Using psychology to overcome problems that regular market research doesn’t solve.
Innovation and product development
Strengthening Communications
Differentiating Brands against commoditisation
Turning around a declining brand
Keeping Brands Relevant in an Evolving Space
Identifying white space and expanding into new categories or markets.
Improving Brand Loyalty
“Other agencies have told us what we need to do, but no one has told us so clearly how we need to do it. This was the most useful debrief I have ever attended.”
Lydia Fomuso – R&D Director Flavor function
PepsiCo - Lay’s Chips
Our clients
Our clients range from multinationals to brand new start-ups.
Speak with us about your needs and we will work with you to create the best project design to give you the answers together with clear practical recommendations to your problems.
Consumer liking and preference is an emotional response to their product experience, not a rational response to its functionality or ingredient list.
If you are looking for a competitive edge and products that out-perform your competition you need to deliver on an emotional level. You need to make your consumer feel good about themselves and about your product every time they encounter it.
The way to differentiate your brand is by finding the ideal emotional experience for the consumer.
We help you to flex the sensory experience in order to create an ideal emotional experience for your consumer.
Authentic communication connects with consumers at an emotional level. If you are only communicating the emotions of your category, you are not differentiating your brand.. All kitchen cleaners make the job easier and make you feel great about your kitchen, all fizzy drinks are refreshing. So how is your product distinctive?
What differentiates your product is the unique emotional journey that it delivers from the opening of the pack to the end of its use and then beyond.
Effective communication resonates with the consumer during their product experience and prompts them to recognise this uniqueness every time that they use it.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique work gets to the heart of the emotional journey that consumers experience with your product and with your competitors. It identifies the key positive differences in the experience of your product or brand and gives you clear recommendations regarding how to communicate these positive differences in a motivational way.
Even in the most commoditised of markets different brands and products will evoke different emotions within consumers. The more commoditised the market is the less conscious consumers are of these emotions, but they will still be there.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique work gets to the heart of the emotional journey that each brand delivers to the consumer. Once we have identified the emotional journeys delivered by your brand and by your competitors we can identify what makes the experience of your brand stand apart from the consumer experience if the other brands and products. Which features of your brand and product experience can we use to add value and differentiate your brand to make the consumer believe that it is worth paying a slight premium for.
We will then make very clear recommendations regarding positioning, communication and product development that will improve the consumers’ emotional image of your brand (which will make them feel better about your brand) and thus willing to a pay a premium above the other more commoditised brands available.
When consumers stop choosing your brand it is because something else is making them feel better. It may be that your brand no longer makes them feel so good, it may be because another brand is now making them feel better than yours.
It could be that brand messages have changed, and this has changed how the consumer responds to the same experiences. Maybe product performances have changed or maybe consumer values have changed and exactly the same branding and experiences are producing different emotional reactions in your consumers. In our experience, it is probably a combination of all three.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique approach discovers what is driving the consumers’ emotional responses to the brands and what has, or is, changing.
We will understand what is driving the decline in your brand and conversely what is driving the success of any alternatives. We will be able to make very clear recommendations for changes in positioning, communications and product development that will improve the consumers’ emotional experience (make them feel better about your brand) and reverse brand decline.
Consumers love your brand and come back to it again and again because it makes them feel good. This is an emotional reaction to how the brand makes them feel not a rational one.
As new competitors are launched, as consumer wants and needs evolve, as consumer expectations and attitudes change, our products and brands sometimes get left behind.
Keeping your brand relevant in a changing environment is challenging. As the environment changes the consumers’ emotional response to their experience of your brand changes, even when your brand and your product are exactly the same.
To understand and respond to these changes you need to understand how and why the consumers’ emotional response to your brand is changing, what would be a better emotional response, what do you need to change to elicit that better response and what is the change that is required.
This understanding does not come from a rational analysis of the changing circumstances, but from an understanding of the consumers emotional response to those changing circumstances and of their resultant changing emotional response to your brand.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique work gets to the heart of the consumers’ unconscious emotional responses to these changing circumstances and to how and why these are affecting your brand. We are able to identify changes in your positioning, communications and product development that will improve consumers’ emotional response to your brand and keep you up-to-date in a rapidly evolving world.
Consumers love your brand because of the way that it makes them feel. This is an emotional reaction to their brand and product experience, not a rational one to how it tastes or performs.
When moving your brand into a new category consumers will expect your brand to deliver that emotional feeling within the context of the new category. When moving into a new market you need to understand the relevance of your emotional delivery within that market.
Of course, your product must perform or taste good, but that just gives you permission to play. If you want to win in any category or market, you need to understand and deliver the best emotional journey from brand encounter to and then beyond product use. You must understand the range of emotional characteristics of your product and which ones make the consumer feel good when they use your product.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique work gets to heart of consumers’ emotional requirements and enables us to give you clear recommendations regarding the best emotional journeys and how to deliver them through positioning, communications and product development.
Your consumers come back to your products again and again because of the feelings the product generates in them. They keep coming back because the product makes them feel good. This is an emotional response to their product experience it is not a rational response to its functionality or ingredient list.
Consumers are loyal to brands that they like, that they trust and that they believe in. These are all emotional, not rational, responses to the brand and the product.
If we are to really understand and grow brand loyalty, we need to understand the consumers’ emotional response to our brand and to our product experience and we need to understand how and why this is different to their emotional responses to competitors and other alternatives.
The Marketing Clinic’s unique work gets to heart of consumers’ emotional responses to brands and products, identifies the key differences in consumers’ responses to your brand and product experience and to those with competitors and enables us to give you clear recommendations regarding the best emotional journeys and how to deliver them through positioning, communications and product development.
