Emotional Connect Between Customers and Brands Through Their Brand Characters Amplify Sales

Authored by -Suresh Mishra, Sudhir Kumar Pandey, Anup SK, Pallavi Dange, Utpal Raj 

Building a brand for a product or service is not a sprint but a marathon. Marketers have to continuously evaluate marketing strategy to make sure that it is effective and adding value to the brand. The Product or service quality is key for any branding exercise. Every brand represents an organization that has values and a code of ethics for its business. Marketers have to understand brand psychology and create advertisements that communicate brand value. Marketers have different options for character's consideration in advertisements. They can use celebrities from different streams such as sports, entertainment, or can create brand characters which will help to create brand recall. Based on historical evidence of advertising ads, Marketers can clearly visualize that Brand character is allowing companies to develop a relative competitive advantage due to strong memory and brand recall they have with customers. Companies are ensuring that brand character must speak a language which is able to connect with the customer quickly. Brand character is ubiquitous in the B2C segment. However, the trends are changing and B2B companies are adopting brand characters in their overall marketing program. Most of the time a brand's character is giving an emotional connection to the brand. we, as a consumer, are associated with the brand so much that we never realize that we are resonating with brand positive traits and ignoring sometimes negative traits if any [1]. What prompts us is to connect with the brand is a persona brand image and character which is a relatable entity. Most of the researcher confirmed that Brand characters help the consumer to develop a brand image which can influence purchase behaviour, therefore a key driver in brand marketing and brand equity [2,3].

Understanding Brand Characters

Brand Characters are potent advertising assets popular with marketers and the audience. They are a category of fluent devices used as a common element in the whole spectrum of brand communication. The characters are inseparable centrepieces of the brand story but are more versatile than human ambassadors are, and help carry the momentum from one great advertisement to subsequent ones [8].

Their memorability generates instant and strong brand association with the audience, especially when they see these characters as extensions of themselves. Brand characters' platform-agnostic nature and long lifespans make their customization to mediums, local specifications, and for multiple generations of customers and products very easy[8].

Quality of Brand character

Brand characters act as an ambassador for the brand. A brand character's principal intention is to connect with the audience in a more humane way rather than the typical advertisements & build on the trust with consumers. The quality of the character should directly reflect the brand itself [5]. Some of the best brand characters are McDonald's clown, KFC’s colonel, Amul girl–these help in quick brain recollection [7]. The brand character can be both original and adapted. Original can challenge that it can take consumer time to understand the brand. Or we can adopt an established character such as celebrities which can allow the audience to easily connect[5].

First, we need to decide what the mascot should be–person or object or animal. A human mascot can be a real person like in KFC or a human body like in Michelin tires. Animal objects are based on the idea that people attribute human traits to such objects. For example, Jaguar brand directly represents the qualities of a jaguar as those of the car. An object such as Pillsbury doughboy can help create an image of the product in consumers [10]. Pixar brand uses a lamp which was used in their first movie Luxo Jr, nominated for 1987 Oscars [9]. As a summary, the mascot should be relatable to the consumer’s mind and reflect the brand quality[6].

Emotions for Brand character

Brand characters are a collection of emotion and many of the brands leverage the power of their brand characters. Some of the very famous brand characters, that aligns with the central theme of the company and pushes them for a brand recall are:

Michelin Man: Bibendum or the Michelin man is an iconic character made of tyres, the charming fictional guy adopted by a tyre company clearly depicts the product along with its capability to connect with the target audience and strong brand recall [11].

 Mickey Mouse by the Walt Disney Company: One of the oldest mascots who never gets old! Despite all the cut-throat competitors, the Mickey mouse stands its position. It enjoys popularity among all age groups

[12].

Ronald McDonald: The clown character used by the company has an emotional connection with its consumer and provides huge brand value[13]. 

 In the recent report published by System 1 Group “Creativity & Effectiveness- Developing creative best practice for long-term growth in a multi-platform world”, Brent Snider hypothesised that fluent devices in the marketing campaign are helping the organization to increase market share, customer gain, increase in profit gain and reduction in price sensitivity[4]. System1 Group has analysed advertisement effectiveness of six sectors (Automotive, financial FMCG, Health and Beauty, Tech and Charity) of every ad in the UK and US for a period July 2017 to June 2018.  We have summarised Key Insights and findings of Brent Snider model and study. Further, the researchers argued that Fluent devices are helping in evoking emotions and characters ingrained in-depth in our memory for decades. This help brands for instant recognition anywhere [4].   

