Building an Emotionally Intelligent Brand

When building your brand you must always keep this front of mind; people connect with and buy from people, even in a B2B situation.

It’s time to go beyond the obvious product features and mundane observations to address the relevant emotional concerns of your target audience. The ability to handle relationships and be aware of emotions is called emotional intelligence. Connecting with your brand’s emotional intelligence requires you to step into your consumer’s shoes to understand how they feel and identify those key emotions that determine and drive their behaviours.

Your relationship with your customers is imperative to your success and it takes two to create that healthy and happy relationship.

Apply the principles of self-analysis to brand analysis keeping in mind that brand personalities can be transformed. If your brand is currently emotionally staid or deficient, that can be turned around. First you must understand your brand – weaknesses and strengths.

Stand for something. All great brands stand for something bigger than the product features; they offer more on an emotional level for their target audience.

For example:

• Nike don’t sell shoes, they sell aspiration.
• Apple don’t sell mobile phones, they sell connectedness.
• Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee, they sell community.
• Colgate Whitening doesn’t sell toothpaste, they sell sex appeal and confidence.

And the list goes on and on…

Employ strategies that increase your emotional intelligence – motivate your customers, be empathetic and display fantastic people skills.

‘People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’– Maya Angelou

An emotionally intelligent brand is one that has evolved from the ‘hard sell’ to the ‘unique selling proposition’. People don’t simply buy products, they buy aspiration. Businesses don’t buy products, people do. People don’t engage with a business, they engage in a relationship.

So, how are you handling your relationships? Are you aware of the emotions of your target audience, especially those involved in the buying decision making process?

To learn more about building an emotionally intelligent brand contact your local branding specialist Liquid Creativity team.