Emotional Branding or Bonding

 When I started to write this article about emotional branding and bonding, I was in doubt how I should frame it. I am sure many of you have had similar thoughts when you try to put thoughts into words. So did some more research and came across an advert by “Always”.

Where they were trying to define what it meant to be "Like a girl', they were trying to make an emotional connection to their target audience the girls who buy their products. They were trying to reframe a mental model most girls have about the statement “Like a girl”. They show this by the help of a video which shows how girls behave before and after puberty and why happens to the thought process of the girls and why they behave differently.

The link to the video is here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N433aXwj59E

This would resonate well with a lot of people, It hit me wasn't this the same message what the movie "Bend it like Beckham" trying to convey. May the reason that movie became a hit was that it made the same connection. 

I think Dove has used the same strategy when they tried to define what “Beauty” was, check out their video. But they had a different take, but basic about breaking the mental model and connecting emotionally still remained

 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

Both the advert’s never mentioned the products their qualities or its benefits. Just mentioned the name at the end. The dove advert was trying to compare how the ladies saw themselves and how others see them and make them aware of their self-image.

 They were We always find meaning where none existed before, we always tend to find connections between things which was no there before. We tend to see the world with the mental models we carry around. They were trying to break the Gestalt of the target customers as my psychology prof @Mathai Fenn tried to explain us.

That is the way we make sense of the world. What we see we make sense by relating to what we already know. Again I think this was what my “What Managers Can Learn from Philosophy” professor @Luc de Brabandere was trying to explain. Can anyone ever come up with an idea which was not related to something before? Who knows? Maybe someone did? (That was my bit of philosophical musing, which I believe many of us have, but I understand is usually in the bathroom when we are free of other thoughts and wonder about our own existence, I believe I read it somewhere it is so, not sure.)

The deepest kind of relation a brand can have with its customers is an emotional one. Sometimes brands don’t realize that.

30 Years ago Coke didn't know this when they launched the now famously failed "New Coke" and was forced by customers to bring back the old Coke. Think about it, the Product is a health-destroying sugary drink carbonated drink for God’s sake, not Elixir.

The same issue is being faced by Harley Davidson. The kind of customers who use Harley has a certain attachment to the brand. The bike is how they define themselves as part of their identity. Harley had done a study over some time back as explained by my prof of management @ Nader Tavassoli , in His lectures on Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behavior. One of the insights found by Harley was that their riders never rode alone. Whereas the Japanese sports bike which was Harley’s competitors were much more about individualism, Harley was about the sense of community. And by discovering that they actually turned their brand into an experience. They reinvested in the cruiser bikes. They build the whole brand around this community

That was well and good and helped the company to make great sales. But now that generation of customers are ageing and the New Generation Is not able to identify with the brand. No new communities are being similarly formed.

My view is that If they dug deeper the whole community thing was about counter-culture and its expression. So the community was a way of expressing that sentiment. But among today’s millennial's what is the counter culture. What forms of expressions does the counter culture take in this generation? May not be Biking, travelling may be, searching for the purpose may be. 

Prof Nader Tavassoli talks of the companies having to find a Brand Purpose which should arise from the customer need. Me thinks if the brands are also able to connect to customers in an emotional way that would be a more engaging relation. Yes, all products or business may not be able t do that all products would not make themselves relevant to customers at an emotional level. Say a pencil company cannot make the emotional connection to storytelling as a way to connect to customers or can it.

The emotional connection needn’t be directly visible like in the case about the airlines I posted last week which h tried to make a connection using teacher’s day. Very subtly done.

Read the post here https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/sajith-r-channadathu-6519084_emotional-activity-6669108513509380096-IthU

I surely hope that this article is also able to make the same kind of emotional bonding with you the readers else I need to rethink my emotional connect strategy. Am I able to understand your mental models and get across to you to connect? Did the article serve its purpose?

Note; I would like to thank @ Sandeep Kochhar for his today's post on story writing which helped me.