psycho.of branding 1

8/2/2019 Psycho.of Branding 1

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Why did you buy that? : The Psychology of Brand Choices andthe Power of BrandingPublished January 18, 2011UncategorizedLeave a Comment

In this article I attempt to define what branding is in the

context of our consumer experienced lives, and how we come

to make our on-the-spot choices when under pressure. I posit

that buying choices are generally made by a combination of

emotional responses to the product or service masked as

rational thinking, and our ignorance, needs and wants.

Furthermore, that branding agencies know how and do

manipulate these in order to nudge us towards their products,

which is ultimately, if we are honest, what we want and need

them to do in order to help us live our lives.

Lining Up

Lining up at the supermarket checkout waiting to buy the

shopping, I look in my trolley and see around 50 items. I

wonder who put them there and how he chose them. I know I

physically took the items off the shelves and put them in the

trolley, but I have no idea of why these particular items?What

ignorance, needs or wants of mine made my brand choices?

What unconscious forces were at work and how and who
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brought these into play on a simple trip to the supermarket?

And most importantly, when presented with many different

versions of the same product, why did I choose one brand over

another?

Define brand

A standard definition of brand:

The emotional and intellectualassociations people make with a

specific person or thing.

Dirk Knemeyer, Involution studios

Therefore from the above we can deduct:

A thing is a brand.

A person is a brand.

A thing is a person.

A brand is a person

A brand is a human being. Like a voodoo doll that has imbibedthe living soul of an absent person, a brand is filled with the

characteristics, traits and hopes of a living member of our race.

A box of Kellogs Cornflakes is not a cardboard box filled with

tasteless bits of corn residue, it is a hopeful happy person who

meets the dawn of a new day with a smile and exclaims I can

do it at the rising sun before setting the table neat and tidy in

preparation for the joyous awakening of the perfect family. Andlike a voodoo doll, brands control us, in order to help us make

the choices that mark our daily lives.

Without brands we would wonder around supermarkets

endlessly, not knowing who we are. Brands perform an


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important service in our modern Western societies they allow

us to define ourselves, differentiate ourselves and better

ourselves in ways that were never available to previous

generations. Brands are the role models we never had andthrough brands we display our values and differences, our

tribes and beliefs. In many ways we only have names and

histories because of the brands we buy into we are

remembered by the choices we made, the jumpers we wore,

the shoes we left, the cars we liked, the films we cried at.

More than voting, more than

philosophy, more than fighting brands define the humanexperience. Brands define the post-modern world more than

any historical event, political movement or war. History will no

longer be written by the winners, it will be written by the

brands bite-sized rational encapsulations of our irrational

emotional thinking. Our inner subjective worlds formed and

packaged for us to experience as objects in order for us to feel

ourselves effectively mirrored and held. Like our mother usedto.

Brands are our all new surrogate mums and dads. Like God

used to be. Amazon is the new New Testament. With next day

delivery. Amen.


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Emotional thinking and brand choice how personality patterns can determine

buying behaviours.A brand is a persons gut feeling about a product, service, or

organization.

Marty Neumeier author, The Brand Gap

A lot of consumer choices are determined by price. Others by

availability and other factors like race, nationality, politics etc.

But some are determined solely by brand. So the question is:

why when faced with a choice between two similar products at

similar prices do we choose one above the other? Why does

one type of branding get to us, and others dont? Furthermore,

how does my personality (my environment and genetics

combined to form my particular version of a human being)

affect the type of brands I favour? Why do I surround myself

with particular brands and not others? Nike over Adidas? Volvo

over Audi? Heinz over Campbells? We can all most probably

give rational explanations for choosing one brand over the

over, explanations which would include references to quality,

packaging and price. But generally these would be the

explanations of the rational conscious buying decisions created

by emotional thinking.

Emotional thinking refers to the unnoticed automatic emotionalresponses we have to people and objects which are then

almost immediately and imperceptibly translated into thoughts

and behaviour. These automatic emotional responses (AERs)

are caused by unconscious base triggers which are seeded by


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past events, experiences and genetic temperaments. These

base triggers are accessible via the AERs which sit in the

preconscious (what is not unconscious but sits just outside of

consciousness), and can be summoned with a bit of skill andprior knowledge.

