Insights on building brands with heart from Sara Faisal

“The only way to assure that your brand remains relevant is via understanding the emotional aspect of your target audience as well as their values and personalities.To be a brand that is loved you need to add value and remain close to the audience you are trying to serve.” – Sara Faisal , senior strategist @ Imagination ?

As senior strategist at brand experience agency Imagination, Sara Faisal understands what it takes to build a brand with heart. In each of her articles for Brandingmag, she returns to the subject with clear eyes and a simple reminder: people want to be happy, and if you keep that desire at the heart of what you do, your brand can fulfill that need, even if only in small, simple ways.?

For lifestyle brands like Harley Davidson, brands can sustain positive feelings—and counter negative ones people may associate with the brand—by encouraging customers to proactively represent the brand themselves through engagement in events, incentives, and compelling narratives. Encouraging people to carry out the lifestyle of your brand—to ‘live it out’—gives them a sense of purpose, which is essential to forming a lasting emotional connection. (1)?

The same goes for building internal devotion to your brand with employees: purpose is paramount. As the people who bring your brand to the world, employees are the first and foremost priority when it comes to developing brand loyalty. (2) Did you know that #love was the most used hashtag in 2020? Sara reminds us that above all, people are driven by their hearts in nearly everything they do, and provides a few tips for reaching them. (3)?

There’s no tried and true formula for ‘melting hearts’, as Sara puts it, but there are few timeless strategies that may help your brand make an emotional connection. Read on for heart-felt insights from Sara Faisal.?

That Client with the Biker’s Jacket: A Brand with Influence

By Sara Faisal

“[...] As humans, we are looking for ways to obtain our identities through self-expression and habitual behaviors. Our values and aspirations define our habits. Accordingly, many brands find ways to sell themselves as matching these aspirations. But the association of these activities or aspirations can extend far beyond those intentionally communicated by the brands themselves.

For instance, when a customer purchases a motorcycle, they are also buying a community and the associations that come with it. From a brand perspective, they are buying desirable qualities like freedom, exclusivity, and adventure. However, bikers are also negatively stereotyped as being dangerous, daring, and having their own private outsider groups. Even though motorcycle communities have worked to change these perceptions for both the preservation of the lifestyle and for the love of the brands that the lifestyle encompasses, certain associations persist.?

A Biker’s jacket, by itself, can build a negative or positive perception for a brand based on personality, perspective, and preferences. Those perceptions can result in the narrowing of the brand’s target market, or the development of a new, and often unexpected, audience. Whether the connotations are perceived as negative or positive, customers are drawn to brands that represent who they are and what they aspire to achieve. It is up the brand to make sure that it represents their intended values as well.?

Regardless of what your brand does, it will have to balance its own values with the perceptions of those values, and the culture that subscribes to them. One of the best ways to do that is to sustain positive associations.

How brands can sustain positive associations

1. Reach out to existing customers

By building that bridge of trust and keeping them in the heart of your business, and listening closely to their needs, you can open up new perspectives on what to enhance with your product or services, and guarantee their loyalty longer.

2. Encourage them to create content

Many brands are relying heavily on their target audience to create content due to trust built between them and their network. The probability of the content produced being genuine tends to be higher. As a result, it is more trusted by their audience.

3. Incentivize online and offline events

Post the pandemic, many brands tend to assume that their audience lives, eats, and breathes online. However, many of them are looking to build physical offline lives and meet others with shared interests. Balancing online and offline engagement will encourage customers to become a part of your brand.

4. Create a narrative where your customer is the hero

For a story to truly be successful, it needs a hero that the audience can identify with and root for. A story about a hero, in this case, your customer, that overcomes some sort of adversity will stay with your audience long after they have left your website or store. Think about some of the most memorable commercials you have seen, chances are they all had some sort of storyline with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Customers want to align themselves with a brand that they are proud to be represented by. The key is making sure that the perceptions of your brand are aligned with your actual brand values. That way, when your target audience engages with your brand they can feel good about using your product and being part of something bigger.”

A Lighter Shade of Strategy: The Happy Land Co.

“‘Out of every goal human beings want to attain, happiness is usually the greatest.’ [...]

Companies are usually caught up with building a strategic approach to reach their target audience externally as the most reliable methodology of brand awareness. On the other hand, external target audiences have limitless brand options to choose from. Indicating that organizations tend to neglect an essential target audience–their employees.

Defining an internal target audience

Individuals who are exposed to your brand every day as their single and own chosen option. To ensure a happy-land company, you ought to choose the right audience that is willing to create an impact.

Companies need to look for the following qualities before choosing these essential target audiences:

• Purpose-driven: Make sure the chosen employees believe in your purpose and are willing to assist you to achieve it.
• Positivity over experience: Acquire a positive personality in which they are willing to learn, enhance their skills, and boost the company’s culture rather than having 20+ years of experience with an attitude problem.

The positive impact of using the previous as a strategic approach in choosing our employees is tremendous.?

Why?

Employees are the front line of your brand.

