I often use the term “Brand Owner” when writing my posts. I use it as a catch-all for anyone involved with the brand; Marketers, Product Developers, HR, CEOs, CFOs. Yes, anyone involved with the brand. Everyone has a role to play in building and maintaining the brand. It is not something that is created and maintained by just a few, its values, its ethos is something in which everyone has a part to play.
However, I was reminded today of a different perspective with regard to brand ownership or even about the existence of the brand.
It is the view that your brand exists only in the mind of your consumer. All that you own is the product or the service that you create.
This is a very valuable perspective. A brand is not a tangible thing and, despite all the work that you might put into your brand, it only has any value in the mind of the consumer. If they don’t believe in the brand, or they don’t know it exists, it means nothing.
So, if you are to truly understand your brand, you need to understand your consumers. By this I don’t mean that you need to segment them, create pen-portraits or avatars of them. This can be very valuable in helping you target your consumers, but when I say “understand your consumers” I am thinking as a psychologist. You need to understand how they perceive your brand and how their experience of your communications and their product experience affects this understanding.
All that time, effort and investment that you make in creating your product and building your brand comes to a climax when the consumer picks up yours or your competitor’s product with little or even no conscious thought.
Be curious about your consumers and about how they respond to your brand. I don’t mean do they buy it, I mean why do they buy it and how do they feel about it. How does their experience of your brand affect their feelings about it and how do these feelings affect their tendency to buy it again.
Yes, I am unashamedly writing about “feelings”.
Your brand has value only in the minds of your consumers and their minds are emotionally driven. Most consumer decisions are not rational and well considered, they are automatic, quick and made with little effort. System 1 decisions.
All that time, effort and investment that you make in creating your product and building your brand comes to a climax when the consumer picks up yours or your competitor’s product with little or even no conscious thought.
It not only improves your brand performance, it also makes working on the brand more interesting, more fun and much more rewarding.
To really understand the value and effectiveness of your brand you need to understand the unconscious triggers that prompt the consumer to select your product against the competition and you need to understand how you can access these triggers through your communications and through their product experience.
This understanding of the psychology of how and why your consumers respond to your brand and your product not only improves your brand performance, it also makes working on the brand more interesting, more fun and much more rewarding.
Chris Lukehurst is a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Understanding the connections between the consumer experience and emotional responses.
