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It’s easy to spend a lot of time thinking about how you can help people better understand your brand and recognize the functional value it can offer them. It’s fair to say that this occupies the lion’s share of most marketers’ time. Need proof? Just look out into the market.
Brands spend an inordinate amount of time talking to us about themselves. We’re assailed with messages about the functionality of the offering and the occasional rational benefit. These aspects are undoubtedly important. And they need to be communicated. But if you start and stop here, you are leaving 50% of your brand’s potential untapped.
Why and how people buy
People are not the rational creatures that most branding and marketing seem to assume they are. No, people are mercurial. They make seemingly irrational decisions. Check out Dan Ariely’s excellent book Predictably Irrational to take a deeper dive.
You can try to fight it or you can accept the fact that we don’t make rational buying decisions. They are emotional. And it doesn’t matter if you’re an engineer or an accountant. You’re still a human being. This means that you are going to make decisions with the part of your brain that is responsible for emotions.
