EMOTIONAL design FOR BRANDS
We humans are emotional beings. The big advancement in analysis of human behaviour and psychology over the past two decades has been the recognition of the fundamental role that emotions play in all aspects of life and decision-making. From Di Masio’s ‘Somatic Markers’ to Kaneman’s theory of ‘Fast and Slow Thinking’, emotion reigns supreme in determining how we feel, who we are and what we do. Brand Emotional Design is the systematic process of developing brand positioning by identifying the most relevant human emotions in a category, a market or a part of culture and finding the critical point of connection to these emotions based on a brand’s DNA.
UNDERSTAND THE AUDIENCE’S EMOTIONAL WORLD
We are experts in everything to do with brands, but one of the key ways we inform brand strategy is with an understanding of people, their emotions and how they behave. We are highly skilled and experienced research practitioners so we do all our own consumer research. The world of feelings and emotions can initially seem quite open and nebulous. We have a highly structured way of analysing and understanding human emotional needs based on recent psychological theory - the 16 motivations model by Dr.Steven Reiss. We use this to create a profile of the consumer’s emotional landscape in relation to the category. This is a very useful way of generating possible brand ideas across a range of different emotions relevant to the brand.
CLOSE COLLABORATION WITH OUR CLIENTS
Brand strategy isn't something you outsource. It's too important and fundamental to the business. When you work with us we don't lock ourselves in a room for four weeks and come back with "the answer". We work closely with you and the marketing and executive team to guide you through the process. In our experience it is essential the leadership team of any organisation helps to generate the brand strategy if they are going to believe in it and own it fully. Brand strategy should aways be a highly collaborative undertaking.
AligN brand strategy to business goals
Investing in the brand and brand strategy is not an indulgence or an exercise in keeping the marketing team happy. Branding is a highly commercial undertaking because it is proven to generate superior long term profitability for a business. To ensure this happens brand ideas cannot be developed in a vacuum, they need to be designed to align closely to business outcomes. This is one of the reasons we spend the time to understand the business strategy first. What audiences are critical? Where will growth come from? We like to understand and express the business strategy in terms of a required consumer behaviour change so that the business and brand strategy are totally aligned. Brand strategy must be informed by and deliver to commercial outcomes.
RECOGNISE THAT BRANDS ARE WHOLE OF BUSINESS
It used to be the case that brand strategy was focused on communication and how the brand should represent itself in advertising. Those days are long gone. In the world today what you do matters more than what you say. This is not to suggest that communication doesn’t matter - clearly it does, but the product and service design, the customer experience and even the way a brand behaves are now equally, if not more, important. The brand strategy needs to be developed in a way that can inform all parts of the organisation or customer experience. This is subtly different to creating a brand strategy that only needs to live in communication.
CREATE BRAND prototypes, then refine & ITERATE
Our approach is to get to solutions (brand idea prototypes) fast then iterate and improve them by exposing ideas early and often to key audiences and stakeholders. There needs to be a learning stage on any project to understand the context and the problem to solve. Once this is done then we like to get to prototypes, early ideas and solutions which we them improve and refine based on exposing them to key audiences inside and especially outside the organisation. In getting to brand ideas we think rigour and creative thinking about brand strategy are not at odds, but rather, go hand in hand. We like numbers, data, statistics and analytical rigour. We like to leave no stone unturned when it comes to knowing the business, the brand, the competition and the customer. But then, with any truly interesting strategy, there needs to be a measure of lateral thinking to get to breakthrough ideas. So we ensure a healthy measure of both in the way we approach projects.