Emotional connections can drive consistent growth

Your consumer is not an analytical, fact-based decision-making machine. Ironically, however, most brand marketing and communication automatically presumes people lean into logic to rationally assess the prevailing evidence of superiority or product benefits companies provide.

The Pandemic has added an exclamation point to this intel as consumers increasingly want brands to be authentically rooted in shared values, beliefs and a higher purpose. Understanding how the DNA of successful brand/consumer relationships has changed is vital to gaining business traction. As you’ll see in the Harvard Business Review case study we review later,  evidence is piling up that mining emotional connectivity is simply a far better business-building decision leading to increased sales and market share over time.

We now have data that confirms brand relationships tethered to emotion are far more effective in delivering the engagement and business results you seek. Here’s the headline: all people are emotionally-driven creatures whose decisions are governed by how they feel about your brand.

Like a lightbulb to a lamp, brand growth is powered by its relevance with consumers who show the highest propensity to engage. Emotion and engagement are uniquely bonded in a vital marriage that will stand the test of time, weathering adversity and continuing to grow deeper, richer like fine wine in the cellar.

How important is this discovery about emotion-led marketing to your business?

Motista conducted a study of 100,000 consumers across 100 different brands and learned that emotionally-connected consumers are more valuable to the balance sheet than the ‘highly-satisfied’ customers you may covet. The former spends, on average, two-times more with retailers they prefer and have a 306% greater lifetime value to the business. Emotionally-invested consumers even recommend favored brands at a much higher rate than those who claim to be super satisfied – 30.2% vs. 7.6%.

Motista concluded emotional connectivity is the most valuable, predictable and enduring strategy you can deploy to build a business that routinely surpasses category growth rates.

Insight Informs Your Strategic Platform

1. Emotional connectivity happens when your brand reflects back to the consumer values, desires and aspirations consistent with their own. If you want a deeper relationship with your users, then imbue your brand with deeper meaning.

2. Knowing your customer on an intimate level is necessary to provide the understanding and ability to secure three important qualities of like, know and trust. This will require an ongoing investment in consumer insight research designed to unearth details of what they care about and who they are.

3. All purchases today are largely symbolic gestures designed to flag to the rest of the world around us what people value and who they are. It isn’t possible to achieve this kind of relevance without knowing what your best users desire.

4. Which leads to this key question: is the relevant lifestyle symbolism people look for embedded everywhere your customer is likely to encounter the brand online and off? Said more succinctly, is the entire customer journey infused with the insights that feed emotional communication?

Harvard Business Review case study offers proof

HBR published an intriguing report to fully test the hypothesis that emotional connectivity leads to out-sized financial results. You can read the report here. Their conclusion, when brands are able to successfully build emotional connections, the payoff is significant.

The journey begins with correctly assessing emotional motivators that are relevant to your brand. An example: “I am inspired by a desire to…”

• Enjoy a sense of well-being.
• Have confidence in the future.
• Become the person I aspire to be.
• Experience fulfillment and purpose.
• Feel secure in the midst of uncertainty.
• Experience a sense of freedom.

HBR reported on a fashion retailer who participated in the project. Appropriately, the company identified a “propensity to engage” segment they characterized as Fashion Flourishers. The segment represented 22% of the customer base but accounted for 37% of sales. This enthusiast customer group spent $468 a year on average vs. $235 for traditional shoppers, and 46% visited the stores at least once a month over 21% for everyone else.

Initial analysis showed this cohort was less price-sensitive and remained a loyal customer over a longer period of time. The goal was to initiate direct investments in forming emotional connections with this group.

To start, the company conducted discovery research around emotional motivators for the segment and found three distinct attributes:

• Makes me feel more creative.
• Makes me feel a sense of belonging.
• Makes me feel a sense of freedom.

Marketing programs were created around the insight. For example, to leverage the sense of belonging motivator, the retailer invited customers to submit selfies wearing their favorite outfits which were then posted as slide shows on video walls inside the stores.

