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There’s no doubt that the Marketing world has progressed from “technology push” to “consumer pull”. Some great companies pride themselves on being consumer centric, and adopting “Consumer is Boss” mantras, which help guide innovation and marketing towards consumers’ needs and desires.

Yet many Brand Builders still find true emotional connection elusive. Common approaches include building an emotional benefit (“I feel”) into positioning statements, “showing” emotion in advertising (Kodak father-daughter wedding dance), and moving from one-way to interactive communications.   

While there’s no “one size fits all”, I believe that one of the best pathways to connecting with consumers on a deeper, more emotional level is to move beyond thinking about people as consumers, and start thinking about them as humans.

• A consumer is defined as someone who pays to consume goods and services (Wikipedia).
• Humans are defined more holistically… based on their larger well-developed brains, high levels of abstract reasoning, language, problem solving, sociality, and culture.

When we think about people as humans (vs. consumers), we take blinders off and magic can happen. Here are two very specific ways the human view can help:

Opportunity 1: Human-centered INSIGHTS.

A lot of evidence points to the power of an INSIGHT to drive Brand growth. Yet many Brands have insights that aren’t insights at all, or that don’t work because they’re too focused on consumerism and not focused enough on the broader understanding of a person’s life. Human Insights are generally not Category-specific, but your Brand can pre-empt and own a Human Insight in your Category.

Some of my favorite insights – that have built Brands – are, in fact, HUMAN Insights… fundamental truths about PEOPLE and what motivates them in life. They capture core human motivations that are not Brand or Category centric. Here are a few examples of Human Insights that Brands have brilliantly tapped: 

1. Always® – Girls feel boxed in by society telling them what they should and shouldn’t do. This is about girls and how they feel and why… it’s not about feminine care or Always®. But Always® taps into this with their “Like A Girl” movement. Always® wants every girl to stay confident / unstoppable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsw62NygooE

2. Rent The Runway® – Every woman deserves a Cinderella moment.  This insight is not about dresses or fashion. Rather, it is about tapping into the core human truth – in an inspirational way – that there is desire for the remarkable luxury experience. The Rent the Runway® Brand promise and business model gives women access to those experiences.  

3. Pampers® — There’s nothing we won’t do to make life #BetterForBaby. The message from Pampers® in this video is about all the good things people do for babies — from everyday acts of kindness to celebrating major life changes. In two days this commercial got over 1.5 million views on YouTube, and Pampers, by association, must be “better for baby”.   

4. Coke — The moments in life that are the most special are the moments we share with others. This is a fundamental human truth that could be tapped into by a wide range of Brands and Categories. The core idea behind Open Happiness was connection itself, rooted in the “shared moments” human insight.

Opportunity #2: Human Centered Storytelling

I can’t think of a Brand that enjoys a deeper connection with its consumers (“members”) than REI. This short blog: “What REI’s Marketing Strategy Says About the ‘Sale’ in Storytelling” sums up how best-in-class storytellers create magic. One of their key success principles is “Forget about the Product”. Counterintuitive? Maybe. Does it work? Absolutely.

“When your employer’s product sits beside brands as loud as its own, the task isn’t to sell people differently; it’s to see people differently.” Also check out REI’s Facebook page – all storytelling!

Bonus: When we focus on people as people, we will also have more empathy than when we’re focused on what a person will or won’t buy. The more empathetic you are as a Brand Builder, the more likely you will be to establish an emotional connection.

About 2/3’s of us make New Year’s Resolutions. Only 8% are kept. Lose weight, get organized, spend less, help others, more time with family… The reason most of us fail most of the time is simple. We’re instant gratification junkies. Doing something we don’t really want to do, something hard, for the promise of long-term gain eludes us.  

The same applies to Brands. We constantly face temptation to achieve short-term reward at a long-term cost. This risks devaluing a coveted asset. Temptations abound: move money from equity-building to price promo, muck up package with violators, reduce product efficacy to hit a price point, proliferate flavors losing focus, off equity promotion (“Buy Ariel Detergent get a FREE turkey”!). That really happened.

In our personal lives, there are principles we can follow to beat the odds. A simple one is “Implementation Intention”. The more specific we are about what we will change, the more likely that we will succeed. “Changing for Good” by Dr. James Prochaska is a wonderful book about habit change, with ‘how to’ guidance.

