DO CONSUMERS REALLY FORGE EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS WITH BRANDS, OR IS THAT JUST SOMETHING MARKETING AGENCIES LIKE TO SAY?
by Marketing types, especially on the agency side, can be so full of crap we could be repackaged and sold as fertilizer. Advertising body copy is filled with useless words and phrases that mean absolutely nothing to anybody, including classic gems like “Our company stands for quality, or “We work to serve you,” and don’t forget the age-long favorite, “We always put our customers first.” Please. This sort of fluffy filler copy has never helped sell a single unit of any product, but marketers continue to litter their advertising and collateral with it.
Consumers aren’t the only ones who are subject to rhetorical bullshit. Brands have to fend against it as well when they’re dealing with their agencies, who feed them lines like they’re hot chicks at a party. “Our agency has over 120 years of experience…” (yeah, 10 years of experience for each of a dozen employees) or “We’re a results-oriented agency, focused on providing you with a positive ROI,” and my personal favorite, “From concept to completion, we have the resources you need to get the job done right, on time and under budget!” Can someone just shoot me if they ever hear me say anything like that to a prospective client? And then there are the less sales-y, more pressure-driven lines, like “We’ve got a pretty big project getting started next month…I’m worried that if you don’t sign now, we may not be able to fit your project on the schedule and meet your deadlines.” Yeah, right.
So there it is – I’ve ’fessed up. I admit that yes, there are instances where agencies speak just for the sake of hearing ourselves talk or because we think this stuff may actually work on people with an above-moron IQ. But when it comes to branding, the emotional connection forged between consumers and a brand is absolutely, positively real, and not a load of BS that we spew in an effort to try to sell more. It’s palpable, it’s clear, and even if the new trend among marketing authors is to try to dig an early grave for brand-building as a practice (a growing number of marketing malcontents seem to suggest that branding is no longer useful given our Web-enabled access to greater information, replaced in part by targeting consumer behavior), there is no denying that brands wield a distinct emotional power over people. In fact, according to a 2002 report (a little old but still relevant) by the Grocery Manufacturers of America, which studies consumer trends in grocery stores, half of all consumers consider the brand to be either the first or the second most important element when deciding which product to buy (other factors include nutritional information, cost, or nostalgia – i.e., they buy products they remember using during childhood). In addition, 13 percent first try a brand because it was recommended to them by someone they trust – further establishing the importance of brands in building a loyal following of customers willing to pass the word on to others.
It’s possible that some of the hesitancy relates to the word “emotion.” The emotional connection between consumers and brands isn’t the same kind of emotional connection between, say, two lovers. A guy’s not about to look at a an Exxon station and suddenly sport wood. And women aren’t going to blush and become coy when they approach the Swiffer section on aisle six. That’s not the kind of emotion we’re talking about. The emotional connection between consumers and brands is more subliminal, more subtle. It’s the difference between longing for something and wanting something. Having an emotional connection to a brand is the consumer’s subconscious acknowledgment that the brand will somehow prove beneficial to them and that they want to – and will – seek it out.
For those who refuse to see the emotional connection between brand and consumer, and disregard the connection between brand and sales, I ask you to close your eyes and imagine every product packaged in a neutral gray box, each the same size and texture; every name changed to a single letter; every advertisement simply stating what the product is, what it does, how much it costs, and where it can be purchased. Boring, huh? And for those who believe that branding should be set aside in favor of targeting consumer behavior in a more connected world, I ask that you acknowledge a difference between branding and advertising, and that multiple efforts can be undertaken simultaneously and, in fact, combined. Whether and how advertising models can be improved for greater ROI is a debate all its own – but the answer to that question will never negate the emotional sway that brands hold over their audiences.
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Yes. Thats why Campbell’s Soup is mm mm Good!
There is no question that brand loyalty is one of the few factors that has kept the American automotive industry alive the last decade or so.
Brand loyalty is extremely powerful in the meeting planning industry where a single mistake can end a career. Planners are so loyal to some of their support companies that they will fly key personnel across the country in spite of their additional cost and occasionally their incompetence purely because they do not know from among the local firms which are good and which are not. They will stay with hotel chains for the same reasons.
There was a time when the slogan ran, “No one ever got fired for recommending IBM.” Today, meeting planners know the same is true of Ritz.
Fear of failure is a tremendous enforcer of brand loyalty.
No doubt about it that building relationships based on trust and loyalty with consumers should be of paramount importance for any marketer. Today, there are abundant, relatively low cost, ways to not only build trust but also to engage in two way communication with your consumers. But, given the current economic conditions, price and convenience are a major factor, too. I don’t think trust and loyalty can be separated from price and convenience to the extent that they maybe could have been in the recent past. Price, convenience, service all are integral pieces of the loyalty/trust equation.
Emotional bonds to brands? I have two words that answer that question: New Coke. While one of the great marketing disasters of the 20th Century it indisputably demonstrated an emotional link between consumers and product. People wept when they thought their Coca-Cola was going away for good. They hoarded the product. And do you consider professional sports franchises brands? Then I would say there is a pretty strong case for an emotional bond between say the Cowboys, Steelers, Yankees, Red Sox, Red Wings, Cubs, etc. with their fans.
The real issue for marketers is not whether those emotions exist, but how are they generated? That is a longer discussion than I care to make here and now, but clearly there are things like consistency, honesty, integrity, the place the product has in the consumer’s heart and mind, the nature of the product that all enter into the level of emotion one can expect to generate. It would seem (without the benefit of a shred of research) that consumers would be less emotionally involved with their gasoline choice (convenience being far more important with what is essentially a commodity in these self-serve days) and their soft drink, where competitors are generally all readily available and choices are made and loyalties built based on other attributes.