Engaging consumer sub-conscious for action and decisions

Neuroscience helps us understand that consumer actions and decisions (to buy) are controlled by the sub-conscious side of our brain. The conscious, learning area of our intellect will play a role post-purchase, as cognitive bias compels us to seek out more factual type information that confirms the wisdom of our choices.

• This area of the brain isn’t influenced by analytical arguments and fact-based messaging. Yet we find the vast majority of CPG and retail marketing communication presumes that people process rational information on the road to making a purchase. Not true. Doesn’t happen that way.

It is how people FEEL in the presence of your brand that influences their decisions and actions. Heart-over-head every time. So why is this insight not the center of brand strategy? Rather it’s an afterthought or addressed only at the surface level through a compelling image for example that drives food appetite appeal.

All-in on sensory strategy

Profiled in a recent report by AXIOS, one company, Mastercard, has jumped fully into multi-sensory marketing strategies that stretch the very core of how a brand creates a feeling, a relationship, an emotion – knowing this is directly connected to below-conscious cues and actionable behaviors.

Mastercard is indeed pushing hard at the edges of differentiation by pulling their brand into totally unusual places that disrupt expectations of how a credit card payments brand might normally behave. In doing so they are actively mining virtually all of our sensory cues including taste, sight, smell, touch and sound. Authentic strategy is always a ‘swing for the fences’ kind of proposition that causes you to step back, blink and notice, and say “wow, that’s unexpected.”

• Mastercard’s Priceless positioning amplifies the value of experiences over merely buying things. This is activated in ways that allows the brand to fully envelop the consumer in an encounter that closes the loop fully on emotional response.

A brand you hear, taste and smell

Mastercard amps its Priceless experience concept by opening fine dining restaurants, six of them so far, under the Priceless banner. You can snack on red and persimmon colored Ladurée macarons, while sipping signature cocktails that match the logo color scheme. Your Mastercard date-night experience enhanced with the compelling scent of either Priceless Passion or Priceless Optimism fragrances packaged in the same logo-inspired colors.

Leaving no stone unturned, 590 million POS terminals have been programmed to play a Mastercard pneumonic ‘song’ when every transaction is completed. The auditory layer again respectful of how people can experience Mastercard by conveying the scent, sound and flavor of its name and “Priceless” theme.

• In an interview with AXIOS, Mastercard CMO Raja Rajamannar explains:  “The theory is that a normal human being is blessed with five senses. Each sense is a mechanism by which information goes into the individual’s brain, [where they] process it, and then they either think, feel, act or do something with it. Marketing people have only historically relied on the sense of sight and the sense of sound, and they were doing it in a highly intuitive rather than a scientific fashion.”

To drive the concept home Mastercard recently held a media dinner at their Peak with Priceless restaurant, on the 101st floor of 30 Hudson Yards in Manhattan. The exquisite menu and inspiring views designed to mirror and breathe life into the kinds of experiences the “Priceless” branding campaign is founded. Likely AXIOS attended, don’t you think?

What’s going on here?

This brand fully embraces the humanity of people who use their product on a routine basis. Here planning and strategy combine to power-up emotional engagement between a payments company and the people they serve. Not by pushing factual statements or information dense narratives. Instead, knowing how people operate with the sub-conscious always in charge of the actions we take, the brand executes on all five senses.

What’s more, the novel and creative ways this effort manifests shows real thought and creativity at work in doing the unexpected in powerful ways.

Dialing up emotional context and brand interaction

Occasionally brands will look at ‘pop-up’ experiences solely through the lens of how media-genic and disruptive it is as an unexpected showcase location for their brand to show up. If you think this through to its emotional roots, so much more can be accomplished by considering the project holistically on ways to amplify all five senses. Why? Because that’s the key to open the door of sub-conscious influence.

How does this work?

The starting gate is understanding that actions and decisions by your customers are driven from the sub-conscious – and that complex part of our brain is far smarter than we give it credit. 60,000 times smarter than the conscious arena, to be exact.

• Emotion is the path to influence here. Knowing this, how can you elevate experience and activity that interacts with the senses. How do you step completely outside your category norms and rules of behavior to show up in unexpected ways?

Mastercard made Priceless a tangible player in their activation scheme. Further, they fearlessly jumped all the way into the pool on this confident knowing they were playing directly to how humans operate.

