Talking About Feelings With Brands

What is it that lets consumers have a soft spot for brands?

What is it that allows entrepreneurs (brand owners) to love their brands?

Is it possible to create a competitive advantage for you by having a brand that you can't help yourself?

In modern marketing environment, it is too easy to copy a new product or service, but the competitive advantage of imitation is short and fragile.

To make the brand stand out from the crowded and chaotic competition, the emotional pattern of consumers or business owners may be the key. Let's put it this way, consumers (or business owners) are the protagonists of the brand.

The reason why a brand can produce emotions is that the brand itself has unique and superior interest points, and can be tied to the emotions of the target consumer group.

For example, what is the difference between the users of Apple and Windows?

Why do some people especially love their own cars, but others are unhappy?

As a result, brand sentiment enables entrepreneurs to sell products or services in different ways.

The extension of brand or brand line is not difficult. The important thing is the response of consumers. The more enthusiastic consumers respond, the greater their help for brand development.

Do not forget that the emotional consumers will naturally engage in the most effective marketing campaign for your brand - word of mouth or commonly known as "Twitter".

The definition of "brand emotion"

To define the so-called "brand sentiment", we must find some relevant features for it. Therefore, the following suggestions have been put forward:

- it has the ability to create word of mouth so that consumers can talk about it everywhere.

- it's a popular symbol.

- what consumers expect.

- it may be gorgeous.

It may also be a symbol of the lifestyle of consumers.

In fact, the emotional brand can not be expensive, luxurious, expected or otherwise, but most importantly, it must be a strong magnet, which can closely attract consumers' emotions.

A consumer's love for his car is not necessarily the owner of Porsche (Porsche) or Ferrari (Ferrari), but it may be just the owner of a popular low price car, though not a good car, but for the owner, the car plays an indispensable role in his life, so the relationship between them is emotional.

Therefore, "brand sentiment" can be interpreted as:

"A brand commitment" that can control the emotion of target customers is far more than their general expectations.

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What is "brand commitment"?

"Brand commitment" represents the highest level of brand pursuit - "loyalty". In other words, it is to make the consumer your lifelong customer, or the consumer only thinks you are the only choice. Even if you can't find your product on the shelf for a while, you will not invest in the arms of its brand, they are spending on the whole brand instead of a single product.

For example, early Coca-Cola changed its traditional formula and tried to replace the traditional taste with new flavour. As a result, it caused a strong protest from loyal customers, and again had to return the old flavor to the shelf.

Believe it or not, in the United States, someone has been leading the Nike Ju hook logo on the trend of young people's leisure sports shoes in the United States. What do you say about the loyalty of a consumer to a brand?

"Brand commitment" also means that brands can affect consumers' lives and allow them to accept changes in their lives.

In other words, brands provide consumers with different lifestyles.

Consumer lifestyles

Brand sentiment is formed through the personification of personality and the communication of consumers in the same language, thus forming a part of the consumer's life style.

Consumers use their own brand to express their emotions, and the message conveyed by the brand is their personality and the language they want to express.

Brand sentiment even contains a special charm, which can bring together the users of the brand and become the so-called "ethnic group".

The ethnic group of a brand can be a specific group of people, or a broader group.

Sports brands, such as football clubs or fashion brands, are always appealing to consumers for pmitting emotions. Brands always play the role of "personification" of consumers and their ethnic groups, and speak for their lifestyle.

The use of Internet sites, direct mail lists, community organizations and consumer groups to build emotional channels is a rapidly rising trend in recent years.

Nowadays, the establishment of various types of membership clubs and issuing membership cards in the name of brand has long been a fashion. The purpose is to narrow the emotional distance between brands and consumers and establish loyalty.

The advantages of this approach can not only retain the best customers, but also assist in implementing the "opinion leader strategy" when developing new products or services, and get accurate feedback from the most important customers.

Narrowing focus and customer experience

Of course, it is impossible for a brand to get rid of all consumers, but brand emotion can often get rid of irrelevant interference and focus on a single product category to maximize its effectiveness.

Apple computer is the best example of narrowing the demand. Its best technology is not the computer itself, but the "creativity".

It has found a "highly creative" niche cut in the computer market, which is completely different from the strategy of Intel (Intel) and windows (Windows) for the mass market.

After narrowing the focus, apple soon has its own advantages in the market and has a good "emotional relationship" with users.

So, Lianhua and Hualian Supermarket are not emotional brands? Do consumers have feelings for them?

Yes, it's just too fragile.

After the merger of Lianhua and Hualian, China has become the largest retail group in the small and medium sized supermarket in China.

It is right to focus on small and medium-sized supermarket blocks and expand the scale. Why is it so fragile?

Go to Lianhua or Hualian Supermarket in person to experience the so-called "customer experience". It is not difficult to find the answer.

Big does not mean that it will win. When the other competitors in the market can provide better "customer experience", the advantage of both will disappear immediately. In other words, the consumer's brand loyalty and loyalty are based on the "customer experience" provided by the two supermarkets.

Convey brand emotion

Business owners (brand owners) are usually the ones who love their brands most, and are also the most important persons to promote "customer experience".

When a brand or an enterprise is sold or collected, the new owner may receive all tangible or intangible assets, but the brand emotion may not be as deep as that of the original owner.

Because of the enthusiasm and devotion of the business owner to the brand, and to spread this enthusiasm to all sectors of the company to strengthen and convey the "customer experience", the so-called "internal marketing" needs to be put into the company's employees so that they can have the same feelings for the brand.

If a marketing person wishes to convey the brand emotion, he must first start from the inside. First, he must have the best employees and "internal marketing" to communicate and develop the emotion.

Because good employees can effectively train them to understand the true brand meaning, so that they can convey the highest level of "customer experience" on behalf of the company.

conclusion

A good marketer must be able to identify which brand of brand family has the potential of emotional development.

If so, how should we release it?

Not every brand has emotional potential. Therefore, marketers should make more use of their market acumen, dig out brand emotions and apply them to brand marketing, so that they can create "customer experience" and "brand loyalty".

Do the new brands also have brand emotions?

In fact, so far, no theory has been found to prove that the new brand is not emotional. As long as its conditions are right, the marketing approach can pull the customer's emotion to the brand, because the new brand can follow the past brand experience route and set up a most suitable way for dialogue with customers.

In addition, poor products or lack of interest and enthusiasm of employees in the company make it difficult to cultivate the brand emotion of customers.

At the same time, and most importantly, you must find out the most unique memory of a brand. It may have gone beyond the USP, functionality, or profit point of the product, perhaps a resonance from the customer's heart.

It is an emotion that is attached to the brand after its functional sublimation.

In other words, customers are not simply buying products, but buying a satisfying and enjoyable experience.

For example, "using apple computer to show you are a creative person", "wearing a Rolex watch shows your dignity and dignity".

Ye Zhenggang, Taipei, Taiwan, China, UK TheRobertGordon, University of Aberdeen business school, master of marketing management, brand marketing and retail marketing experience for 16 years, commercial real estate planning for 5 years, customer experience mode + service chain 7P marketing mix strategy development mode.

Mobile phone: 00-86-15801748290

E-mail:jeffreyck@hotmail.co.uk