DEEPER NEEDS MAKE STRONGER BRANDS

A brand has to stand for something. Has to.?

Call it a purpose if you’re inside-out or a positioning if you’re outside-in.?

Either way, it’s what you want your brand to mean to all parties involved.?

And it has to be some kind of belief. What you believe in delivering and what people believe you’ll deliver.?

That’s where I started with Closer to Brands way back when.?

I believed brands had to make an emotional connection. That’s because people’s brand choices are driven by their deeper needs.?

I always hoped the brand name got this across. To spell it out, I’d say our aim was to ‘move people closer to brands’. Psychology and geography.

When a few fools fell in love with the idea of brand love, I knew there’d be a backlash. Years before, I’d realised ‘emotional connection’ was a better bet than ‘building relationships’.?

When the science storm blew in, I was shaken enough to shift my ground. There was simply no denying the truth behind System 1 thinking and hence the importance of salience.?

So ‘moving people closer to brands’ became ‘creating moments of closeness’. Jeffrey created the ‘O’s and O’s’ image and off I went out the other side of COVID. The proposals worked, projects came in.?

But recently I’ve noticed I’m talking a bit less to clients about deeper needs. They’re still the foundation of every project but the Need Maps themselves are now more in the background.?

I’ve also worked on a couple of positioning projects recently that have reminded me how central the product experience can be to a brand. That pushes you back to product feature leading to functional benefit leading to emotional benefit.?

Mind you, I’ve always believed in the importance of the product. It’s why I’m not keen on the phrase ‘brand image’. It can make a brand sound like comms gift wrap.?

So time for a Closer to Brands refresh.?

The thinking went like this (still to be validated):?

Target - brand owners wanting help in getting their brand chosen more often.?

Insight - I need more than someone telling me to increase my brand’s mental and physical availability.?

Product features - our specialist needs expertise and brand positioning experience.?

Functional benefit - insight into the deeper needs driving choices in your category, leading to a more compelling positioning for your brand.?

Emotional benefit - the rewards that come from making your brand mean more to people.?

Belief - DEEPER NEEDS MAKE STRONGER BRANDS.?

And when I first wrote those five words down, some distant memory stirred, something in the rhythm of the phrase.?

Eventually, I worked out it was ‘GRADED GRAINS MAKE FINER FLOUR’, the old TV campaign for Homepride. Fred the Flour Grader. Watch it here.

So that’s it, I’m now Richard the Need Grader.?

In a bowler hat.