Recognize fact-based selling for its true role

Your product or retail “what you do and how you do it” story comes after purchase as justification for the decision that was made. A great place to start on your rode to improved strategy is your brand “why” – your higher purpose, mission and value system that informs virtually every decision you make in the business.

• Your Purpose is a great exploratory place to be when looking for a concept like Priceless and then pushing that idea further out on engaging people through the senses.

The creative work here can be some of the most exciting and gratifying you’ll encounter as a brand steward and builder. It can be liberating to let go of traditional feature/benefit tactics and let radical differentiation move your thinking into new territory.

It can be helpful to have a guide on this journey. That’s what we do. Use the email link below to share your ideas and ambitions for emotional marketing with a team of like-minded experts who can help you formulate the right plan.

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Social responds to a world on fire…

When social media first arrived nearly 20 years ago (time flies doesn’t it!) following the birth of Facebook, it didn’t take that long for the vital channel to commercially evolve, monetize itself and become an extension of brand broadcast strategy via paid distribution. However, the world has changed and with it the ‘best practices’ approach to social channel strategy is recalibrating. Are you ready?

Here we will examine the evolution and provide guidance on how to embrace the reset of what social is intended to be and how your brand should plan within it.

Culture influences consumer behavior

Culture change is coming more rapidly than ever before and it’s having a profound impact on how brands behave in the marketplace. Because, as always, consumers hold sway while they mirror and appropriate cultural trends. For example, witness the rapid ascension of —

• Values-driven consumer behavior.
• Escalating conscious consumption.
• Alignment between people and brands on mission and beliefs.
• Growing role of brand higher purpose, empathy and deeper meaning.

Integrating culture with social strategy

It’s time to integrate culture trends within your social plans and strategies. That means your brand must work hard to understand, then embrace, and also consider how to lead cultural change.

Think for a moment about what’s going in around us right now. Did any of you observe the incredible Instagram reels of raging floods and devastating mudslides in southern California? Don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen anything remotely horrific like that before in the SoCal area. It was truly alarming. Also symptomatic of what’s influencing culture shifts around us now, and it is having a profound impact on social media.

Here’s the culture influence impact gallery –

• Chaotic climate developments, news of same and extreme weather events.
• Elections that might appear to challenge the foundations of democracy.
• Looming concern of AI disruption on the horizon.
• Wars, more wars, attacks and terrorism on the rise.
• Pervasive feeling of lost control over our lives and the world around us.

The only thing that’s certain is growing uncertainty

• The key insight: Social communities are an anchor in the storm to help users navigate a world on fire around them. The shared interests, passions, attitudes of like-minded people all coalesce with those who seek common ground and to make sense of their lives.

Up to this point, social strategy was defined mainly by branded content and paid distribution of product-centric stories and promotions. It represented a co-mingling of branded content, community and media spend/traction imperatives.

Now with the influence of culture trends, brands need to build a more meaningful, relevant value exchange in return for consumer time and attention.

Move from brand first to audience first content and narratives

Social strategy is shifting to embrace authentic, lo-fi, real and more intimate content designed to both inform and entertain – and created intentionally for organic traction. It’s a de-emphasis on measuring reach and eyeballs in favor of qualitative assessments, shares and meaningful interaction. People want, maybe even need, to participate in communities of shared passions and fandom. It presages a rise in the importance of user generated content that will be unscripted, unpolished and also unpredictable.

Here are some tactical considerations to fold into your thinking:

Nano-moments and empathetic moves: A North Face outerwear user on a mountain expedition expressed a complaint on social media about their jacket underperforming in a critical setting. North Face leapt into action and managed to deliver a new replacement coat to the customer on a mountain top. Great social moment and expression of zealous customer care.

Rise of the creator economy: micro-influence from creators is redefining the social channel engagement plan. #booktok, #healthtok and #cleantok are all symptomatic of niche creator communities where innovation and brand collabs will become increasingly important. Coke recently invited creators to use AI inspired tools to share unique holiday themed images.

Video, video and more video: Did you know that 58.5% of time spent on social is spent consuming videos? We’re moving from ad cutdowns for social consumption to video intentionally designed to instruct, guide and coach in an “edutainment” format. As a natural extension of this development, longer form videos will gain favor like this lively, fun effort on behalf of Hilton Hotels.

