Proven Strategies and Tips for Effective Emotional Branding

Brand marketing often focuses on appealing to the logical and
rational side of the consumer, but did you know you can appeal to the
irrational side of the consumer as well? Emotional branding
gives you a direct means for influencing consumer behavior by tapping
into the way a product, service or brand makes the consumer appear or
feel. When performed correctly, emotional bonding strengthens the ties a
consumer has to a brand, making it easier for a devoted relationship to
take place between the two parties. This bond also makes traditional
marketing tactics more effective.

Why is Emotional Branding So Effective?

That's because emotional branding takes customer loyalty to another
level. It accomplishes this by tapping into the four foundational
emotions: happiness, sadness, anger and fear (which encompasses surprise
as well). Just as all colors are created from just three primary
colors, all emotions are triggered through the melding of these four
emotions, thereby making it easy for a seasoned marketer to tap into any
consumer behavior they want and alter it through emotional branding.

How to Interpret the Four Basic Emotions

Before implementing emotional branding tactics in your campaign,
you first have to understand how the four emotions alter consumer
behavior.

1. Happiness. When we feel happy, we want to share
   that happiness and with brands, we want to share that brand. Tapping
   into the happy emotion with your content is brilliant for social media
   marketing i.e., virality. A study performed by professor of marketing at
   the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) Jonah Berger showed
   that out of 7,000 New York Times articles, the more positive an
   article was, the more likely it was to be emailed and shared. This has
   been described as the spirit of the gifter being embodied by the gift,
   or more plainly, happiness begets happy gifts of social sharing.


2. Sadness. Sad feelings cause us to empathize with
   others and reach out to form a connection. As far as emotional
   opposites go, sadness is about as opposite as you can get from
   happiness, but what is interesting is that many of the same areas of the
   brain light up for both emotions. In truth, they are flip-sides of the
   same coin. But unlike happiness, sadness produces neurological chemicals
   such as the stress-coping hormone, cortisol and oxytocin, an
   empathizing hormone specializing in human connection. Studies have shown
   that when sad content triggers these two hormones, consumers are more
   likely to give or spend money, or in other words, trust in a brand.


3. Anger. When a consumer feels anger from the
   content they take in, they become more stubborn (in addition to other
   primal reactions such as aggressive), especially online. For example,
   when confronted with an article reaffirming their own beliefs, one of
   two groups of people were then exposed to rude and derogatory comments
   left on the article by the opposing view. Those exposed to the rude
   content dug their heels in firmly on their stance, while the group that
   didn't view these comments were less stubborn. The takeaway—negativity
   has a lasting effect on consumers which can be harnessed to reinforce
   your brand.


4. Fear. Fear is controlled by the amydgala, which
   also regulates our response to surprise as well. You probably know of
   the fight or flight response, but what is of interest to emotional
   branding is the fact that fear also creates a desperation in audiences.
   In short, they want something to cling on to, just the way a teenage boy
   hopes his date clings to him during a scary movie. In the right place
   with the right content around it, your brand can become a magnet of
   safety.

Five Tips for Effective Emotional Branding

With this understanding, you should have no problem implementing
emotional branding to stoke the behavior you desire from your consumers.
To help you along the way, here are five tips for emotional branding:

1. Approach your audience from a more personal level. Don't think of
   them as consumers buying a product, but rather as your friends. You
   want them to have the best experience possible so stay away from data
   delivery and focus more on creating a dialogue. Emotional branding works
   best on this level, so it's important to know your demographic inside
   and out.


2. Storytelling
   goes hand in hand with emotional branding, so if your content creation
   team isn't utilizing this method for anything else, be sure that they
   use it for this aspect of the campaign. No other content delivery method
   works as well for creating emotional connections.


3. Take a close look at the Sixteen Hot Buttons
   that Barry Feig talks about in Hot Button Marketing (sex, nurture,
   control, discovery, revalue, time, want for best, reinvention,
   intelligence, power, wishes, longing to belong, family value, etc.) and
   really figure out which work best for your brand. Then, push those
   buttons!


4. End on a strong note no matter which emotion you are triggering.
   That last note of your campaign will be what lingers with the viewer, so
   be sure yours is ending on the right one. This makes it easy to blend
   emotions for multiple effects, such as sharing a sad story that ends on a
   happy note—you get the best of both worlds. Keep in mind that it's not
   always where you start, but how you finish.


5. Look closely at the content that gets the most shares in your
   industry. What is it that makes it so viral? The delivery method? The
   message? The context? The site it is shared on? Emotional branding
   creates a lot of virality, so setting it up to succeed through a
   well-planned launch will increase your chances of success.

No matter what your experience with emotional branding, one quick
way to get started is to speak to your own emotions within the industry.
You can also look towards bigger brands to get an idea of how they tap
into the emotions of their consumers. Scale these up or down as needed
and then tailor them to fit your own marketing message.