Same with Brand building. There are principles we can follow to increase the odds. Of course, this needs to be done as an AND to delivering the P/L. But just as the craving for a sweet often trumps the resolution to diet, the short-term often trumps the long-term in Brand land. To counteract this bias, leaders can institute practices that better balance long-term Brand Building and short-term results. My Top 10 that work:

1. Appoint a Brand Steward with veto power on all marketing executions.  
2. Have a clear and simple statement of the desired long-term Brand equity with buy-in from lead team.   
3. Use robust briefing documents as a bridge between Equity statement and in-market executions (advertising, packaging, in-store promotion, etc.)
4. Educate the organization broadly, early, and often on the desired equity and what it means for them. You must…, you can…, you can never…
5. Have a clear Brand Portfolio or Brand Hierarchy that ensures everything in a Brand family borrows from and pays rent to the Brand equity, and clarifies how that will work.
6. Have an Annual Brand Health Check, a high level, strategic meeting where Brand Equity choices are confirmed or refined, and where marketing executions are reviewed for consistency with desired equity.
7. Visibly reward people and organizations that consistently honor the Brand equity. Make them heroes!
8. Institute consequences for people / organizations that mortgage a Brand’s future for short-term gain. Put them in roles where they can’t harm the Brand.
9. Enlist internal ‘early adopters’ and Agency Leaders as ambassadors of the Brand Stewardship agenda.
10. Measure and reward long-term Brand health – tie to compensation and promotion.

What are you doing to save your Brand from becoming a broken-resolution statistic? 

A new study by Wharton Professor, Keisha Cutright, has broad implications for Brand building. The study — Doing It the Hard Way: How Low Control Drives Preferences for High-Effort Products and Services — finds that “when people feel a lack of control over their lives, they will seek out products that require them to put in some effort – and in turn reignite their belief in being able to achieve a positive outcome”.  

It’s Counterintuitive. I’d expect that when people feel low control over life outcomes, they’d want heroes to ‘rescue’ them. But the study finds that the opposite is true. Feelings of low control are associated with preference for helper, not hero, Brands.

Hero Bias is Problematic. In my experience, there is a general hero-bias among brand builders (not you, of course!). This suggests that many Brand messages don’t resonate because they unknowingly undervalue the importance of empowering consumers.

Demographics and ‘need states’ matter. Demographically, lower income and older consumers tend to feel less control. But all consumers, in some situations or need states, can feel low control (e.g. – a disease diagnosis or stock market crash).

Nicorette® got this right decades ago with “You Can Do It, We Can Help”:

I just spent a transformational week at Canyon Ranch®, a health & wellness resort in Arizona. I went at the suggestion of a client who had just been… I learned a lot about health and wellness, as expected. I also got some powerful lessons on brand building:

1. Power of purpose, which emerged from the founder’s personal wake-up call and transformation — at age 52. Canyon Ranch® exists “To create an inspirational environment where people could come to pursue optimal health and wellness, and appreciate “The Power of Possibility”.
2. Power of word of mouth. My decision to go was entirely due to ONE person’s personal testimony. 
3. Power of target choice and understanding. Focus is women 40+ with whom the ranch mission resonates, and the understanding of and empathy for this group was palpable throughout the experience.
4. Power of “Point-of-Market-Entry”. Recent grads (aged 14-24) are FREE with a paying adult during off season. This undoubtedly makes an imprint, and increases odds that a “grad” will be a paying guest in future.
5. Power of building Trial AND Loyalty. A 20% discount is used to attract new guests; AND membership options reward guests who commit to a week a year for 10 years.
6. Power of flawless execution of the desired consumer experience. Everything about the experience fits the purpose. For example, cell phone use in public areas is strictly forbidden. Once I recovered from withdrawal, this was a delightful rule! 😉
7. Power of Employees as Brand Advocates. Employees are encouraged to use the facility at no cost, and naturally become Brand ambassadors. They interact with guests, but aren’t given a message track that would undermine authenticity. Each had a personal story to tell.
8. Power of Storytelling starting with the California “fat farm” story about the founder, now 85 who still lives on and largely owns the ranch.
9. Power of exceptional customer service. Attention to detail, going extra mile, and terrific staff-guest ratio, support this. Example: during your last meal, you order a “to go” meal, which is waiting for you, nicely packaged, in your car at departure.   
10. Power of putting guests best interest at heart. There were things to buy, but no hard sales. Rather, they offered web-links as resources for myriad wellness products/services.
11. Power of community. I participated in a group program focused on healthy weight. There were 20 of us in all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, and walks of life. We fast became a community… now we’re on cyberspace. This enriched our experience and our affinity with Brand.
12. Power of the familiar (vs. radical habit change). The philosophy is all about modifying existing habits. Examples: Reduce portion size vs. changing foods consumed; adding interval training to a favorite workout.
13. Power of Personalization. Everyone is encouraged to customize a health and wellness program to meet his or her personal needs. What is the best kind of exercise to do? The kind YOU enjoy the most!

