WHAT DO EMOTIONS HAVE TO DO WITH BRANDING STRATEGY?

 

I sat as a silent observer at an internal marketing workshop of a multi-billion-dollar consumer brand. They spoke for three hours about being customer-obsessed. They never spoke about the customer.

That’s the old way of marketing.

As a profession, we’ve talked the talk about customer obsession for some time now, but have seldom walked the walk. And when we have, they’ve been tremulous steps, clinging to the crutches of the old ways of brand and marketing management.

But a silent revolution is reaching its crescendo.

A revolution in how we understand human decision making has been quietly working in the wings to upend the old assumptions of branding. We’ve come to understand that our decisions, including the ones related to considering, preferring, using, and recommending brands, are intimately associated with emotions.

In an article in CMO.com, I wrote:

“The emotional connection is the primal pull of a great brand—the kind that makes you walk a mile in the freezing rain past a McDonald’s and a garden-variety coffee shop for a $5 Starbucks latte. Awareness and relevance can make brands strong and big, but it’s the emotional seduction that makes brands great.”

This is the kind of emotional energy that marketers need to infuse into their brands. To determine how best they can do it, I have led the charge at Forrester to build a new data-driven brand framework in a way that is applicable to and actionable by marketers. We’ve done the research, cranked the numbers, vetted the results. And we have validated the primacy of emotions and shed light on the ones that matter most.

Want to know more?

On April 6th, at Forrester’s Consumer Marketing Forum in New York City, at my morning keynote, I will walk you through how to build emotion-powered brands.

This is the new way of marketing. You should be there.

And while you’re at the Forum, look for the release of my new report on what every marketer should learn from Apple.

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Interested in hearing more? Join us at Forrester’s Consumer Marketing 2018 on April 5-6 at the New York Marriott Marquis. To receive a complimentary Brand Marketing pass, please email your contact details to events@forrester.com and receive the code.