Further the company weighed into emotionally-relevant media and experiences such as social channels and enhanced store design to marry the shopping experience to the emotional traits. Similarly, an email campaign was created around messaging that nurtured the ‘makes me feel creative’ attribute.

Outcomes confirmed the hypothesis

As a result of investing in emotional connections, stores optimized to reflect the emotional interests of Fashion Flourishers averaged 3.5% annual sales growth vs 1.0 percent for other stores in the chain. Inventory turns improved by 25% and customer advocacy scores grew by 20% year over year.

Key to success

Emotional motivators will vary across brands and audience segments, which underscores why the insight research component is so important to achieving results.

Bottomline, brand communications focused on building emotional connection is the secret sauce to consistently strong business results. Emotional connectivity works because it is respectful of what we now know about how people operate and how they make decisions (not analytically).

Thus, it is important to marry the emotional-driven strategy to every touch point and contact opportunity consumers may have with the brand. COVID-19 and the cultural disruption it is creating will change the face of marketing. The emotional-led strategy is aligned with these shifts and can help improve the future business results for brands that are wise enough to pursue it.

We can help you develop the strategic plan and execute the appropriate research for building emotional connections with your consumers, as well as bringing it to life with creative communications tools. Let us know if you would like to discuss informally.

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Cultural shift impacts marketing strategy

Your marketing planning and strategic game plan will need to change to maintain relevance as the global pandemic creates a seismic cultural shift in how people behave and how successful relationships are formed between brands, retailers and consumers.

Here’s what you need to know about the basis of these transformative differences and their impact on your strategic communication plans.

The pandemic has served as the world’s greatest and most impactful, harrowing lesson on vulnerability. Regardless of age, income, career or social status, COVID-19 has reached into every corner of society to show that a highly contagious, invisible disease can move quickly and freely to impact every aspect of social and family life, career, health and wellbeing.

• According to a recent survey conducted by the American Psychiatric Association, more than one-third of Americans say the pandemic has had a negative impact on their mental health.

Economic disruption, societal upheaval and social isolation have generated lasting deviations in how people behave – working to permanently alter life priorities and preferences. What people cared about in December of 2019 is radically different today and isn’t likely to subside in the future.

What was once important is less so now

The accumulation of assets and material wealth as evidence, goals or symbols of life success and fulfillment have fallen away, replaced by health and wellbeing as the new marker of desired “wealth” and personal success.

Anxiety, stress and loss of control have also created an open opportunity for brands and businesses to be a source of credible guidance on more mindful living, and reasserting lifestyle control with investments in personal health and wellness. It cannot be understated: the foundation of brand building is moving away from a transactional approach sewn into the fabric of marketing thinking for the last 50 years. It is resettling now on the requirement to create deeper meaning and a more personally-relevant, useful brand value proposition.

Simply said, you’re going to have to genuinely care deeply, organizationally, about the health and wellbeing of your customers and consider how the brand can contribute to improving their lives. This may sound like a water is wet statement, but in truth, it is an entirely different way of looking at the brand-to-purchaser relationship.

Moving from features, benefits and price cuts to empathy and care

Repeatedly stating ‘we’re in this with you’ isn’t sufficient. Brand and business behaviors must match the cultural shift to managing health and wellness – and operate in sync with how consumers are living and how their needs have morphed.

Higher purpose marketing is first about valuing the customer relationship in a different way. We can define it as putting the brand and business ‘in league’ with the consumer on their life journey, looking for ways to be of tangible value as they seek answers to some significant questions about how they should live and what the future holds.

This more empathetic view of how to communicate should be based in ongoing, continual investments in consumer insight research, designed to assess their attitudes and concerns in a downside of the curve and eventually post-pandemic world. When the brand is able to accurately mirror consumers’ views and desires, the opportunity for relevance is secured, and permission for a conversation is earned. ‘Talking at’ people about features and benefits is a sure pathway to disconnect because it casts the brand as hero of the storytelling rather than the consumer – who must be the hero in all brand outreach.

