For some time we’ve observed growing forces that have finally led to a tipping point in the world of brands – demonstrating that emotional engagement is now the dominant driver of purchase decisions and brand loyalty across virtually all brand categories.
The result of this shift is a growing polarization among brands – in a market flooded with indistinguishable players – with brands learning, most-often through decreasing profits or a death-spiral of same-store sales, that rational arguments are but table-stakes.
It isn’t that the rational isn’t important, it’s just that it’s pretty much the same for all products and services when it comes to, what marketing textbooks call, “primacy of product.” Does the product you bought do what they said it would? If so, OK. If not there are plenty of options available. Which is why satisfaction measures, reflecting what happened the last time a consumer did something, have lost a lot of, let’s call it efficacy, to be polite.
Process re-engineering, the economy, the Internet and the expectations and demands of smarter consumers have resulted in a pretty undifferentiated slate of offerings in most categories when it comes to the rational approach. And, no matter how much marketers wish it were so, name awareness does not a brand make. Nor does entertaining advertising or Facebook likes.
More than ever it’s critical for marketers to deeply understand the emotional aspects of their categories – not imagery – but actual engagement on an emotional basis that a brand:
A) Researches so they actually understand from the consumers’ perspective what is emotional and leveragable in their specific category (consumers don’t buy cars the same way they buy computers)
B) Actually sets out to own these emotional values (not relying upon “social networking” to take up the slack), and then
C) Creates a positioning and strategy that believably allows the brand to own it in the minds, hearts and wallets of consumers, and acts as a surrogate for added-value. The brand brings much more to the rational stuff, and way more than just identifying it on the shelf. Consumers pay more for something other than just the rational stuff. Always.
In preparing to write this we were reminded that there are some marketers and researchers who think emotional metrics are “soft.” They probably do so because they equate imagery with emotion and emotional engagement, which is mostly a dangerous thing, albeit easy to do. We would heartily agree that relying only on image metrics are, in fact, soft. But real emotional engagement metrics are pretty much indisputable – so hard. Hard to identify and hard to measure if you rely on traditional research approaches.
Brands that spend more time understanding – and taking ownership of emotional engagement – see profits. Just like Samsung, which expects to report a 53% rise in operating profits for 1Q ‘13, buoyed by sales of its Galaxy smartphones, the same ones that pushed Apple out of the leader spot in the Smartphone category in this year’s Customer Loyalty Engagement Index.
In the interest of full disclosure, we never position our emotional engagement assessments as a market model in-and-of-itself, although some clients not only use these emotionally-based measures for their scorecards and strategic dashboards, but as inputs to their own market models. They do that because, as axiomatic as it may sound, when you create a level of emotional brand engagement and brand differentiation it adds a sense of value to your product, a value unattainable by and/or just plain missed by your competition. Consumers behave more positively toward your brand because they feel they are getting more and that their expectations are being met. That being the case, you ought to see greater profits. Quod erat demonstrandum, as they say, in virtually any category you’d care to examine!
Along those lines, it was reported recently that P&G indicated profits would fall more than anticipated, and shares fell 6%, with analysts asking why the company hasn’t posted better sales growth after more than a year into its promised turnaround.
That, of course was Wall Street talking. But if you had talked to Main Street (the way we did – via emotionally-based engagement metrics) we could have told them you don’t build your brand or market share on constant rational low-lower-lowest pricing strategies, on-going rational promotions, or even the promise of innovation (which has the potential to be emotional, but usually ends up being yet another blade added to the razor), and then expect your offering to be seen as different or better than the competition – who’s doing precisely the same thing, which makes emotionally-based measures all the more critical.
We would leave you with two thoughts. First, your rational intellect may sometimes be confused, but emotions never lie. And whether you are an Apple loyalist or not, if you are truthful about it, you do think differently about the Samsung brand and their smartphones than you did two years ago. Second, real emotional engagement, while very, very important, doesn’t make a lot of noise no matter how many marketing dollars you spend. It’s hard to hear that a brand really cares for you or about you, or truly understands your values. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
And while it is hard, happily, it’s not impossible.