The technique of establishing a link between a consumer and a brand or product by appealing to their emotions is known as emotional branding. Marketers produce content that speaks to their target audience’s feelings, egos, wants, and ambitions.
Marc Gobé developed the idea of emotional branding over 20 years ago and elaborated on it in his book The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People. His thinking is built on the premise that interactions between companies and consumers may happen on an emotional level.
Emotionally triggered marketing may appeal to people’s irrational subconscious desires for love, power, emotional stability, and ego pleasure through emotional branding.
Emotional branding essentially entails building a relationship between a consumer and a brand by activating their emotional reactions to that brand.
Emotional branding is even more crucial when you’re aiming your marketing toward millennial consumers.
This younger generation has often said that brands that support them in living their ideals are most appealing to them: For instance, 73% of millennials stated they would be ready to pay extra for goods and services from businesses committed to bringing about social and environmental change.
The correct emotional tone helps companies that want to embrace principles appear more credible.
B2B has also been affected by this wave of change. Millennials are filling more and more B2B product research positions. They are also taking more responsibility for making the ultimate choice. Their emotionally astute attitude will undoubtedly influence their choices.
Emotional Branding vs Emotional Advertising
Even though it could appear self-explanatory, emotional advertising is a sophisticated technique, and when applied poorly, it can mislead your audience. However, emotional appeal and serious thought may make dynamic advertising quite powerful.
In advertising, emotion might be used more overtly in a commercial or campaign. Each emotional ad contributes to the moving branding strategy; they are the unique pieces of the brand’s structural integrity.
In reaction to significant events, many businesses may produce moving advertisements that simultaneously market their goods and services. For instance, Airbnb created a campaign in support of a global community after the US travel restriction in 2018 with the slogan “Let’s Keep Traveling Forward.” This aggressive and successful brand positioning approach involves making a statement.
Emotion and the Hierarchy of Needs
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Requirements theory, emotional motivation is categorized according to biological and social needs. 02 Before climbing the pyramid to achieve their dynamic requirements, including esteem (respect, status, strength), and self-actualization, humans must first meet their physiological needs (food, shelter, air, and water).
What if branding could be done using Maslow’s theory of human needs? How have the most well-known businesses in the world been able to appeal to huge audiences and use human nature so effectively?
Following Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Apple’s emotional branding approach over the years is therefore premised on Physiological, Safety, Love, Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs:
You may choose which emotion appeals to a target by determining your product or service’s demands and where your value proposition sits along the pyramid.
How does Emotional Marketing work?
Keep in mind Aristotle? He is responsible for the three pillars of persuasion in marketing: ethos, pathos, and logos.
You have an emotionally potent brand when you can balance all three of them.
These methods are divided into three types based on how rhetoric is applied in arguments. They are as follows:
1. Ethos: Appeal to Credibility and Ethics
“X is preferred above the rivals by three out of four doctors.”
An advertisement appeals to ethos when they use a physician or other influential person to support their goods or services. Branding Ethos may take many forms, such as using case studies, quoting industry experts, referencing sources, and consumer testimonials.
By appealing to your company’s values, you may position your brand as the expert in the field and increase credibility and trust within your sector.
2. Pathos: Appeal to Empathy
Live, Laugh, Long-Term Retention is the motto of X.
When used wisely and without making the customer feel as though their emotions are being controlled, pathos may inspire people to act by evoking feelings of urgency, dread of missing out, belonging, and more. Pathos is a common technique used by nonprofit organizations to build empathy and support their branding efforts.
3. Logos: Appeal to Logic and Reason
“X is 99.9% successful in preventing churn.”
Aristotle’s third and most compelling pillar, logos, is also the one that depends most on the other two. Customers are typically not persuaded to act simply by being informed of facts, figures, or features. Connect your reasoning and your audience’s emotions by demonstrating what your product can achieve for them.
Although you don’t have to use all three of Aristotle’s ideas in every circumstance, doing so can help you be more convincing when developing an emotional strategy.
The Benefits of Emotional Branding
The outcomes of combining neuroscience methods with branding and marketing tactics are rather persuasive. You’ll be able to engage your audience more effectively if you target customers with more effective advertisements.
The bond you develop with your audience when you engage them results in a notable rise in customer lifetime value. Your accountant or budget also appreciates you. That’s because you’ll be spending far less while fostering client loyalty, significantly improving your return on investment.
What makes it crucial to utilize this tactic? Because 89 percent of consumers don’t have a personal connection to the products they’re buying, 90 percent of purchasing choices are made unconsciously. This means there is a tremendous potential to set your company apart from the competition by attempting to create an emotional connection.
Emotional Branding Examples
- Always: #LikeAGirl
This ad, which plays on emotions by empowering and reassuring women, was always intended to flip the phrase “…like a girl.” Despite the backlash that ensued, the advertisement went on to take home an Emmy, a Cannes Grand Prix, and a Grand Clio.
- Pet cube: Pet Parents
Users enjoy using Pet cube’s interactive pet cams because they can interact with their animals wherever they are. Their logo depicts “pet parents” having fun and grinning while using smartphone applications to interact with their dogs.
Emotional Branding for Organization to retain a customer?
It’s no surprise that when customers feel good about your brand, they stay with you longer, but happiness is not the only emotion that matters. There are six feelings that customers say can help boost their loyalty:
- Appreciated
- Confident
- Grateful
- Happy
- Respected
- Valued
What are the ways through which we can achieve Emotional Branding?
1. Social Media
Brands may listen to audience interactions using social media listening technologies. You may learn about any concerns or queries your audience may have about your product by listening to their conversations and keeping an eye on the keywords associated with your brand and industry.
Brands may improve their audience’s comprehension of the language through social listening. You may choose how to communicate with them and resolve these problems in their language to create a closer relationship.
2. Focus on Emotion Through Visuals
Due to their impact on the subconscious, emotions are unquestionably essential for successful neuromarketing. The brain’s visual processing capacity makes up nearly 50% of it. To maximize satisfying emotional experiences, pay attention to your visual identity and logos, fonts, colors, depth, and movement.
3. Customize Your Communications
Make your consumers feel content, valued, and satisfied to appeal to the selfishness of the human brain. Make them feel unique and sincere in your dealings with them. To build encounters that seem individualized to each user, add personalization choices and employ targeted sales and marketing strategies.
4. Encourage Participation
Engaging with your audience fosters a stronger emotional connection and helps them feel more intimately linked to your brand. Build enduring relationships with your users by establishing ties with influencers, distributing user-generated content on social media, and responding to reviews and comments.
5. Make users comfortable
Consistency is essential for emotional branding. To prevent people from being confused, make sure you use the same colors and appeal to comparable emotions.
6. Quickly respond to public relations issues
When addressing significant concerns, timing is crucial, and customers value swift responses from businesses that make a mistake. To safeguard customers, Johnson & Johnson promptly removed all products from stores after discovering a case of Tylenol tampering (even though there was no evidence of further contamination).
Final Thoughts
There are a few factors to keep in mind if you want to develop an emotional connection-based marketing strategy:
Concentrate on developing sincere relationships with your audience through your common ideals.
Please spend some time hearing what your consumers say and use it to guide your future strategy.