Data underscores the shifts in behavior

According to a recent national survey by Bernstein, nearly 60% of consumers report a surge in scratch cooking at home.

• 35% say they care deeply about their wellbeing.
• 30% say they plan to eat more healthfully.
• 38% are looking for real food ingredients and packaged products with simple labels.

In fact, the study reported that health and wellness is on the rise as a key consideration when people shop for food. Consumers say they will increase consumption of vegetables, fruits and other fresh foods, while they reduce purchases of highly processed products and foods that are high in fat, sugar, carbs and salt. The current spike in sales of processed packaged foods is likely to be short-lived. Consumers post-pandemic will worry less about emergency stock-ups and instead turn their attention to managing their own health and wellbeing.

In a related study by AMC Global and reported in Food Navigator, 52% are increasing their use of online grocery shopping platforms, and 25% say they expect to continue using online channels after the restrictions are lifted.

• 38% plan to more fully support local businesses and product sources.
• 32% expect to continue cooking more meals at home.
• 35% intend post-pandemic to spend more time with their families.

Post-pandemic planning insights

For food, beverage and lifestyle brands and retailers, health and wellbeing should be a centerpiece in your messaging strategy and given consideration as a focus of content creation strategies. It is the most important and viable way for consumers to regain control of their lives, and to address what is now one of the most significant concerns they have: protecting themselves and their families from immune system vulnerabilities, while enhancing their comfort and wellbeing.

A more holistic view of health and wellness should factor in stress and anxiety as a key component in healthy living strategies by offering guidance and information on ways to cope. Meditation and exercise can be an important way for consumers to administer self-care and address the uncertainty they continue to face in their lives.

The dynamic in how brand relationships are created will increasingly be based on reciprocity and operating in a manner that demonstrates the consumer’s welfare is a top priority, thus why transparency and trust creation will need to be addressed in communication and operations strategy.

The forced changes in routine home food preparation arising from the stay-at-home order, is likely to be permanent as consumers experience the benefits of exercising greater control over ingredients, portions and preparations. Brands should be working hard to operate as guide, coach and inspiration for aspiring home chefs who want to hone their skills and feed their creativity. Equally so for home-based exercise and fitness activities.

The pivot by foodservice operators to offer meal kits, groceries and culinary advice, is also likely to be a lasting business model change for the restaurant industry. Which brings us to the growing importance of the home as a centerpiece for social interaction, safety and security and now a place of work. This will favor digital-first thinking and enhance the value of media consumed online and at home.

E-commerce channel is going to get more and more use as the systems improve and the friction in ordering and accurate, timely delivery is removed. Brick and mortar retail will have to strategically shift to facilitate a more seamless experience in omni-channel shopping behaviors. The importance of web site and email marketing should rise as consumers increasingly look for helpful, valuable engagement rather than access to what is at most self-promotional or least an online brochure.

The efforts you make to invest in building social channel communities will get more productive as the brand voice moves further from self-promotion and more fully into offering useful lifestyle guidance and direction. This will facilitate a more interactive environment and encourage consumers to share their own stories, interests and concerns. Social proof is a vital part of creating belief and credibility with your best users and attracting new fans to the brand. If you want to attract to new fans to the brand, you need to start by being a fan of theirs!

Finally, people believe other people more than they do corporate voices. To the extent you are engaging outside third-party voices in brand communication, you have the opportunity to humanize the brand and create more authentic messaging. In fact, building a more human-like brand is a critical component to acquiring trust. Great care should be exercised in how paid influencers are deployed as the consumer increasingly sees these voices as compromised and less trusted.

Emergent is an expert resource to help you develop post-pandemic plans and strategies.

• Do you need support in consumer insight research to help inform your planning?
• Would guidance be helpful on building optimal messaging strategies and content creation programs?
• Would it be of benefit to have a creative resource help think through the evolutionary changes that will be required in how you go to market?

Let us know if you would like to talk informally about what comes next.

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New research flags brand trust declines amid crisis

A new report from Forrester Research concludes consumers are growing less optimistic that brands will keep their promises. Of all the significant attitudinal changes occurring, trust rating has fallen the most and is in dire need of improvement.