Controlling emotional thinking in consumers is the key to

controlling their buying behaviour. By triggering and

manipulating those base unconscious feelings and AERs

through advertising, packaging and product innovations,

advertisers can set-up a chain of thought which leads to a

rational buying decision (even though the decision is in fact

based on a hidden emotional response to the memory of past

experience or personality trait). There are many variations in

the way brands can use a consumers past to nudge them to a

buying decision. Two popular brand roles are the personal loss

filler and personality trait amplifier. A brand may either act as

fillers for the bad/sad missing bits in our personalities, or may

accentuate the good/demanding parts by adding to them or

temporarily solving them. These can be used interchangeably.

Below I detail a couple of examples of how advertisers have

used consumer personality patterns (created by their

backgrounds) in order to manipulate their buying behaviour.

The two now relatively old ad techniques use almost universal

consumer family backgrounds the divorced/insecure family

and the over-achieving, ambitious family.


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1. An example of a personal loss filler brand would be Volvo. Itis sold as a secure and solid space to sit in and the designs are

purposely boxy to accentuate the feelings of complete

impenetrable safety of the cars. People who choose Volvo

would generally choose brands which they perceive to offer

what they are missing internally a safe place. Their

backgrounds may be from divorced or bereaved families, or

those who had parents who were financially insecure or unableto provide a safe and stable enough environment for them.


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2. An example of a personality trait amplifier brand would be

Nike. Nike is sold as an addition to an already present skill or

talent. The basketball shoes dont make you good at basketball,

you are already good says Nike. The shoes make you better.Nike sponsors over-achievers, people who never give up and

who are never happy with their current success. They want

more. People who choose Nike would generally choose brands

that challenge them, push them, and are constantly being

updated. By buying Nike they feel they are on the road to

achieving what is expected of them. Their backgrounds may be

very socially mobile parents who expect their kids to emulatethem and succeed at everything they do. The parents would be

very hands on and demanding, almost smothering their

children with their ambitions for them.

The breakdown of the Emotional Thinking could look something

like this:

Consumer AAd: Volvo logo, car and image depicting happy family in or

around car

Base Unconscious Trigger: Insecure family background

AER: Quick feeling of yearned for internal security and stability

/ Volvo will protect me and keep me safe

Rational Chain of Thought: Happy family stability personal

happiness safety for my family most important part of buying

decision best car for me is safest car buy Volvo

Generally the only part of the Rational Chain of Thought that

the consumer would remember when asked would the last


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three: safety for my family most important part of buying

decision best car for me is safest car buy Volvo.

Consumer B

Ad: Nike logo, Nike basketball shoes and NBA star spectacular

dunk/shot/play

Base Unconscious Trigger: Need to achieve continually and

consistently underachieving

AER: Quick feeling of never being good enough at anything /

always being behind brother/sister / Nike knows I am good

enough

Rational Chain of Thought: Super star achiever I want to be

like him/her latest shoes I am an achiever too buy new

Nike shoes Nike believes in me.

Generally the only part of the Rational Chain of Thought that

the consumer would remember when asked would the last

three: I am an achiever too buy new Nike shoes Nike

believes in me.

Branded vs Generic

There seems to be no better example of the power of branding

than the choices between branded and generic identical

products. One is full of life, hopes, love and life the other is

flat, utilitarian, anti-brand, frugal, straight forward. It is almost

as if the generic is telling us we should forgo the pleasures of a

fuller life and refuse that which we want but know is just an

illusion. An illusion we desperately need but refuse to give up

even in the face of the facts. Or, if we want we can refuse the

whole concept of branding and buy non or anti-brands. But of


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course, these are brands themselves because of their

opposition to branding and we buy them because of this

opposition. Brands are in fact not outward shows of status, but

internal states of being states of being that even allow us tobuy non-branded products but still experience the buying of a

brand, or wear non-branded clothes but internally still feel the

feeling of brandness and hope to be judged by others on the

basis of our (non)brand choices.

Nurofen vs Ibuprofen

Why when given the choice between

generic ibuprofen and Nurofen do we pay nine times more for

Nurofen? Is it because we are ignorant of the facts? There is noconstituent difference between the two they are identical.

