If you’ve been reading my newsletters for a long time, you know that I believe that marketing and branding are all about the product/customer relationship. In fact, brands are icons of the essence of those relationships and connections. We can talk more about that at another time.
Today, I challenge anyone to beat this fantastic customer relationship support example.
Setting the scene:
Yesterday, Glenn and I went to see our doctors in Kennebunk ME. It’s a 2 hour drive but well worth it. This dynamic duo discovered and CURED Glenn’s debilitating Lyme disease which had gone undiagnosed for 10 years. [Glenn is completely free of long standing migraines, joint aches and pains, has restored energy and basically got his life back.]
While it may sound very strange for a Pharma specialist like me, I’m personally a huge chicken about doctors and dentists, especially when it comes to poking, prodding and tests. So much so that Glenn suggested taking his blood tests at the same time I did and going for the results together so I would feel supported and maybe a little less of a scaredy cat.
So that’s what we did. About 10 days ago we did our 12 hour fast and headed to The Elliot Hospital Lab to get beakers of blood taken [just kidding, only 4 small vials, but it felt like a blood letting to me.]
Yesterday was our day to make the trek out to southern Maine to get our report cards. That’s how it always feels to me. As soon as the word test is used, I develop performance anxiety. “Sorry, Dr Livingston, but you failed on your liver enzymes, barely passed on C Reactive Protein and you need to work harder on your metabolic syndrome factors.” I’m not sure which is more traumatic; having my blood drawn or the anxiety of being “graded.” Ugh.
We got to Kennebunk early with plenty of time to pick up an Rx that we needed to bring with us for our appointment. In fact, it was the whole reason for making the long drive. Otherwise we could have gotten the feedback via phone.
Traditionally, unearthing Emotional End Benefits has been done through benefit chain/laddering exercises. The unfortunate thing is that these exercises tend to be tedious and, in the hands of a less than master practitioner can leave us somewhere in the middle of the ladder or jumping to the ultimate end benefit of
“I feel good/better/ecstatic/like myself more/higher self worth” etc.
The problem with these answers is that they leave us in the dark. We’re doing the exercise to find differentiating emotional hot buttons that help set the mood and tone of our marketing. What can a creative do with emotional end benefits of enhanced self esteem? They need more specific direction in what the communications needs to look like, feel like, sound like for that category and product and more importantly, that particular brand. Unfinished ladders leave us in the dark, having to project our own beliefs onto the branding and advertising instead of designing for our target markets.
After years of conducting 1000’s of benefit chains, as I mentioned in the previous post, we have constructed a model of Emotional End Benefits. Some lead to Trial and Some Lead to Repeat. Ideally we want both. Fortunately, there are features and functions that secure both.
More importantly, through extensive research, we now know that various Brand Archetypes suggest different and specific Emotional End Benefits. So you no longer have to go through the long, arduous task of pulling teeth from respondents in IDI’s [taking up long portions of it] to identify meaningful emotional benefits. We’ve done the work for you.
To tempt you to join our new www.IconiCards.com club and learn the specific connections of archetypes to emotional benefits so you can more easily empower your clients to leverage brand archetyping, let me give you a few examples.
- If your brand is a Conqueror, like some aggressive antibiotics, the emotional end benefit is Winning the competition and Triumphing over the deadly bugs.
- That’s in contrast to the Angel image, in the same category of antibiotics, which is all about Gentle, Compassionate, Caregiving.
- Another antibiotic might be the Engineer, which is a targeted product that accomplishes its goal by being the Smartest guy/gal on the block.
If you’re interested in the www.IconiCards.com club it’s $49/month. Email me Sharonl@tlgonline.com or call my cell 603 5050 5000 and I’ll let you know all about it. BTW, the cards have been getting a super response. Wait til you hear all the wonderful stories people are sharing.
Hope you’re getting to enjoy the holiday pre-season and,
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Sharon 
Dr. Sharon Livingston, President
The Livingston Group for Marketing, Inc.
office:603.537.0775 mobile:603.505.5000
www.tlgonline.com
In the way we at TLG see brands and help clients to think about them, the brand is an expression of a relationship with the product and with self, via the brand. It’s an emotional connection which is the glue of the relationship. People stay with a brand to continue experiencing the feelings they enjoy getting.
When people use various brands they do so for some benefit or set of benefits. What I find truly amazing and fascinating is that every brand feature and functional benefit ladders up to an emotional end benefit or valued judgment of self that results in enhanced self esteem. This last rung is alternately described as:
- I feel good about myself
- I’m confident/self confident
- I like myself
- I’m proud of myself
- I have better self worth
- I’m good
The customer’s relationship with a brand results in these overall positive feelings. It’s just human. We stay with a given brand, just like we stay in our people relationships, as long as we continue to maintain some positive feeling about self from the connection. Relationships fall apart when we’re no longer getting enough good feelings to want to stay with it.
