Emotive branding for success

Employers hire people that are skilled, but, prefer those who are compatible to them or their team. Consumers alike, buy products that are not necessarily only cheaper or just convenient, but; brands that appeal to their conscience. This topic of liking verses emotional recall, has been long debated by advertisers for years now.

Overtime, the findings relating to consumers being able to recall an advert based on liking or emotion continue to place emotive branding at an upper hand. When comparing commercials that are rational, rational – emotional, and, emotional. Emotional commercials were 45% more likely to be recalled by the target market. This is according to findings by Thorson and Friestad (1989).

Emotive branding as defined by emotivebrand.com means: “the connection of brands with people on an emotionally meaningful level”. It is at this point, where we consider the importance of design thinking for any business. As explained by Tim Brown (President and CEO of IDEO): “Design thinking is a deeply human process that taps into abilities we all have but get overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognise patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as functional, and to express ourselves through means beyond words or symbols. Nobody wants to run an organisation on feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-reliance on the rational and the analytical can be just as risky. Design thinking provides an integrated third way.”

Design thinking, can assist in re-shaping the thinking of strategy and research departments of business. To influence the business strategy, that will give insights to the kind of emotive branding and advertising required. Evidence of the need for emotive branding is not only found in statistics done through research. But, almost everywhere around us, we see an increase of great innovations to what used to be formally just static images on billboards, newspapers and magazines.

A more concerted effort is now on evoking emotions for example, more billboards are having things like car lights that actually indicate in car advertisements, newspapers with QR codes to get videos of static images on the article, and fragrances using scent on pages they advertise in magazines.

It is clear that brands are recognising the importance of having something that evokes a deeper meaning and connection, than, just trying to appeal to consumers in a basic way. The price war in a unstable economy almost forces brands to be more creative in finding a deeper and unique memorable differentiator. Connectivity is soon becoming the buzz word in various communications disciplines. Because after all, consumers have emotions and the more you appeal to their deeper thought process the better your brand connection and this can very well increase sales volumes and more importantly brand loyalty.