How you respond to this crisis of confidence and belief will impact business outcomes and reputation going forward. A change in message and brand voice is required, and we have guidance to provide. First a little more texture on the current situation and how it informs content strategy.

Contributing to the attitude shift, according to Forrester data, is a pervasive feeling of consumers ‘being out of control’ with their lives and the environment around them. Uncertainty has a way of unsettling people and how they perceive the world around them, casting doubt about whom to trust.

The acid test for consumers now: will the brands I care about put my needs and concerns first?

Two important insights from the research:

1. Consumers are looking for information, entertainment and ‘adventure’ to help fill the void. Online engagement is up significantly as people work from home and are otherwise confined to the house. Online content strategy decisions are critical here to optimize messaging for relevance to their needs.
2. Consumers remain open to receiving marketing communications from brands. While this is encouraging news, it is also a slippery slope if the messaging is deemed overly self-promotional or tone deaf to the crisis around us.

When the dust finally settles, people will remember…

There will be winners and losers coming out of the current conditions. Brands that work hard to express care and concern for the health and wellbeing of their customers, who authentically work to guide, help and assist stand to gain additional business, followers and fans.

Brands that go dark, stop communicating and otherwise, in effect, abandon their customers or willfully treat them like walking wallets, will face other difficulties once the COVID-19 crisis is over. People will remember those who stepped up, those who continued to operate in service of their needs and concerns vs. those who didn’t.

Now is the time to double down on your outreach efforts. Your immediate goal is to deploy content that strikes the right emotional chord and builds trust.

Emergent’s content guidance

• Address the isolation. People are living in an extraordinary period of social distance. Beyond the uncertainty about health, wellbeing, and what lies ahead, the opportunity for social interaction is greatly diminished beyond occasional Zoom meet-ups and Skype calls. How you activate your social channels to create community and conversation is vital.

• Demonstrate integrity to neutralize consumer skepticism. Time to step back and consider ways to actively show how promises will be kept, that you are walking the walk of higher purpose and commitment to their needs.

• More specifically, how your company and brand is prioritizing their health and wellbeing ahead of financial objectives. Research shows 58% of adults don’t trust a brand until they witness real-world proof that promises are being kept. No doubt there are ways to bring this to life.

• Assist people in regaining their sense of control, by providing ways for them to exercise control in their relationship with you. Where appropriate, give them the reigns and ability to carry a decision forward.

People trust people first

Perhaps the most important guidance we can provide concerns the medium that is carrying the message. Corporations only begin to sound human when they enlist real people to speak on their behalf. Third parties and expert voices are critical in these times to humanize the brand voice and validate what you want people to believe.

The new advertising in this era of unprecedented change is about authentic storytelling. Stories that serve and inspire people around meaningful behaviors and events that demonstrate true caring and compassion.

This is your higher purpose right now. Are you ready to step up?

If you need help navigating in these uncertain times and experienced support to refine messaging, please let us know.

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Time to stop talking about wiping down surfaces

A veritable flood of email communication is heading outward by the minute from brands and retailers, serving mostly as a reminder of hygiene activity and safety practices. While doing so is certainly admirable, it abrogates the one maxim of effective communication that, now more than ever, must be observed to build consumer trust and relationship.

First, for clarity, we recommend the hygiene regimen focused emailing should cease. It serves only to remind people of the coronavirus threat. It is also placing the company at the center of the message rather than the consumer. Hygiene has its place, but not as a lead message.

Effective storytelling begins with observing these important criteria:

• How is my brand communication being helpful and useful to the consumer in the new conditions they find themselves?
• How can I help improve customers’ lives at a time when homebound stresses multiply, and families are living in isolation?
• What utility are you providing that earns permission for engagement and hence is seen as value-added rather than corporate interruption?

Successful communication places the consumer at the center of messaging

The consumer MUST be the hero of your messaging. Their needs, concerns, conditions and challenges are paramount at a time when anything else may be greeted as irrelevant or spam. Granted it’s important to provide information on safety practices and supply chain integrity. That said, you should lead content strategy with consumer-relevant stories over internal mandates.