The role of AI in social: AI is being deployed to automate and elevate community monitoring and in doing so to support social teams with intel on social behaviors, sentiment and social listening. AI will also be used to facilitate more customized content delivery and enable advanced content creation like Coke’s Real Magic image effort cited above.

LinkedIn and B-to-B outreach: LinkedIn has a grip on B-to-B social interaction. It is a great environment to showcase company culture and staff expertise. Nearly 75% of B-to-B companies already leverage CEOs, academics and doctors for content creation there. We expect employee engagement on the platform to grow, working to position staff as opinion leaders with insider knowledge.

Uncertainty in the world around us is changing the value proposition for social channels, with a call to level-up on community building. It offers a safe harbor at a time when people want to engage with others who share their specific passions. The essential strategic shift is from brand first, audience second thinking to the reverse of that point of view. Goes without saying that properly curated and fed, social channel value in the brand marketing playbook is growing while the content game plan targets relevance.

If this post gets you thinking about social strategy and you’d like to ask questions about your brand’s approach to optimizing your social community plans, use this link to share your thoughts and start an informal conversation.

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Paid influencers might be a problem

When a key marketing ‘best practices’ principle continues to be validated time and again, you start to regard it as fundamental and credible guidance. Once again, we’re seeing new evidence that consumers question the veracity of brand content created by paid influencers, while simultaneously embracing the comments and experiences of real-world users.

How can this be? It’s simply a matter of trust. Those motivated by a profit agenda are viewed as less objective and trustworthy than those without underlying financial self-interest. Career endorsers are often seen as paid shills or at least they have the appearance of same to consumers.

What is the litmus test for trusted communication?

Communication that comes from sources:

1. Without any hidden or potentially compromising (paid hustler) agenda
2. Whose behavior is informed by simple honesty and factual integrity
3. From voices that put the concerns and needs of others ahead of their own self-interest

In a recent Marketing Daily report a new consumer study, “The State of User Generated Content” from EnTribe, reinforces the credibility gap between trusted sources and paid influencers.

• 64% of consumers say they follow their preferred brands in social channels.

• 63% of consumers complain about the frequent appearance of influencer content in brand social posts.

• 85% of consumers believe influencers are inauthentic or unrelatable.

• 85% say they prefer to see content from citizen users.

• 84% believe user generated content drives brand trust.

• 77% of shoppers say user content makes them more likely to buy.

• 65% say user content makes them more loyal.

Never underestimate the power of trust

Let’s face it, consumers find it difficult to believe the claims and assertions made by brands. Why? Because true or not they believe companies will inevitably put their self-interest and profit motives ahead of their own welfare. In the consumer’s mind paid influencers suffer from a similar compromise of ‘never bite the hand that feeds you.’

Who do consumers believe or at least accept more readily as truthful and honest assessors of brand integrity and performance?

Each other – consumers will believe their peers before they embrace the brand’s own statements. That said, when trust breaks out it may also benefit the genuine acceptance levels of what a brand conveys on its own.

Editorial, non-paid media – say what you will about fake news, for the most part people continue to think that journalists are objective observers who attempt to unearth facts and evidence to confirm or deny what brands claim.

Credentialed experts with science, medical or academic backgrounds – individuals whose professional reputations are built on a hallowed ground of objective evaluation are perceived to have skin in the game and something important to lose should their recommendations turn out to be a fabrication.

Of course, just like restaurant reviews can be skewed because of a bad night in the kitchen, there is no such thing as unassailable, 100 percent bank-able opinions from any quarter. That said, the body of evidence weighed in sum will tip the scale one way or the other.

Why is trust so important to belief?

The always-on Internet and 24/7 reporting cycle have put every brand in every category inside a glass house. Anything than can be known, will be known – sooner or later. Too many trips into bad behavior land and trust fractures from half-truths or outright misinformation have caused a societal-level sense of caution and skepticism about what companies convey.

Here’s the antidote to trust fractures:

Actions speak louder than words. What a brand does – the actions it takes – can serve as evidence of its integrity and corporate soulfulness.