Depending on your company’s purpose, employees with a positive attitude and who are thrilled to work every day will be happy to learn something new, eager to prove themselves in the work environment, and open to new ideas and suggestions.

They will genuinely offer the right assistance to your clients, partners, vendors, and other stakeholders that you may have, which will enhance the stakeholders’ experience. Therefore, they will increase your brand equity.

WOM/eWOM (word of mouth/electronic word of mouth) is one of the most effective ways to promote your company and market your brand. Internal audiences have external audience members (families, friends, and partners ) – they can increase your brand awareness positively or unfortunately negatively.

When an employee is excited to talk about working at your company and believing in your purpose, that will generate positive word of mouth that will enhance your brand perception among unexpected external target audiences.

What?

The lighter shade of strategy here is to be genuine with your employees. Yes, it all works out for increasing overall productivity and innovation.

When hiring:

During the interviewing process, ask prospects to share stories and events during their experience rather than listing their experiences. Listening more to others will shed light on their personalities, ask them to tell you a story about a day at their work, a project that they have conducted, and how they were able to meet the KPIs and deadlines. Finally, ask them how their work-life balance is. This will give you a hint of KPI’s indications and what their reaction would be if something in their personal life comes up, and heads up on how to offer support accordingly.

The pandemic has drawn attention to mental health problems. Therefore, providing support to giving the option of working remotely, hybrid, or full time will ensure the employees increase in productivity levels.?

Facts that matter:

• 45% of employees would rather work in a purpose-driven company;
• Resilience is the number one trait sought when hiring a successful manager;
• Being happy at work and therefore productive differs depending on the concept of happiness at work from one person to another;
• The clarity in the tasks required of the employees as well as providing support increases productivity levels;
• Recognizing employees for their success goes far.[...]

Look at their answers:

The key to having an enjoyable and productive work environment is to hire employees who enjoy coming to work. It’s also important to make sure your employees feel like they have the opportunity to grow and develop their skills. This will ensure they are happy, which in turn will lead to increased satisfaction. Finally, it’s important to make sure your employees have the financial benefits they deserve.

Today, more than ever, it’s crucial to have a strong brand awareness among your employees. Let’s face it, when it comes to the economy, employees are the backbone of your business. Therefore, it’s critical to have a strong brand awareness among your internal audience. When you inspire your employees to care about your brand, they will go above and beyond to make sure they are doing everything they can to make your brand a success.”

That One Heart Melter: For the Love of Brands!

“‘The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart’ ―Helen Keller

[...] According to a marketing agency report, the hashtag #love was the most used across social media platforms in the year 2020 globally. The previous gives a brand the opportunity of going beyond thinking of the target audience as targets but rather as part of their community in which consumers can express their emotions associated with a product or a service. Those brands become a lifestyle, a representation of a set of values and personalities.

If we take a closer look at how brands can influence the way we feel about a product or a service, we may find that those brands align with our aspirations of whom we want to become and what we want to achieve. For example, the overall intense excitement of fashion lovers (over 20K of them) watching a fashion show on a live stream while engaging and discussing the runway. The accessibility versus exclusivity concept is being applied by luxurious brands as they aim to sustain the emotional connection between their brand and audience in a highly competitive environment.

Why is being a heart melter important?

Increases loyalty

When you identify with certain lifestyles and values aligned with the audience’s aspirations, the probability of switching to another brand decreases. Increasing loyalty can be enhanced by providing a great customer experience, loyalty programs, and solving customer complaints swiftly and smoothly.

Increases advocacy

Advocates are the ones who have a large online network of contacts, are highly satisfied with the brands’ products and services, and follow the brand’s news more than the average consumer. Building a relationship with those is highly important as it would influence the decision of their networks as those advocates’ opinions are heard and trusted among the target audience.

Price is not as relevant

When you are providing an excellent and consistent customer experience across touchpoints and can shift your focus on adding value to your consumer’s interaction with the product/service, consumers won’t be as price-sensitive to your brand compared to others and will justify the slight price increase.

How to be a heart melter?

Serve to deliver an unexpected customer experience (be genuine)

Go beyond expectations as you may exceed the needs of your customers, by providing a total solution product and service. For example, a car company would go the extra mile to book a hotel for its client in case the car needed maintenance away from home to achieve excellent customer service.

The bond

In a world where competition is intense, keeping a closer approach to your target audience via community engagement, closely listening to them, and dedicating time and efforts to serving them would enhance positive word of mouth.

Being ethical

Consumers are often loyal to brands they trust, which is why they are willing to spend more money on brands they believe to be ethical. This is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that can have a profound impact on a company’s bottom line.

The world is changing. We’re living in a time when consumers have more power than ever before. They can spread their message to others and have the ability to make purchases without the help of a salesperson. This has allowed brands to rethink their strategies. The only way to assure that your brand remains relevant is via understanding the emotional aspect of your target audience as well as their values and personalities. To be a brand that is loved you need to add value and remain close to the audience you are trying to serve.”

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