What’s going on right now that informs messaging strategy:

1. People are homebound and contending with the growing stresses related to confinement, absence of lifestyle options and restricted social activity.
2. Children are out of school and disrupted from their learning routine and quality interaction with friends. Boredom is a real thing.
3. The home is the center of the universe and meal preparation activity becomes a never-ending call to action.
4. Online communication and contact are at a premium and is a threshold for engagement while screen time explodes.
5. Economic uncertainty bubbles underneath as people grow wary of the quarantine consequences for business and jobs.

What to convey in your outreach messaging:

• Be empathetic. Put the brand in league with consumer concerns during this time of crisis. A human, conversational voice is essential. Edit out corporate speak or self-promotion.
• Offers and generous incentives are important as a thank you and to help ease the stresses on family finances. This may sound like self-promotion but it isn’t. It’s just a well-timed reward.
• At no other time in the history of modern cultural change has health and wellness become more important. Now is the time to weigh in on stories aimed at helping people take better care of themselves, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This is your higher purpose right now.
• The kitchen is now the center of the home universe. This is the time to become helpful on menus ideas, preparation hacks, e-commerce ordering tips, interactive cooking experiences with the kids, recipes, pantry stocking advice, food freshness guidance, home baking (the most challenging of culinary skills), and ways to take the drudgery out of home meal prep. Pivot to online cooking classes with your corporate chef.
• Time needs filling with activities that have more going for it than consuming massive quantities of Netflix programming. Here are some ideas, advice, guidance on activities and pursuits that take advantage of the extra down time:

Music

Art projects

Reading and learning; podcast listening is on a tear

Exercise, yoga and online experiences to promote same

Meditation, mental health and wellness

Home repair and refurbishment

Pet behavioral training

Interactive activities with pets

Spring housecleaning tips

Organization and decluttering the home

Games, puzzles, and other hands-on moments of home-based entertainment

Spring gardening

Online workshops for any of these

You may be asking what’s this got to do with my business, and the answer is, it’s about them and how marketing becomes useful to people in extraordinary conditions.

Unselfishness is put to the test

Ample evidence exists that earning trust and belief is best served when the consumer believes you are genuinely concerned about them and improving their lives. At its core this requires a move towards a less selfish form of marketing that puts their intrinsic needs first.

Given the incredible circumstances in which we find ourselves, this axiom is more important than ever. Reciprocity is the guiding principle that should help direct your strategic thinking. When the brand becomes an enabler, guide and coach, you are seeding the opportunity for a welcomed and appreciated relationship.

This will require a reorientation from traditional command and control forms of marketing. However, the more enlightened approach will put your brand in position to engage at a time when there are fewer distractions. People are looking for the voices that provide useful guidance in these uncertain times.

If you need help in navigating the right message and content, we’re here to assist.

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Guidance as new voice required in the face of cultural upheaval

Whatever the marketing plan looked like four months ago, it’s changing now in the face of a new reality and shifts in consumer attitude. Here we will chart the conditions and explain an enlightened approach.

So you understand what sits underneath the shifts:

Awhile back when we were engaged in the home safety products category, we had access to reams of quantitative and qualitative research to help us understand what the barriers were to purchase of potentially lifesaving products. The primary hill climb can be summed up in six words: “It will never happen to me.” Home fires, carbon monoxide incidents and other similar close-to-home threats happen to “other people,” consumers believed. This complacency could only be disrupted when confronted with real people stories of loss and tragedy.

The self-assessment people made was, never in my backyard. Now that sentiment has broadly shifted.

The unfolding events around us all has created a new reality. The change can be summed again in a statement, only modified as “it CAN happen to me.” We are witnessing the emergence of primal fear, anxiety nourished with uncertainty, multiplied by the speed of change going on and accelerated by public policy moves in an effort to flatten the curve of pandemic impact.