A brand’s devotion to a higher purpose and evidence of this belief system tend to project an aura of honesty and values-driven code about how the business is run and what the leadership team prioritizes.

Want to be trusted and believed? Then operate that way by putting the consumer’s welfare, wellbeing, priorities and needs ahead of company self-promotion interests. Selflessness is seen as an admirable trait in human behavior and when brands act this way (and are even willing to openly admit when they make a mistake) it helps cement consumer trust.

What do we know…?

• That trust is the fundamental grist underneath any real relationship that works. It is true in life and in human relationships as much as it is in the give and take between people and the brands that matter to them.

Without trust you have an intractable problem. With embedded trust you have an opportunity to secure belief and engagement. Trust is never claimed. It is always earned. User generated content supplies the verification.

Trust is a strategic and organization-level consideration that should be baked into the foundation of any business and marketing plan. Should guidance on brand trust-building best practices be of help to you, and how to translate that into compelling communication, use this link to start an informal conversation about your questions.

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Don’t overlook the human in front of you…

We’re going to peel the onion on how people think and operate. We’ll show you how this impacts optimizing brand communications strategy to vastly improve engagement and results from your investments in consumer and stakeholder outreach.

But first, the state of the state

It seems inevitable, like a law of physics gone bad, that the majority of CPG and retail marketing is inwardly focused on the brand or product specifics. Communication strategies spin around self-promotion, and a belief that brands must “prove” their value with analytical arguments. As such, marketers are fixated on what has been invented, added or stirred in to the product to “deserve” the purchase or shop. This approach is founded on a view that the hard evidence, pushed even harder at the audience, makes the product or retailer more desirable.

But this is a mistake. Like lies by omission, this approach glosses over the profound truths we know about how people think and behave. Doesn’t it make more sense to design brand communication that resolves the inherent barriers to change people raise, rather than pushing proof points to an audience that begins each day with risk aversion sewn into their DNA?

Neophobia is everywhere

“Fear of anything new” lives in varying degrees with most people. We are, after all, creatures of habit for the very reason people abhor the discomfort of perceived risk in making bad decisions. Staying the course with the tried-and-true takes burning any mental calories out of the equation through default to the familiar.

However, for any brand or business, launching new products, services, ideas are fundamental to generating incremental growth. With resistance baked into human behavior change, it only makes sense to work backwards from how people think to acknowledge the human in front of us in our story.

The driving force behind decisions is…

People are on a constant scan of their surroundings for information that affirms their own point of view. We call this confirmation bias. People see what they expect to see and conclude what they expect to conclude. Try asking a Coke drinker to switch to Pepsi – not likely and a sampling will simply confirm their bias about taste expectations. The importance of insight research to better understand what people already believe can’t be overstated. Confirmation bias is foundational to the human condition and needs to be weighed on the path to optimal strategy.

How do marketers answer risk and bias?

Changing minds and hearts is an invitation to trust creation. Important to note here that trust is a feeling and not a rational experience. It emerges when we sense the brand is driven by values and beliefs, similar to our own, that transcend self-gain. This is the essence of our longing for reciprocity, honesty and integrity – qualities people resonate to and respect.

Specific considerations from human behavior insight come to play in the strategic plan.

Narrow your targeted consumer cohorts to those whose beliefs are closer to the desired opinion or viewpoint you are trying to secure. There is a temptation especially at a launch to go wide and attempt to appeal to everyone. That is a riskier approach. Better to identify the audience closest to your proposition, those most likely to embrace your offer because it is seen as a pain killer. A pain killer is a product your refined audience needs to have now, right now, rather than a nice to have maybe someday.

But what about those consumers who are further afield and more difficult to draw in? Here are three principles to consider when you have a steeper hill to climb.

• Shorten/reduce the ask – how can you create a stepping-stone approach of a slower, steady path to change that comes at people in chunks and stages. Meatless Monday is a great example of modifying the ask. You don’t need to convert to a plant-based diet entirely, just one day a week opens the door to trial and experience without trying to force wholesale lifestyle change.

• Switching the field – look for places where like-mindedness already exists, where your brand values and beliefs align. This “unsticking point” can help move your audience closer to you by riding the wave of shared view and aspiration. People are more comfortable with what is familiar to them.