The difference is millions of pounds in branding.

The buying behaviour here seems perplexing. Almost

inexplicable. But it is the ultimate proof of the power of

branding in determining consumer buying behaviour. The

question is: what are the factors behind this behaviour that

favours the branded over the generic?

1. Ignorance

Ignorance is a good excuse for bad choices. There are two

types of ignorance in this case: ignorance through lack of

availability of information, and ignorance by choice. The former


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exists in imperfect markets where information is

misrepresented, withheld or misinterpreted. The latter is

caused generally by denial, otherwise known as brand

blindness. This can happen when consumers have too much oftheir own self-worth invested in the specialnessof their brand.

2. Needs

Consumers have needs which they want solved. The more

specific the solutions, and the more tailored to the need, the

better. Consumers prefer targeted products, rather than

general.

3. WantsAn internal need to feel special, individual, and in need of

special care and attention when ill. The level of these needs will

depend very much on family histories and the more troubled

these are the more susceptible certain consumers will be to

solving their individuality needs through brands.

Nurofen is a great example of all of the above. The adverts

claim it is the best at pain relief even though it can not be any

better than generic ibuprofen at the same dosage (ignorance).

The brand has also been broken into further sub-brands aimed

at particular areas of the body such as back and joint pain,

period pain, migraine, child fever (needs). The ibuprofen sold in

these sub-brands is again exactly the same as that sold in the

standard Nurofen packages and in the generic ibuprofen. Most

importantly of all Nurofen is sold as an over-the-counter pain

relief drug that consumers can trust, is safe and that will

deliver pain relief (wants). In contrast to Nurofen, the generic

ibuprofen makes no claims about its effectiveness, about its

ability to help with all different types of pain or about its safety


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and efficacy. These are taken as givens because the

information needed to make an informed decision is freely

available.

What the Nurofen example seems to confirm is that we

consumers want and expect branding. We do not want generic

products and we will pay a lot more for branded products that

pretend to understand our needs and wants and solve them

quicker, better and with more care. It is therefore not the

function of ibuprofen we want (the pain relief), it is the form

that that pain relief takes. We have moved away from products

that work and fulfil their functional promise. We now expect

products to do the emotional work for us by allaying our fears,

making us individuals, and solving our identity problems by

fulfilling our dreams of completeness. Products now have to fill

the holes in our being left by our past and the imminent future

of old age, illness and death.

As the world fills upAs the world fills up with more individuals who all want to be as

individual as possible we will have a problem: how to allow all

of them to express their personal specialness but at the same

keep the system working? Society must keep us happy with our

specialness in order for us to keep society stable and

productive. How will this be possible? Through the creation andmanagement of more and more brands.

Brands will be everything. They will be what we sign up to,

buy, sing to, fight for, cry for, live with, die for. We will have

multiple brands for life, and each will satisfy a particular need


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of our human dilemma. The brands will allow us to feel

creative, intelligent, insightful, incorporated, excluded,

banished, in control, out of control, in power, powerless

internally, without physically being in that state. Any emotionalneed you have will be covered. Brand management will be the

key to a stable society. Brand management will be

government. There will be cover-ups and corruption, but

because there will be nothing else left for human beings to

believe in, it wont matter. Brands will always recover because

we will need them to. Society will no longer be able to offer

real world avenues for the creative exploration of our selves.Brands will do this for us. We will no longer need to worry

about achieving our inner desires. We will no longer have any

outside of brand.

The USA has been selling a brand experience very successfully

since the 1950s. The American Dream, whether it be 1950s

home appliances and freedom from communism, love,

democracy for all, free enterprise, or a return to 1492 values

it has worked. The ultimate brand experiment has managed to

produce a majority of Americans, united under one logo, who

work, believe, vote, and die with no questions asked. This is

what the brand managers of the future will aim for but

without all the messy politics attached. Pure brands are only

accountable to their own brand values.

Brands will soon no longer be physical products or services.

They will be external manifestations of internal states of being.

Branding started as a way of identifying ownership of cows by

farmers, and will finish as a way to identify ownership of

human beings by brands on an overcrowded planet.


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