I have just returned from a whistlestop tour of Europe doing a series of brand definition workshops for a large financial services provider.
I was struck by how deeply embedded the notion is that emotion is the opposite of reason. Given this, I quite understood why the workshop participants were initially reluctant to talk about the emotional dimension of their value proposition to clients. If emotional = irrational, then branding is little more than deceit.
By the middle of each workshop, a light bulb would go off as the participants realized that the opposite of rational is irrational, and the opposite of emotional is unemotional. They came to see that reason and emotion represent different - but equally valid – dimensions of the customer purchase decision.
They saw that reason focuses on the transaction and asks “does this product or service meet my needs?” in terms of technical performance. Emotion focuses on the relationship and asks the more visceral question of “does this feel right for me?”. Both are important sources of value for customers.
Armed with this insight, they saw that there were two fallacies that needed to be corrected:
- First, the belief that marketing is the panacea for generating sales for an undifferentiated and even substandard product (a tactic known as “perfuming the pig”);
- Second, and perhaps even more harmful, the belief that a superior product or service will achieve success without marketing support (also known as the “build it and they will come” mentality)
By the end of the workshops we were on a roll about what their services can both do for customers and mean to them!