• Adoption psychology – how easy and frictionless can you make trial? How can you reduce the costs of trial? How do you remove any sense of risk in taking a bite-size swing at what’s on offer? Ease of returns maybe. Years ago, Zappos as an early player in e-commerce created free shipping and free returns as a path to making shoe purchases acceptable and desirable when customers couldn’t try a pair before buying. Now we take that free ship offer for granted, but in its day, that big move raised business results literally overnight.

Here are rules to observe in risk reduction:

Rule of Similarity

We will believe “people like me” before accepting the assertions and claims made by brands. The opportunities for engagement increase substantially when people are in communities of like-minded souls who share the same needs and concerns.

Curate your social channels to identify audiences most likely to resonate and share similar points of view with each other. This narrowcasting approach is more powerful than ‘all things to all people’.

Rule of Validation

The more risky the ask, the more verification will be required. The use of multiple outside third party, credible voices can help make your communication convincing and validating. We did this for a financial services company whose primary customers were banks – a conservative, risk averse audience if there ever was one. We created a video covering key issues of concern on the path to acceptance. We did this through candid, unscripted interviews with 10 existing banker customers from varying markets and business models. These executives affirmed through their own experiences what we wanted potential bank prospects to believe. The sheer number of voices, the similarity of backgrounds and values, the humanization and unscripted tone made the entire communication more credible, powerful. The outcome was astounding to quicky step bank decision makers beyond perceived risk and resistance.

Rule of Concentration

We often get asked, which is better – a heavy-up concentration of media activity over a smaller geographic area vs. a broader but lighter outreach over a larger distribution territory? The answer is concentration is always best to help confront the desired audience with multiple messages from multiple sources. This generates a bandwagon effect that suggests to the audience, “wow, this might be important” and thus worthy of further investigation. It may take longer to address a larger geographic launch this way, but it will also be more effective.

We often convey to clients that Emergent is in the brand storytelling business. That’s certainly true. But if we step back and look at the integration of strategy to story and what we know about behavior, it might be more accurate to say we’re in the risk removal business.

We utilize our knowledge of psychology and neuroscience to help create interest, change and trial by getting past the elaborate risk barriers every human manifests. We reduce risk by mining our client brands’ higher purpose and values alignment (trust) — while delivering credible evidence and authoritative guidance that gives consumers permission to buy.

If you would like to talk in greater detail about how risk aversion impacts your business, use this link to start an informal get-acquainted conversation.

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You have a short time to earn trust…

“Trust Creation is a leading, modern brand communication strategy intentionally designed to build credibility and authenticity. How Trust Creation is translated in the digital experience is one of the greatest challenges of our era.” – Emergent

According to McKinsey, during the first 90 days of the Pandemic more products were sold online than in the previous decade. In short order, consumer adoption of e-commerce and online engagement has accelerated past the tipping point and likely will never go back. Google forecasts by 2024 – just two years from now – 60% of all global spending will be digital.

Therefore, it is likely the first point of contact for any new consumer getting acquainted with your brand will be online, and it will be fast. You just never get a second chance to make a first impression.

• Thus, your digital challenge: how do you get a perfect stranger to commit to a relationship with your brand online when you know risk and loss aversion is a universal human barrier to overcome?

It goes without saying, brands that get digital romance right will succeed (yes, it is romance by the way). Those that don’t get it right will risk losing the scarcest resource of all on our planet: consumer attention.

• “The consumer experience is rapidly evolving from one built upon the transactional process of in-store shopping to one that is rooted in deep, ongoing and enriching relationships.” – Harvard Business Review.

Romance is all about values, trust, purpose, emotion and deeper meaning.

So now what?

The secret to a successful digital relationship is…?

We know consumers 100 percent of the time are focused on avoiding a bad decision and the regret that accompanies it. They are more concerned about loss and unsatisfactory outcomes than a perceived gain. What they require is trust and certainty. How will you deliver it?

The most important move you can make is to inject humanity into the online experience you create. Why? Because relating to a brand is now fundamentally the same thing as relating to a person. The future of healthy brand relationship in the digital space will be built on a foundation of admiration and trust.

