Every brand produces a shift in the consumer mood. If your brand does not improve your consumers’ mood, then what does it do?
But knowing that your consumers feel energised, relaxed or happy after using your product is not good enough.
In order to stand apart from your competition you need to understand the whole emotional journey that your brand takes your consumer on and how and why this makes them feel better.
Imagine interviewing riders as they alight from a rollercoaster. They will be in a heightened emotional state, excited, exhilarated, maybe a little unnerved. If you ask them why, they will tell you about the sudden drop that turned their stomach, the corkscrew that left their heart in their mouth.
While this is very true and gives you an image of how they experienced the ride, it is just snippets, highlights of their experience.
If you really want to understand their experience, you need to understand their whole journey: How the sudden drop was so shocking because the preceding section of the ride had relaxed them after an initial shock. How their relaxed state made the drop all the more shocking and dramatic. How the speed of entry into the corkscrew was what left their heart in their mouth, rather than the corkscrew itself.
While the rider recalls the peaks and troughs of their experience, it is the set up and sequencing of these peaks that makes them so significant.
It is the same for your consumers’ journey with your brand. It is the detail and sequencing of that journey that differentiates your brand from its competition.
It is the journey that is the essence of your brand, not the endpoint.
When you can sequence your consumers sensorial journey and understand how this triggers their emotional journey, you have a completely different view of your brand. It gives you a clearer view of many of your brand and competitive issues and helps you to create brands that consumers love, prefer, come back to again and again and recommend to their friends.
Chris Lukehurst is a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Understanding the connections between the consumer experience and emotional responses.
