Keeping your brand story out of the rational trap

The most powerful brand stories evoke an emotional response from us. We are drawn to these brands because they make us feel something.

Even though we all intuitively understand this, we still see a huge number of brands opt for a rational approach the majority of the time. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to feel like you are quantifying your offer. You can check off a list of features that you covered. You can conduct research on those features. Then you can put it all in a report. Never mind that it all gives your prospects very little reason to care.

The decision driver

This isn’t an either/or situation. You need to have a clear rational offering. At a specific point in the customer journey, your prospect will want to know that you have titanium sprockets on your widgets. Or that you guarantee on-time delivery. Or whatever other functional attributes are important to prospects. I’m not advocating for you to abandon the rational side of your offering. When customers have moved to the ‘evaluating’ stage of the customer journey, they are ready to examine the functional attributes.

The challenge is that we get solely focused on the rational attributes. Most likely because they are so tangible. They become the drivers of our story. Since these attributes only speak to…