More then ever, we see how brands affect people. If we love them, we show it. To create such appealing brands is often a long process but also a bit of luck. You can’t influence the luck factor, but knowing the variables that predict your brand appeal success would be a good start.

In a large scale scientific study by Kim Cramer, PhD and Alexander Koene, it was investigated why some brands are better able to touch people than other brands. Results indicate that brand appeal has everything to do with fundamental human drives.

Cramer and Koene have conducted a series of quantitative studies involving over 8000 consumers, 23 markets and 196 brands to identify the laws of brand appeal. Twenty-four fundamental human drives have been identified and lay at the base of a proprietary methodology of mixing and matching combinations of these drives to create appealing tensions within brands.

To be honest, I’m not that fond of papers, studies and reports. But this research is combined with their 23plusone profile and that makes it an excellent way of presenting a scientific research on brands. The profile gives you the opportunity to compare the results of your profile to the variables they have found in this research.

23plusone results:

• The better a brand touches fundamental human drives, the higher the brand appeal
• The better a brand simultaneously triggers drives from the five groups (Vitality, Attraction, Self-development, Ambition and Basics), the higher the brand appeal.
• Overall, drives from the groups Vitality (Health and Sportive) and Attraction (Beauty and Sexuality) have the highest relative impact on brand appeal.
• Brands which trigger ‘unexpected’ drives, deviating from category conformity, increase in brand appeal.
• There are no universal mixing rules. The most effective ‘drive cocktail’ is category-dependent.
• Brand awareness (the degree in which a person knows the brand), brand expectations (the degree in which a person knows what to expect from the brand) and 23plusone are intertwined concepts influencing brand appeal.
• Brand appeal is a sound marker of brand preference.
• There are few truly appealing brands which exceed their category.

[via Joost Galjart, theworldison.blogspot.com]

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• 23plusone: A scientific study on brand appeal (theworldison.blogspot.com)
• Branding is now (insights-group.com)

It’s been a long time since our mentor Eric Roscam Abbing has posted something to his own blog, so let’s feature some of his work here :-)

One of the first interviews we did for Klatergoud was with Eric, and his ideas have been a continuous inspiration for us. Eric just published a case-study of his ‘brand driven innovation’ work for Dutch kitchen brand Etna, and you can see the results here:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

What you can see from this case is that the work does not center on designing new products per sé, but rather helping the firm build a framework in which to conduct their innovation processes. It helps them understand en envision their market and users, and orchestrate product innovations and marketing ideas from that.

This is central to Eric’s idea that design thinking should form a basis for the entire innovation effort within a company, from the brand to the eventual product. I’ll leave it to Eric to do most of the talking on the subject, think of this post as a conversation starter…

We came across an inspiring blogpost by Joost Galjart. he has a blog called TWIO (the world is on) on which he posts anything that catches his attention concerning branding, design & innovation. This week he wrote a nice posting on living logos and iAd. Both rather new for me and I guess for more readers of Klatergoud.com. That’s why I’m pleased that we can share his article here on Klatergoud. Read and enjoy.
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Will iAd (& the Ipad) boost the arrival of living logos?

LivingLogos are logos which live in there own (created/designed) brand world. As in our real world, the LivingLogos are bounded to the ‘physical laws’ of their brand world. Laws like gravity, space (x,y,z axes), time but also some variables.

For print you will/can use photos (‘screenshots’) of this world.

Two interesting new dimensions with LivingLogos are:

• Time: By adding time into the mix you can add a lifecycle/storyline to a logo (a place where you can add strategical power) and combining it with the space dimension means of course movement
• Interaction: You can let the brand world connect/interact with external variables/forces (like a database: weather report or stock exchange) but most important of all: human interaction/intervention

Spectrum of types of Logos (from static to LivingLogos)

So LivingLogos live and grow/evolve in their own brand world.
There are three degree in type of brand worlds:

I’m a strong believer that in the future these LivingLogos will take the overhand in the branding game. I even dare to say that in the future brands (as we now them now) will only be a ‘endorsment brand’ of the brand worlds (but more on this statement later).

The arrival of these LivingLogos depends on the pass in which all consumer touch points become interactive. One of the most important touch points are our mobile devices, because they are always within our grasp and of its interactive capabilities.

Now with the arrival of the iPad magazines become interactive but more important the ads also can become interactive (really cool how they redefined how we make and read our future magazines). But much more interesting is the arrival of iAd on the iPhone and iPod touch because they sold already 85 million of them. iAd makes it possible for app developers to integrate high standard/end ads that not only can look good but also delivers the best of the deverent media types: Interaction + emotion (and sometimes even functionality).

I (and my friends @BR-ND) believe that truly appealing brands touch us both in our minds and hearts. I think (and hope) that this platform (iAd) will stimulate brand owners to start creating appealing brand worlds where LivingLogos finally run free to live up to their maximal potential!

Here the examples of what I call controled loops:

kiss-and-tell
(kĭs’ən-tĕl’)
adj. Informal
Disclosing private or confidential information, especially in a first-hand account: a kiss-and-tell memoir by a Presidential aide.

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece on Side Wiki, the next powertool for the consumer. For longer we have seen different online possibilities for the consumer to give their opinions on products and services. But now there’s an online way for consumers to evaluate a brand’s image, Brandkarma.

On this social media platform, consumers can now tell brands what they think of them. Brandkarma has been developed to connect valuable information on brand behavior. The information is based on opinions from one consumer and helps the other consumer to evaluate and rate different kinds of brands.  It’s a way to pressure brands to feel more accountable to all parts of their brands. Not only their product but also employees, investors, consumers and so on, are engaged in an overall evalaution for a brand image. So Brandkarma is an online place where consumers, employees and even subcontractors kan kiss-and-tell on a brand.

There are news feeds and a comparison chart to channel all this information to consumers.  There is even a rank for the top 50 opinion leaders.

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!