Images are from Canyon Ranch website and are used to illustrate learning points.

I recently returned from a 2-week trip late Friday night. Exhausted, I slept-in on Saturday, forgetting a routine Terminix® Pest Control visit I had scheduled. When I awoke, after the appointment time, I wondered if I’d missed the doorbell? Or was this service was an outdoor only visit? I’d need to find out.

But the very thought of “finding out” was daunting:

• Dial 800 number
• Find/enter account number
• Listen to option lists
• And more option lists!
• Press buttons to identify myself and my problem
• Wait on hold
• Say “no” – to “do you want to take a survey?”
• Finally, talking to someone in a call center who may or may not know the story…  

And so, I procrastinated. A few days later, I found on my front door a note from Keith who worked for Terminix®, and had been at my house. The note read as follows:

WOW! As a consumer, I could call a real person – who was at my house and would know what was what. I would talk to him or get a call back — within 24 hours! Nirvana.

As a Marketer, these thoughts crossed my mind:

• Clever marketers, even in mature industries where there is little functional differentiation to be had, can create entirely new points-of-difference.
• A Brand Point-of-Difference that has nothing to do with why I am in the Category can create fierce loyalty and advocacy. 
• Consider personal service PODs as “back to the future” opportunities to seize in today’s impersonal world.

The lesson: Look for potential Brand differentiators that may have little direct connection to why consumers are in your Category.

Consumers want to do business with companies that have their best interest at heart. But what does this look like to consumers? Some years ago, I had the privilege of serving as an Advisor to Dr. Gerry Zaltman’s “Mind of the Market” Lab at Harvard. “Best interest at heart” was one of many studies conducted using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), leading to mapping of consumers deep thoughts about a company that has their best interests at heart. 

In “Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market”, Dr. Zaltman documents dignity as a central characteristic of a “best interest at heart” company. Related thoughts include moral character and honesty. This is easy to “head nod” to, but which companies really behave this way… and how do consumers know it? 

The A&E^® Door Company has shown me repeatedly that they have my best interest at heart. How? I called them a year ago requesting service for a non-working garage remote. They told me to get on a step-stool in the garage, remove plastic cover on unit above, press a reset button, and then click the remote. It worked! I’ve successfully repeated this a few times when the problem recurred. Today I called A&E^® again. I told them that there was a problem and this time I knew that a simple do-it-myself reset wouldn’t suffice. Given cold temps and incomplete closure, I wanted a service call… today. 

I explained that the car remotes didn’t work at all, but this time the button ON the garage wall only worked if I held it down while the door opened or closed. “Even with that, it won’t close completely”. The A&E^® rep said, “It sounds like a problem with the safety eyes”, and asked me to check if there was anything obstructing the view of the eyes. “NO”, I answered. Then he asked me to see if the safety eyes were parallel with each other – pointing straight across the line where the garage should close. I noticed that one of the eyes was, in fact, slightly off center and pointing toward a car in the garage. It likely got moved by accident, while moving garbage cans in and out of the garage. A&E^® also told me to wipe the lenses on the eyes in case dirt was causing the problem. I repositioned the eye and wiped the lens. VOILA — the garage worked perfectly!

This is a company that, on multiple occasions, could have taken my money — and didn’t. Their behavior epitomizes the dignity, moral character, and honesty that consumers want to see from companies… behaviors that show “best interest at heart”.   

Does your Company/Brand have consumers best interests at heart? And how do they know this? 

Observation: Emphasis on reliability over validity unwittingly stifles Marketing innovation.

