Inside The Pyramid

Today I want to take you inside the pyramid;

I want to talk to you about science versus emotion. 

What do I mean by the pyramid? 

First of all, one of the things we do for our clients focuses on what we call the brand pyramid. This is a methodology is a process that we've built that helps unpack for clients their brand architecture, around which the rest of the business can then be built. 

Without a brand pyramid, it's my belief that you're fundamentally building on quicksand. You are building on undefined, non thorough architecture and messaging. 

Therefore later down the line, your business will force that change, to the architecture and thus you will look incongruent over time. 

What do I mean in layman's terms? 

I mean a lack of consistency... and we know that consistency breeds confidence, and that confidence breeds consumerism. 

To give you an example;

When I'm driving past a McDonald's drive-through and I haven't eaten for three hours, I've been on the motorway, for example, and am desperate for food, I'm not going to McDonald's because of the quality of the food, I'm going in because of the consistency of service. 

I accept the compromise of poorer food, because I value the consistency of service. 

So when we're talking about brand pyramids, what we're talking about is building your business on a solid foundation of whatever matters to you, your clients and customers. 

The brand pyramid we build covers a few phases. 

I'll happily tell you all the phases for free. 

I'll talk you through them, no problem, just get in touch. 

But today I want to focus on science versus emotion, and that focuses our attention into the part of the brand pyramid where we see a pair coexisting. A pair of separate pieces of that architecture, which are the WOW and the USP. 

A WOW is a statement that should literally elicit a response, an emotional response from the person hearing the WOW. They should literally go "Wow, that's pretty cool! Never thought of it like that before." That's what we want & are aiming for. 

I mean if you can actually get a tear in their eye, even better. It's all about triggering the emotion. 

The opposite partner to the WOW is the USP. 

USP stands for unique selling proposition. 

It means what's absolutely unique about your business that no one else could claim? 

That absolutely is yours and that if you try and attach another brand to it or another business, it's not going to make sense. Most people's USP isn't really unique. 

People talk about quite vague things and it doesn't set them apart truly. And that's a shame because often they are unique, but they are either unwilling to go the distance to find out what it is that's unique, or they just don't understand what I've just said. 

My job is to educate more people around that. 

We're talking about science versus emotion, so how does that tie into WOW and USP? 

The WOW is emotion, it's about tapping into the emotion, it's creating the emotional connection between your business, your brand and that customer. And the emotional connection is very powerful!

Seeing what Apple have done with emotional connection to their brand, to their why and to their mission. 

When it comes to USP, the USP is very scientific, is very ‘Ronseal’.

It's very black and white.

It's very matter-of-fact.

It is how it is. 

The problem between the WOW and the USP is that if your USP is prominent, more prominent than WOW then you're pushing your agenda from science. 

If the WOW is more prominent, then you're pushing your agenda from emotion. 

Here's where it gets interesting.....

Because if you engage with the USP first, you are buying from science. 

If you engage with the WOW first, you're buying from emotion. 

When you buy from science, it's about numbers, so it becomes very focused on price. 

And when you're buying from emotion, it's the opposite. It becomes very why and mission-focused and you're buying from value. 

So if you are a high value product or service, you cannot sell from science, because it's not a race to the bottom on price dropping all the time. 

If you are a price based business, if you're a supermarket, then it's really hard to sell on emotion because people want to buy on price. So there you have to sell on price. You can add value as well, but people are going to make a price based decision. The price elasticity in economic terms is very low. 

In emotion the price elasticity is very high in economic terms, because people are buying into why, mission and your agenda - the emotional connection. So price is less relevant, people will pay more, and sometimes even for less value, if they identify with the brand in a way beyond that of the competition. 

That's the key thing to think about. 

Are you selling from science? 

Or from emotion? 

Or more importantly where are your customers buying from? 

Are they buying from science or emotion? 

Whichever one they're buying from, you must make sure you get your WOW and USP into the strongest possible position to facilitate that buyer relationship. 

I hope that helps.