People believe they are truly vulnerable, while news reports of continued escalation in COVID-19 cases operates as confirmation of that view.

What does this mean to you? There is a rapidly increasing need for emotional support and preparedness. If you’re wondering whether or not consumers are paying attention to your behaviors and communication, a new research report suggests they are closely watching your moves.

• Gfk research has been tracking the changes and in a recent report said that 73 percent of consumers say how companies react and handle the unfolding crisis will have an impact on future purchase decisions. No surprise, 85 percent of Gfk respondents indicated the virus is impacting their shopping behaviors, presaging a significant, and likely lasting, migration to e-commerce channels.

Primary call to action: consumers are looking for “a brand I can trust to guide me.” Thus, it’s time to step back and take a hard look at what initiatives and outreach in your current efforts are specifically addressing the need for trust creation.

Trust and safety are paramount

• How are you expressing and addressing empathy and support for the lifestyle upheaval and anxiety people are experiencing?
• Can you help people answer and manage the emergence of ‘family cabin fever’ conditions in the home?
• Can you provide lifestyle encouragement, advice and ideas to help home-bound families continue healthy living regimens and behaviors?
• Of note here, the more ‘unexpected’ it is from you in the areas to try to be helpful in, the more unselfish and trustworthy you appear.
• Time to enable and encourage community conversation of shared experiences and events in your social channels. People need a place to engage and share.
• Reveal details of your ingredient safety and testing standards in product creation. In fact, generally there has never been a better time than now to be transparent about everything.
• What are your manufacturing hygiene protocols and safety procedures?
• For emerging brands, communicate your supply chain integrity and ability to continue the regular flow of products to distribution. If there are limitations in this area, explain them openly and honestly.
• For food retailers, your customers are going to hit exhaustion with home meal preparation 24/7. How can you amp up your prepared meal solutions business to bring some welcome relief for home chef monotony syndrome?

Engagement likely to be at an all-time high

With fewer distractions and a feast of extra time on their hands, people will be more open to engagement and have the bandwidth to pay attention. Content creation strategies can help fill the void. That said, it’s important to observe the rules of being helpful and useful over product promotion hype.

In 2008 and 09 when the economy tanked, a great lesson was served to businesses everywhere. Companies that continued to invest and communicate experienced share gains over rivals who answered the soft economic conditions by going into a fiscal fetal position.

You have the chance now to be seen and heard. What you say will impact perceptions of your ability to be trusted and of value to consumers’ rapidly changing lives.

If you need help navigating in this time of great change, please let us know.

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Higher purpose works when lived

My wife Kristen and I last night went to what’s affectionately known in Chicago as a ‘Blackhawks Bar’ (code for sports bar with lots of TVs and the sound on during a game) in the West Loop area called WestEnd. We were there to watch the Blackhawks play the San Jose Sharks. Both of us are avid fans. To our left was a table occupied by three Chicago police officers who were grabbing a meal together.

Kristen motioned the waitress over and said, “I’d like to pay the check for the officers over there.” She does this routinely, early and often – and before the game was over, she did it again for another group of officers who were also dining nearby.

She believes that police officers put their lives on the line daily to help provide safety and protection in what is largely a tough and thankless job. Her effort to buy their dinner was a small gesture of appreciation for their service and to telegraph they are valued. She said to me, “I believe in them and what they do, it’s the least I can do to show some support.”

Her effort was genuine, heartfelt and an expression of her values.

We have published extensively about the importance of higher purpose and deeper meaning to brand growth, at a time when people care more than ever about how businesses contribute to making the world around us better. The goal to operate consistently on a level that transcends commerce and aligns the business with inspiring values and unselfish behaviors.

Kristen’s gesture was based on her beliefs. She lives and breathes this way and I for one am honored to have a person like her in my life. So it is that convictions and actions can contribute each day to improving the world we live in.

Sometimes it’s important to step back for a minute and examine how we can author this kind of thinking inside the businesses we run. Our actions always and forever speak louder than our words. When we live it and do it, it can influence the culture around us and inspire others to join us.

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