Your brand is less convincing right now

You expect the investments you make in brand communication to advance business outcomes beyond simple awareness. Yet it is becoming more and more difficult to convincingly engage audiences in a way that produces the desired results.

“The purpose of business is to get and keep a customer,” exclaimed the remarkable Gordon Leavitt, the former Harvard Marketing Dean and author of The Marketing Imagination. Except it is exponentially harder to do so. The art and science of persuasion is rapidly evolving. Attention is in decline. Machine led content oversupply muddies the foundations of trust and credibility. Thus why uncertainty abounds. With uncertainty comes unacceptable perceived risk – and now why it can cost twice as much just to maintain market performance as it did when increased investments almost always translated into proportional upticks in business outcomes.

• The unique chemistry of persuasion is in flux and as we’ve said before when times change, if you don’t change with them you’re likely in trouble. 

Amazingly this condition serves as a pressing reminder of that critical and important marketing truth we already know – but too often don’t fully embrace: the battle your business is waging for sustainable growth is not won at the shelf or online. In reality it resides within the six or seven inches of gray matter between both ears of your most important customers. Win the argument there and you have a shot at achieving your business goals – in a manner that isn’t tactically dependent on lowering prices and margins to achieve your business objectives.

Yet being seen, heard and trusted is a bigger barrier to overcome these days. 

Full stop: your business depends on how successfully you are at influencing the decisions and actions taken by your stakeholders, whether that’s consumers or trade partners. That said, the path to persuasion is evolving.

It is not facts, reports and white papers.

It is not claims and assertions of superiority.

It is not specmanship and percentages of formulation advantage.

It is not an advance in technology and manufacturing.

It is not the efficiencies and high standards in your supply chain.

It is not the celebrity you hired as the well-known face of a campaign.

All of these things can hold relevance in what you’re doing, but won’t be the reason you win the decision. For the fundamental reason that human beings are not and never will be analytical, fact-based and rational decision making machines.

Indeed your path to success begins and ends with the humans you need to communicate with so it stands to reason we must explore what it now takes to be persuasive at a time when the very act of gaining attention and belief is upside down. Of note, humans are universally feeling creatures who think and not the other way round.

What’s changed?

Agentic advisers have pulled ahead of the brand, dispensing recommendations that jump over your own resources/assets and land with authority. 

• It’s worth noting for consumers… AI can’t love you. Or believe in you. It doesn’t create shared struggles or victories. It can’t touch or know your feelings in a visceral way, beyond the labeling of an emotion. It can’t truly know you (or those your brand serves) except to digest what the literature says about behavior. It is not your true friend even though it may sound empathetic. 

Yet its undeniable presence in our lives is expanding and will continue to secure a place given the value of well-researched information and guidance we increasingly seek.

It is weaving itself into the fabric of life as a very smart digital companion that knows a lot and can dispense help and recommendations at lightning speed. At its worst it also can hallucinate and make mistakes. Or it misses key parts of the brand story, while still sounding confident. It can churn out content in massive quantities that’s devoid of the bumpy humanity people recognize and prefer. So yes it’s a force multiplier but can’t be a substitute for humans reaching humans. 

The disruption this creates in the equilibrium of marketing best practices is truly historic. So what should we do? Start by returning to the one constant that will never change – how humans operate and what that means to re-calibrating the path to persuasion.

Number one: know your audience and from there how to speak to them

Here’s an iconic case example: our client was the largest home safety products company in America and asked us to spearhead the launch of an entirely new home safety product category – residential carbon monoxide alarms. How do you market a product for a deadly household hazard that is invisible, has no taste, sound or color, can be present without you knowing it and whose early symptoms of exposure are a perfect mimic of the flu? Yet it remained the leading cause of accidental poisoning fatalities in America. A fact that news organizations ultimately were shocked to learn. 

We began by building a series of arguments that approached the CO exposure threat from a variety of angles including indoor air quality hazards and the sources of this toxic invisible gas inside homes like malfunctioning furnaces. Also the medical story of how carbon monoxide enters the lungs and attaches to hemoglobin in the bloodstream while removing oxygen and causing a person to suffocate from the inside out. 

We also built an interesting story around the ground-breaking technology leap in the device employing a sensor that replicates how the human body reacts to carbon monoxide. Finally we built a story around a family in a small town in Maine who lost their daughter to an accidental CO poisoning incident in their home. 

We tested these narratives in an array of consumer interviews and one-on-one meetings. None of the logical fact based and tech arguments were remotely as powerful as the emotional loss expressed by the parents whose daughter had succumbed. It was an unspeakable event that could have been prevented with a household device that senses the presence of this unseen hazard. 