Roger Martin (former Director of Monitor Company and Dean of the Rotman School of Management) teaches the following lesson on reliability and validity:

• Reliability focuses on producing a predictable, consistent outcome. The IQ test focused on ‘little logical puzzles’ is highly reliable. “The problem is it doesn’t really predict much about how you’ll do in life – other than that, it’s really good”.
• Validity focuses on producing outcomes you really want. “Emotional Intelligence is a less reliable test… you tradeoff some reliability to get something that takes more things into consideration – including fuzzier variables – to get something more valid”.

Roger asks: “Do you want consistency or do you want an outcome you’ll really like?”.

In the world of Marketing, especially in large companies, I often see Reliability trumping Validity. One example of this is following marketing mix models (MMM) ‘off cliffs’. MMM’s are, like IQ tests, one great tool to aid judgment. The tool has many strengths and important limitations. Much like an IQ test reveals nothing about a person’s people skills, MMM reveals nothing about how a highly targeted campaign aimed at new household acquisition performs over an appropriate time period. Yet many companies have made MMM the one holy grail upon which all spend decisions are based. This feels safe (nobody ever got fired for MMM based spends), but leads to bad decisions. Rather, companies need a suite of analytical tools to aid judgment in making valid spend decisions… decisions that produce the desired outcome.

Another example is in the targeting realm. Using a quant segmentation study and picking 1-2 of 5 segments is very simple and reliable, and has some predictability. We know a lot of facts about those people and can measure how we’re doing against them. However, to make valid target choice (one that delivers the desired outcome), looking at consumers through different lenses, including some fuzzy ones, is necessary.

The other danger of Reliability you might want to address is that reliable systems assume the conditions of the past are unchanged in the present and future. MMM based decisions are ones based on history in a world that is changing more rapidly than ever.

Interestingly, Marketing leaders prioritize validity in recruiting. A suite of tools are leveraged including: on-line screenings for multiple intelligences, interviews, formal reference checks, informal reference checks, etc… Why do we accept a Valid, albeit less reliable, system in this arena, but follow Reliability off a cliff in multi-million dollar spend decisions… with far greater financial risk than a bad hire?

Roger notes that “Over time, forces of Reliability tend to overwhelm forces of Validity in large companies… and it often takes the CEO to force Validity back in”. How does this play out in your company? What might you do to “force validity back into the system”?

One of the most important ingredients in successful Brand Positioning is fully understanding both Category Drivers and Brand Drivers. This alone can make or break a Brand, and is surprisingly often not well understood.

• Category Drivers are motivations behind participation in a Category. People buy laundry detergents to clean clothes. People stay in hotels to get a good night’s sleep away from home. Ironically, Category Drivers are often not drivers of Brand choice. A hotel that emphasizes a good night’s sleep won’t get my business because all of the hotels in my consideration set provide this.
• Brand Drivers determine which Brand a Category consumer will select. In Laundry, if most Brands meet or exceed cleaning expectations, this lead Category Driver may not discriminate Brand choice. Instead, drivers of Brand Choice may be scent or color protection.  I prefer to stay at the Ritz because they treat me like royalty. That’s the Brand Driver and their Point-of-Difference.

A classic positioning dilemma is whether to try to establish differentiation on key Category driver(s). Two questions on Category and Brand drivers can help sort this out:

1. Is the primary Category driver ownable by anyone or has it become table stakes? In oral care, cavity protection was once the key Category driver and a differentiator between Brands; however, over time, it has become table stakes — a necessary Point-of-Parity for all Brands and not differentiating for any Brand. This explains Crest’s broadening of its positioning to “Healthy Beautiful Smiles for Life” and launch of new products such as Crest White Strips®.
   
2. If the primary Category Driver is up for grabs, is your Brand able to take this on? In general, a Brand that enjoys or desires leadership, can try to ‘own’ the key Category driver. Johnnie Walker® knew that the whisky key Category Driver was success, most powerfully expressed as ‘progress’. The ‘inspires men to progress’ positioning — brought to life with the highly successful Keep Walking campaign — is an excellent example of a leading Brand ‘owning’ a category driver.

In contrast, a Brand that aspires to be a meaningful albeit not top Category player may be well served establishing a Point-of-Parity on the key Category Drivers and a strong POD on a secondary Category driver (e.g. – Gain® in Laundry with a POD on Cleaning and a POP on scent).

Why do consumers participate in your Category? And what drives their Brand selection? Can you establish superiority on a key Category Driver? If not, what Points-of-Parity will be required to ‘play’ and what secondary Category drivers can become primary Points-of-Difference and drivers of Brand choice for your Brand?