenges the fundamental claim that you need to establish a clear, consistent and distinctive benefit position for your radio station in the mind of the consumer.
Emotional-branding advocates suggest that benefit-driven positioning fails to provide a true, long-lasting competitive advantage because it can be easily copied.
For example, the phrase "We make your work day go faster with a refreshing mix of 80s, 90s and today," can be easily adopted by another station and rendered meaningless to consumers.
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Emotional-branding focuses on consumers as the
driving force of the marketing strategy, not the
product attributes or benefits.
- Marc
Gobé, author
Emotional-Branding |
More importantly, according to branding researcher Michael Gobé, feature/benefit-driven messages are more likely to get lost in the clutter of brands fighting to claim unique distinctions.
Instead, emotional-branding gurus argue that consumer's passion and loyalty for the brand are seldom inspired by attribute oriented benefits.
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Seth Godin, in his book
All Marketers are Liars, insists that successful marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits.
Instead, they tell a story that fits a consumer's world-view.
A story we want to believe.
Doing that requires a
genuine and rich understanding of the consumer's
lifestyle, hearts, and minds and a true
understanding of how the brand can improve their
life.
The end-game, according to Craig Thompson in his
Journal of Marketing article, "Emotional Branding," is to "forge strong and meaningful affective bonds with consumers and in so doing, become part of their life stories, memories, and an important link in their social networks."
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Thompson states that "many well-known brands have adopted emotional-branding strategies, including Tide, Lexus, Apple, Nike, IBM, Cheerios, McDonald’s, and Starbucks. |
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To learn more about emotional-branding, we invite you to listen to Dan Hill, founder of Sensory Logic, discuss
marketing to the senses in this
podcast.
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For more information, email
Tripp Eldredge or call (859) 655-9200, ext. 103.
dmr regularly updates our site with important new ideas and applications for marketing.
Be sure to check back each month to get our latest insights and how they apply to the broadcast industry.
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