• The family stepped up to help so that others wouldn’t face the same tragedy they did. The result was nothing short of phenomenal. The emotional story changed minds, changed lives and motivated families to protect themselves. It was dramatic testimony to the power of emotion to help people make the right decision. Yes the other arguments were useful and supported on other levels (meaningful to media gatekeepers), but the ultimate test was how people felt and what they did after hearing the family’s story of a tragic preventable loss.

While this may be an exceptional case example, we’ve seen the same scenario play out across virtually all consumable categories: emotion that taps into consumer beliefs is powerful and persuasive. It’s a reliable anchor because the human brain makes every decision to act by moving from emotion to decision.

So how do we resolve the intersection of logic and emotion? How do we communicate in a way that is powerful because it taps both right and left sides of the human brain, alongside conscious and sub-conscious processing?

The shifts and changes we’re witnessing demand a thoughtful, strategic and disciplined answer. We’ve assembled an integrated solution that embraces both sides of the brain, but make no mistake about it, although there are four separate elements, the last one is the most important.

The ultimate persuasion stack engages:

Emotion

Credibility

Logic

With insight from Owen Fitzpatrick and his insightful book, Inner Propaganda, to make sense of this we’ve assembled the DELP approach to brand communication because it fully embraces what we understand about human behavior. 

In sum DELP consists of four elements – we will add detail to each one.

Demos – how well you know your audience

Ethos – how believable your communication is

Logos – how sound is the argument you’re making

Pathos – how you make people feel

Demos and belief

Communication that lands starts with a story that connects to what your audience already believes. When people hear a story that aligns with their beliefs, they pay attention. When it doesn’t they tend to tune out or disagree. Thus this approach starts with understanding the audiences’ beliefs about themselves and what matters.

What do they want?

What problems need solving?

What are their aspirations and goals?

What do they believe is important?

How will your message impact what they believe about themselves?

Ethos and the voice

People don’t have real relationships with corporations. They have relationships with other people. Especially those who bring credibility, character and authority. There can be more than one humanized voice, but they must be aligned around a core message. Here are the four C’s of a persuasive human voice:

Confidence – you consistently express certainty, securing the feeling of confidence by employing clear and decisive language that doesn’t hedge.

Connection – the outreach is founded on common ground and helps the audience feel valued by identifying and tapping into their beliefs.

Care – a voice that demonstrates compassion, empathy, unselfishness and genuine interest by operating at all times in good faith.

Credibility – authentic expertise and knowledge is evident but tempered by working to simplify complex ideas, issues while owning mistakes and embracing honesty in visible ways.

Logos and the sound argument

The message needs to make sense, again resonating because it connects with audience beliefs and values. Here we break this down into its relevant components –

Claim – your core idea

Grounds – evidence that supports your argument

Warrant – your ability to connect the reasons

Backing – outside, third-party expert support and validation

Qualifier – how certain are you?

Rebuttal – conditions that could impact the truth (honesty come to life)

The narrative expression of this is what do you believe, why do you believe it and how you know it is true.

Ethos and how we feel

The subconscious side of the brain resides at the front door of consumer actions and decisions. It may not be apparent but it is far smarter and quicker than the cognitive, learning side of the brain. Neuroscience tells us the subconscious is influenced by emotion.

People act decisively when they ‘feel’ compelled to do so. Hence the concept of ‘gut feel’ is far more intuitive than we give it credit for. How you feel about someone or a brand is far more compelling and powerful than support from a factual argument. For that matter, stories are more meaningful than facts especially when they tap into beliefs people already hold. 

At the foundation of this guidance is the right language, the right words, because it can cause us to feel a certain way and will motivate people towards a decision. Language can have an immediate impact on the brain especially when the right words resonate with an existing belief.

When something sounds true we are more likely to believe it. What does truth sound like? When the words connect to concepts we already have in our brains, those that spring from what we are, who we are, what we believe.

• And now we’ve come full circle. Do you see it? AI makes sound, factual, supported, logical arguments. But humans can communicate in a way that goes beyond the clinical and into the melody, the magic and cadence of words that can only spring from the human experience. 

Deploying the super power of language

AI might say this –

“I imagine a scenario in which, at some stage in the future, people in Georgia whose ancestors were either enslaved or enslavers may have civil conversations in the same space.” 

That’s how it went, right? No indeed. The human said this: 

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream.” So said Martin Luther King in his famous I Have a Dream speech that helped alter the trajectory of civil rights in America. 

The power in his words sparks an essential truth about impactful communication. Language based on a story that tugs at the heart is far more effective than cognitive arguments based on factual representations of the claim du jour.

There it is, the future belongs to the persuasive and that means to the use of real stories presented using emotive language. Frankly this isn’t easy. It takes some work to get there. A machine won’t do it for you. This is how to get unstuck, to be persuasive and move the gears of commerce in a new, exciting and relevant way. 

What do you think?

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Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.