Move Me! Creating For Emotions…
Apple @ $183 Billion, Disney @ $48 Billion, Coca Cola @ $57Billion, and Louis Vuitton @ $34 Billion, are the brand valuations (Forbes 2018) of some of the top brands in the world today. The brand valuations best capture the value of emotions in business. Each of those brands are able to conjure up multiple positive emotions and associations within us, and that is one of the secrets behind their success. They are able to employ positive emotional hooks to capture and sustain the attention of the audience, and move them emotionally.
What do you want your brand or business to stand for? Which emotions do you want to stir up in your audience? Will the name and the story around your brand excite and/or inspire your audience/customer? Will it make someone wonder about the product/the service — fuel their curiosity enough to go explore your creation?
Successful companies and creators are able to move the audience, throughout their creation’s journey/interaction with the audience (end-customer). They do it through the compelling emotional story they tell about their creation (marketing & advertisements), the first contact or the retail experience (think Apple and Tesla store), the product itself (heavy emphasis on design), the after-sales customer service and experience (Apple Genius Bar) et al. It is the secret ingredient behind the adoption and commercial success of most products that you see around you — an iPhone, a Tesla car, Scandinavian furniture or a Prada product.
One cannot expect a potential customer to buy the product only because it makes logical sense. It has to move them emotionally as well.
A customer’s willingness to pay (WTP) and the perceived value of the product is often driven by their emotions (inspires them/feeds their ego/satisfies their quest for happiness and excellence etc.) and not as much by logic. It is easy to market-segment the customers by the typical metrics of demographics, geography etc., and to expect all customers in a segment to behave and respond to a product similarly. That is often not the case. One cannot expect a potential customer to buy the product only because it makes logical sense. It has to move them emotionally as well. Think of the emotions the product will spark within the end-customer/audience, even when creating a product for the mass-market — a shoe, a car, a phone or the user experience (UX) for a website or an app. Create for it.
Incorporate the human element in your creation and its marketing strategy, keeping in mind the unique individual your potential customers/audience are. Mine and utilize the data deluge (from social media and the internet) effectively and take advantage of that minute personal and individual data that is now so readily available. Design a marketing campaign around an individual and not for their entire demographic segment. Micro-target your customer as an individual and tailor your marketing message based on the understanding of their emotion-driven buying behaviors to further differentiate your product/service and increase the customer’s WTP.
Create the new product, book or software keeping in mind the inherent emotional nature of the audience (human for now) — emotional beings with occasional rationality, idiosyncratic, fickle, wanting to keep up with the Joneses and still lusting after that grass in their neighbor’s yard.
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The above is an excerpt from the book: “CREATIVITY SECRETS: Creativity Secrets & Musings for Creating Your Own Masterpiece”, 8/2018, by ABHAY (Wharton MBA, Artist, Entrepreneur) available on Amazon. www.CreativitySecrets.net
