The user needs to feel. There is no time to understand nor reason.
The consumer does not spend a lot of time thinking about our product. He usually does not analyze advantages and disadvantages coldly.
We can go beyond the rational analysis. We can go beyond the brand experience, too. Sensations are what make the difference.
The brand homogeneity
The brand is a guarantee of continuity. All the products and services will have some common characteristics.
That helps the consumer. In front of a large offer, the brand provides information. It is not necessary to test all the products to know what we prefer.
If it is the same product, we can infer it will be like others that we tried before. Even if it is a different product but the same brand, we know that it will have some common characteristics.
Differentiation
The brand gives character and life to the product or service. It makes possible the connection with the consumer.
The image must be consistent; it cannot have sudden changes. If the customer finds characteristics that are not comparable, he will lose confidence. The fact that it carries that logo will not be useful information to know if he wants to buy or not.
The brand is also a guarantee of differentiation. The name, the symbol, the logo, and sometimes the packaging are decisive. They condense all the characteristics that make a product unique. It is necessary to look for the competitive advantage that avoids confusion with competitors. The brand will be useful if it can communicate that.
Brand experience
When we talk about differentiation, we all think about physical characteristics. In a car, for example, it is the engine or the chassis; in a meal the ingredients. But, these differences between products are smaller everytime. In many products and services, are not perceived at all, by the consumer.
In some cases what makes the difference is not the product, but what surround it. This vision connects with the concept of the brand as an experience. Bern H. Smidt, in his book Experiential Marketing, popularized the term. The experience that we have with the product is essential to measure the satisfaction.
The brand as transmitter of sensations
I propose that we go one step ahead of the brand as an experience.
Most of the products are not relevant to the consumer. We all spend just a few seconds to decide what brand to choose in the supermarket. The cold analysis of the physical characteristics is not always possible.
In other cases, the experience is not that important, especially, in products that we do not value a lot. What is crucial are the sensations.
Sensations are what the brand conveys. It is information that we have, but it's hard to make explicit in words. Even more, we do not need to put into words, or if we do, it is to make a brief comment, sometimes only in our mind. That is because most of the brands that surround us are not critical to us. We bought them, and that's it. We do not spend time analyzing why.
The brand will be useful if it conveys the right feelings. It should compress the values of the physical characteristics and experiences. To achieve that, we need to organize different parts of the company to get there. The brand should be the result of a communication plan. Coordinate, give a unified image of all the aspects that the consumer has contact. That encompasses the logo, the web page, the app in mobile devices, the packaging, and shipment.
The company must work to make things easier. Sometimes it is not necessary to understand anything. The consumer just needs to feel.
This post is the continuation of a series related to brand creation and emotional branding:
Brand Creation:
- Brand building process
- Rebranding process
Emotional Branding:
- Communication plan
- Love a brand
- Your brand communicates what you feel
- Entertain
