While at a birthday party I got engaged in a fierce discussion about the difference of an functional benefit and a emotional benefit for a brand or product. Ok, for starters - not to come over as your average nerd with a limited interest in only marketing. I did have a good time at that party! As a matter of fact, all the usual conversation subjects of a party such as the gossips, politics, newest models of cars, the assessment of each others dates and past dating bloopers were all discussed. But when the beers really kicked in - that’s when the discussions took off. We became your average nerds…

No seriously, it all started with a plain but very clear hypothesis: products which are designed to perform a specific function are better, more innovative, products than most of the new ‘innovative’ fast-moving consumer products that, except for taste and nutritious values, are masked with a lot of persuasive advertising just to ‘lure’ consumers’ cash out of their wallets and therefore don’t really serve any need. For instance: a walkman or a mp3 player has clear function. On the opposite: the function of a cashew nut peanut butter is not really clear. As a strategic planner in an advertising agency I couldn’t let this one go by without a fight. My business is obviously to ‘lure consumers’ cash out of their wallets’ and therefore I had to make my stand. I love a good branding fight.

By the way, I truly hope readers of Klatergoud.com don’t see me as the marketing anti-Christ with all the bad intentions of deceiving consumers for their money. Because, really I’m not - but by saying this I just made my most important point in this article. Just give me some time to come back to this later on.

See, the product in dispute was a product innovation of Albert Heijn (‘AH’ is a chain of Dutch supermarkets of Ahold Inc.). This product is a line extension of the peanut butter range sold at AH and is strangely called ‘cashew nut peanut butter’. There you go - its not peanut butter, but a sandwich spread product made out of a paste of cashew nuts. Basically it’s cashew nut butter but as the association with this product are not easily made, AH decided to still call it a ‘peanut butter’.
A very important part of the product is its packaging. The cashew nut peanut butter is part of the ‘AH Excellent’ luxury brand of products. Synonymous for products of an unique quality, with a exceptional recipe and an own character made for, and I quote: ” an intense taste experience*”.

Do we need this product? Obviously not! Might we have the intention to buy this product once? Well - yes, we might! And there is were an evil persuasive advertising campaign comes in handy and plays with the minds of us the innocent consumers.

We consumers (it’s hard to believe, but we are also one of you - although a lot of colleagues in the industry might not directly agree on this) have a lot of difficulties in assessing emotional benefits and share them with professionals in the marketing field. Most often in interviews, we have the preference not to reveal certain emotional motives to marketers, based on the beliefs that 1) we make all our decisions completely objectively or perhaps because 2) emotional motivation is at a subconscious level that we simply can not identify or articulate. Other barriers to uncovering our emotional motivation to buy a product include the rational purchasing consciousness and the fear of the ‘hidden persuaders’.

The term ‘rational purchasing consciousness’ means that we consumers prefer to believe that we make decisions based upon purely objective and observable criteria about the product at hand. Emotional motivation threatens this belief system. This is why so many people say that advertising doesn’t affect them, despite of the fact that millions of euros are still being spend on advertising each year!
Moreover, many of us fear that if marketers really know how we think (remember? I am a consumer), they might take advantage of them and sell us things they don’t really need, hence the ‘hidden persuaders’.

A brand or a product like AH’s Excellent cashew nut peanut butter contains a emotional benefit which is a complex, positive and cognitive statement that we consumers are able to make about ourselves due to our use, display and attachment to the product’s brand and features. In other words: ‘something nice I can say about myself because I use the product’. Emotional benefits relate directly and powerfully to our self-concept (e.g. how we see ourselves, how other should see ourselves and how we ideally want to see ourselves). That’s why emotional benefits are so vital to branding and advertising. And why we marketers want to link a brand or a product like AH’s Excellent cashew nut peanut butter to the consumers’ self-concept. Ideally: we want that the product endures a life-time relationship with the consumer. This is only possible if we (see, now I am a marketer) understand the core values and principles which consumers, we, use to define them.

Made them totally rational, emotional benefits would sound a bit like:

• “I am an attractive person because I wear the newest and very in fashion jeans of Diesel”
• “People see me as a productive person because I’ve bought a computer with a fast processor”
• “I want people to see me as ‘modern’ and ‘in touch with the newest technology’ and that’s why I bought the newest iPhone”.

But a self-concept, like an emotional benefit, is not translatable into rational predominations in which we are fully aware of. Because of the fact that we most likely will never agree to them! When we were to read one of the emotional benefit statements above and we are asked for levels of agreement, we would get a much lower level of agreement than it is in fact the case or would reflect our normal consumer behaviour. Thinking rationally about these benefits, makes us conscious of them and would somewhat nullify them as well. We would say things like: “Oh come on, I’m being ridiculous - buying this product doesn’t really make me a different person.” We were probably be right, although were are not.

The point is, most of us cannot raise emotional benefits to this level of consciousness, so the impact of evil persuasive advertising remains - whether we like it or not. It’s just too damn hard. Commercials do work and serve a need!

I - as a marketer and a consumer, am also very (sub)conscious of this. As I pointed out earlier. I am concerned how you, the readers, would see me: as a marketing anti-Christ or not. My self-concept is also in dispute whether I like it or not. Writing this very article and uploading it online for everyone to read DOES make me a different person and therefore serves a need for me. Sharing this with (hopefully) millions of readers all over the world reinforces this need. Yes, I am an attention junky!

- Let me catch some breath here -

… And now that I’ve let myself go. Let’s go back to the cashew nut peanut butter. Buying this luxury product would make me feel a ‘better person’ in the sense that I would be seen by others as someone having an exclusive taste for delicate high quality food, able to make an extra cash expenditure for this premium product and someone who’s conscious of what I eat. It would make me feel a little bit better but I will never admit to it…. Imagine! Now that’s an idea.

It has been emotional,

Alfredo Silva

* visit www.ah.nl for more cashew nut peanut butter - it’s in Dutch, and no, we are not sponsored by them!

Tags: AH, Albert Heijn, brand, innovation, marketing