Making customers feel the right things

Brands are driven by emotions. Our research has shown that simple affection is not enough. A positive attitude is not enough. In order to create strong loyalty that turns into sales and advocacy brands have to stimulate a carefully considered cocktail of emotions, in a unique way, at various touch points.

When Woolworth's closed its doors in January 2009 there was outrage– demands that the retailer should be rescued could be heard in coffee shops and offices. Yet many of these ‘outraged’ consumers had not been to a Woolworths store in years or if so only sporadically buying very little. Those consumers were definitely feeling an attachment to the brand – but that attachment had not translated into sales and so the brand fell.

So clearly it is not just about making consumers feel something – it's about making them feel the right things.

What is the right thing? For a start the emotions have to be relevant to the product category – they have to emotionally fit with the core emotional experience the consumer is seeking from the product category. This then has to be supported by a unique mix of emotional drivers that only the brand can own and that a credible brand story can be written around. To stimulate those emotions sensory triggers are applied throughout all elements of the marketing mix. Sounds complicated? The process for finding and developing the correct emotional triggers is complex and requires specialist research techniques, but that is for us to worry about. The result however is very simple – an emotional brand synopsis that can be summarised on one sheet of paper and will inform all areas of brand activity.

Go to the next page: What we do: Emotional Logic fuels brand growth