For this study, the same product ad is created with a fluent device and no fluent device and broadcast on different platforms, and data is captured for study. Based on the outcome of the study it is clearly visible that in all three critical parameters, Spontaneous Brand recall, Average Dwell time, and Effective reach, Fluents device ad has much better engagements over no fluent device ads [4].

Further study on Brand fluency and TV spend shows that fluent device advertisements create better memory structures for brand recognition and help in marketing investment to give better results. The advertisements which are including Fluent devices create emotional connect for a longer duration between brands and their customers. A study done by Binet et.al in 2013 shows that emotional advertisements drive long term higher profit over rational advertisements campaigns [4].

Summary

Our analysis of different research works concludes that Emotional advertisement campaigns with fluent devices create long term emotional impressions in the customer mind and result in a higher profit than rational advertisement campaigns. However, we also understood during our study that with digital disruption and multi-platform availability, the marketer has reduced usage of Brand characters (Fluent devices). Considering the increase in digital marketing, Organizations should use mixed marketing strategies and should promote usage of brand character which is already a proven concept based on historical evidence of advertisement campaign.

Reference

1. Steve Harvey, Dec -2017, Memorable or forgettable? What your brand personality says about you, (Available at https://fabrikbrands.com/what-your-brand-personality-says-about-you/ )
2. Keller, K. L. “Conceptualizing, Measuring and Managing Customer-Based Brand Equity.” Journal of Marketing 57, 1 (1993): 35–50.
3. Herz, M., and K. H. Brunk. “Conceptual Advances in Consumers’ Semantic and Episodic Brand Memories: A Mixed Methods Exploration.” Psychology & Marketing 34, 1 (2017): 70–91.
4. Brent Snider, President of Client Development & Strategy, “Creativity & Effectiveness Developing creative best practice for Long-term growth in a multi-platform world” https://effworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/System1-Creativity-and-Effectiveness-Brent-Snider-May-17.pdf
5. Sam Douglass, Why Your Brand Needs to Identify a Brand Character. July 2019 (Available at www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-your-brand-needs-to-identify-a-brand-character/)
6. Report by Mascots and Branding, Brand Mascots: Choose the right type of character for your brand. Dec 2018 (Available at https://visualcontent.space/brand-mascots-choose-the-right--character-type-for-your-brand/)
7. Eduncle article ,16 Famous Mascots of Popular Indian Brands , Feb 2019 (Available at https://scoop.eduncle.com/16-famous-mascots-of-popular-indian-brands)
8. Ellen de Kruijf, The Power of Fluent Devices, Dec 2018 (Available at https://www.greenbook.org/mr/market-research-industry/the-power-of-fluent-devices/)
9. Sohini Sen, How a hopping desk lamp ended up in Pixar, Nov 2019 (Available at https://www.livemint.com/mint-lounge/business-of-life/how-a-hopping-desk-lamp-ended-up-in-pixar-11574707702719.html)
10. Carlye Adler, How the Pillsbury Doughboy Explains What You Buy, A tiny marketing firm brings product mascots – and profits – to life, October 12, 2006 (Available at: https://carlyeadler.com/writing/2013/01/10/how-the-pillsbury-doughboy-explains-what-you-buy/)
11. Dale Buss, ‘Michelin Man’ Bibendum Slims Down in Brand Refresh, June 2017 (Available at https://www.brandchannel.com/2017/06/19/michelin-rebrand-061917/)
12. Report on “Branding Secrets Learned from Mickey’s 90th Birthday Celebration” (Available at https://zephoria.com/branding-secrets-learned-from-mickeys-birthday/)
13. Claire Nowak, The Real Reason Ronald McDonald Is the McDonald’s Mascot, Jan 2020 (Available at https://www.rd.com/article/why-ronald-mcdonald-mascot/)
14. WARC Best Practice, What we know about brand characters, August 2019 (Available at https://www.warc.com/content/paywall/article/bestprac/what-we-know-about-brand-characters/108120)

Disclaimer - Authors have used information available publicly, please go through references for further information. The Brands Characters used only for supporting Academic study and not for the promotion of any brand.