The step just before the top of the ladder, self worth, is what specifically makes up feel better about ourselves, proud, confident, good. It’s also the specific “shade of good/better” that informs the mood and tone of our marketing applications and advertising.
There are many different avenues to increasing our targets’ sense of self worth. In our Livingston Paradigm of Self Esteem©, these fall into four classic categories which we have chosen to call . . .
- Category I – Healthy Narcissism [yes it’s possible and necessary to feel good about ourselves for what we reflect in our personal mirrors]
I’m FlexibleI’m CreativeI’m Free - Category II – Love/Sex/Belonging
I’m LovedI’m Sexy - Category III – Nurturance
I’m a good caretaker - Category IV – Altruism/Giving back to Society
I take care of the worldI mentor the world
Feelings/Values that fall under Category I – Healthy Narcissism, include:
- Feeling Free
- Being in Control
- Having Integrity
- Enjoying Humor
- Being Creative, etc.
Those under Category II – Love/Sex/Belonging are items like:
- Being attractive/sexy
- Loving and feeling loved by another
Category III – Nurturance
- Being a good Mother/Father
- Being a good Manager
- Being a Caretaker
Category IV – Altruism
- Taking a political stand
- Protecting the Environment
- Being a community leader
The value of understanding the categories is that they link to Trial and Repeat.
Categories I and II are the kinds of things that get us charged up and excited. Features and functional benefits that lead to Cat I and II also create “Trial”. So fast cars [BMW] and big trucks [FORD] make some people feel empowered and in control, leading to a wish to test drive the car or Trial.
Categories III and IV are the “Shoulds” of society and the dharma of marketing. We believe we should be doing the right thing in our lives. These are features that have benefits like “saves time”/”saves money.” Such benefits and feelings that are associated with giving to others lead to “Repeat”. [If I have extra time/money I’ll spend it on my family and will be appreciated for being a better parent.] Volvo is known for its safety features leading up to Nurturance and Repeat. Volvo buyers are very loyal to their brand.
So the best, most compelling brands/marketing applications and ads ladder up to emotional end benefits associated with both trial and repeat. Combine Hi Performance with Safety as in the Volvo S80 and you pique interest for Trial while encouraging Repeat.
After years of research, we have discovered some short cuts for getting to emotional end benefits via identifying the Brand’s Archetypal character and story. In fact, as some of you know, we’ve created a deck of cards to help identify Brand Archetypes and their stories. [Check out www.Iconicards.com if you haven’t already, to see what they are and get some tips on how to use them. ] The stories include the emotional end benefit that is connected to each archetype. In the next blog I’ll tell you about some of these archetypes and how they load on emotional end benefits.
I sometimes can’t believe we get paid for doing such interesting work! Hope you AND YOUR CLIENTS enjoy the exploration and discoveries as much as I do.
As always, to your success.
Dr. Sharon Livingston, President
The Livingston Group for Marketing, Inc.
office:603.537.0775 mobile:603.505.5000
www.tlgonline.com
Hi Folks,
Welcome to my new blog on Emotional Branding.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m, Sharon Livingston, a clinical psychologist who has been conducting Qualitative Research for over 20 years. I’m the immediate Past President of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association – a network of 1000 Focus Group Moderators/Professionals worldwide and President of The Livingston Group for Marketing, a consultancy that specializes in Insight Mining.
But who am I really? If I describe my essence, like a brand, you might see me as:
New Product Detective – on the scent for hooks that will grab people and reel them into the right approach for them
Emotional Benefit Diviner – discovering the emotional undercurrents that drive appeal and purchase
Marketing Mystic – able to intuit the essence of your brand to help you market to the combined feature, function and emotional needs of your audiences
So in this blog, let me be your:
Marketing Muse, inspiring, cheerleading, giving you ideas for how to talk to your audiences and help them tell you what’s really driving them; what they really think and feel rather than just telling us what they think is the right answer, the socially desirable response.
I LOVE my work and feel grateful that I get to such exciting work with such great results for my clients.
I’ll invite you to think imaginatively, push the limits, be creative and have fun.
Join me and please share your stories.
To your success!
Sharon
Dr. Sharon Livingston, President
The Livingston Group for Marketing, Inc.
office:603.537.0775 mobile:603.505.5000
www.tlgonline.com
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