Your digital experience must avoid being:

1. Overly transactional – Myopically focused on selling things at the expense of lifestyle relevance and non-product related usefulness
2. Technology focused on your ‘better mouse trap’ – Asking people to burn mental calories on complex tech messaging never works
3. Self-reverential – It’s about the consumer and not self-promotion. They should be the heroes of your narrative (Read that again.)
4. Analytical – People are feeling creatures who think and not thinking creatures who feel

Instead, lean into emotion, celebrating the consumer as hero of your storytelling. When they see themselves in your content, it’s like holding up a mirror – a reflection of themselves and their interests. Now you have their attention. When it’s all about you, the brand is competing with customers for the hero role in your narrative. Bad idea.

The humanization of digital brand experiences

When you meet someone for the first time and a connection quickly forms, what’s going on there? People see early signs of: Laser-like interest in them and their needs, similarity, common values and genuine care. People pick up quickly on these attributes and signals.

What is it about the people we are drawn to and like? For the most part it stems from like-minded souls who actively show an interest in us, who we believe authentically care about us, and who can add value to our lives. Can a brand behave this way?

• Or are brands handcuffed to the hard sell, unable to adapt and adopt more human-like behaviors such as care and empathy?

You understand now the consumer is likely to engage with your business online – a behavior that is only going to accelerate – thus leaving you with a short amount of time (the zero moment of truth) to gain their trust and belief.  We know people already seek to avoid loss and disappointment so what can you do to bypass risk and earn a relationship?

No matter the product you’re selling – be it cheese, pet food, shoes, cosmetics, software or beer – you are obligated to author conditions that will encourage personal connection and engagement. Your goal is to adopt the whole pantheon of respected, cherished human behaviors that we anticipate and expect from people we know and trust.

This is why your digital experience should be built around these Eight Characteristics of a Humanized Brand.

How will you amplify, facilitate and enable:

1. Trust – reliability
2. Integrity – honesty
3. Conversation – dialogue
4. Guidance – usefulness
5. Shared experiences – common aspirations
6. Reciprocity – unselfishness and being considerate of them
7. Empathy – focus on them
8. Shared values – ethos and moral character

Think about it –

• Do any of us enjoy encountering the one-dimensional salesperson who is “always closing” and whose motives we suspect are not operating with our best interests at heart?

• Do we gain much beyond the exchange of features and price if the only conversation we’re having online is product driven?

• When consumers are looking for coaches and guides to help them fulfill their aspirations and lifestyle needs, is your brand answering the call?

• Is your web site a fun and engaging place to visit and learn, get inspired and take away tools that help improve people’s lives?

• Is your web experience a true mirror of your best customers’ lifestyle interests and passions?

Earning trust and respect begins with making the audience’s welfare and wellbeing an unselfish priority – this is how you earn the opportunity to engage on products and services. You just don’t lead with the hard sell if you expect to gain confidence and overcome the powerful motivation to avoid risk at all times.

Your web site shouldn’t be merely a digital brochure. It can’t be just an e-commerce transaction platform. A web site that is three-miles-wide and half inch deep focused on self-promotion with just a smattering of usefulness to navigating life’s complexities here and there isn’t going to achieve digital romance.

You have an enormous opportunity to break the conventions and traditions of selling and become a coach to customers who long for advice, ideas and inspiration. It may feel counterintuitive to be focused on customers beyond your own product story, but this reorientation is necessary when you know the consumer is now in total control of the brand relationship. Brands no longer dictate terms and can’t command engagement.

Here’s the litmus test:

Does your web experience deliver:

• Emotional connection?
• Learning?
• Inspiration?
• Entertainment?
• Community and sharing?

Your brand will benefit by looking beyond self-interest to see the requirement for trust creation and to embrace the humanity it takes to get there. Knowing that digital engagement will be dominant for people, it’s time now to conduct an audit of the entire web experience to look for opportunities to refine your brand’s higher purpose, mission, content and experience – to better align with your consumers’ needs.

Want to have a deeper relationship with your customers, then imbue your online brand experience with deeper meaning. We can help you think through the challenges of relevance and resonance, humanization of your story, content and visual assets. This could be the most important conversation you have in 2022.

Use this link to say ‘hello’ and let’s get acquainted.

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Trust in advertising report spotlights the true path to consumer engagement…

Is it possible what your brand stands for will be more important than the product you make?

Yes. Read on.

Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising Report confirms a cultural sea change has taken place. The comprehensive survey advances new guidance that brands and retailers should reconsider their traditional single-minded devotion to product-centric communications strategies. The report signals emergence of a different roadmap to credibly and effectively secure consumer attention. A more enlightened path that is paved with higher purpose, mission and values ahead of glossy product features and benefits.

The rise of interest in more human-centric values reflects consumers’ need for trust in a marketing environment they believe lacks credibility and validation.

Don’t underestimate the importance of cultivating trust to brand communication effectiveness

For five years, Emergent has tracked the steady decline in brand and corporate trust alongside the parallel rise in why businesses must put the consumer and their requirement for trusted relationships at the center of strategic planning. Is this a feature in your marketing plan?

• A recent sustainability trends report published by Mintel concluded one of the greatest barriers businesses face in getting credit for sustainability readiness is the consumer’s dramatic shortage of trust in their claims of performance. People find it harder to believe assertions made by companies on their commitment to sustainability standards and mitigation policies. (Hence the need for credible validation).

Nielsen’s study verified that consumers are placing greater importance on values, beliefs, inspiration, deeper meaning, humor and family. According to Cathy Heeley, Nielsen Media Analytics Lead, “People are much more interested in how a brand is going to help the world, not just what benefits a product has to offer. Consumers are looking at what brand values actually mean, what they stand for and their practical application.” Actions always speak louder and more believably than words alone.

Leaders across the globe should be asking: how do we propel and harness the power of our brand as a force for purpose that creates deeper meaning and societal benefit?

• Brands should declare a clear point of view and create inclusive spaces of belonging.
• They should also provide an opportunity for people to make a difference, while securing the greatest opportunity to generate impactful meaning in the world.
• This commitment acts to galvanize both users and employees.
• Now more than ever, leaders and decision-makers should cultivate a workforce while serving consumers in a way that requires the brand to stand for more than just profit.

The oldest millennials are entering their 40s, while Gen Z is carving its own unique space in the working population. The traditional hierarchical structures – two-week vacation policies and in-office incentives that are linked to growth – are no longer motivating enough to join an organization. The new generation of workers values higher purpose before profit.

Why are brand mission and values rising in importance to people?

Cultural change sits at the foundation of how these changes manifest and how consumers think – an important consideration when deciding how best to frame marketing strategy and communications effectiveness.

We are witnessing a cultural evolution. It first started in the early aughts following 9/11 when the disruptive shock to the nation caused people to re-evaluate their priorities and focus on relationships, family and values over other lifestyle and career considerations. Simultaneously control in the brand-to-consumer relationship was shifting entirely away from companies.

The Internet served as a fantastic enabler of consumer awareness and learning that also exposed the weaknesses of conspicuous consumption.

Dawn of the relationship economy

Underneath these cultural moves came a transformational change in the brand to consumer relationship, now taking on the characteristics of what we treasure in our human relationships – trust, meaning, reciprocity, values, investment, care and consideration for others.

Simply said, people want to be part of something greater than themselves. The search for deeper meaning was fully underway and with it came the initial priority placed on health and wellness and how choices will impact their quality of life.

Brands today must act as guide, coach, trusted advisor and enabler to consumers on their life journey. Yet more often than not, we find marketing strategies still anchored in self-promotion of product feature to benefit, embedding the brand communication with a systemic disconnect due to the weakness in consumer relevance.

The next evolution coming in 2022 – societal change and sustainability

Meanwhile trust in government as a catalyst for societal change has also diminished. Consumers now believe that companies are in a unique and better position – and have an inherent responsibility – to enact positive societal improvement.

Chief among these concerns is the hyper-focus on sustainability that has morphed into more specific questions about how companies source materials, ingredients and how they operate in a way that mitigates carbon footprint rather than contributing to the emerging chaos of climate change.

What should you do?

1. First and foremost, refine and optimize your brand’s higher purpose platform. Profit is not a purpose. A human relevant and meaningful purpose is a purpose. This isn’t a call for philanthropy. Instead, it is about anchoring the business in a mission reflected through how the entire organization operates that is centered on the consumer and the changing world around us.
2. Insight research will be required to better understand the specific details of what your best users care about, what areas of sustainable performance matter most, what needs they prioritize on their life journey and what barriers stand in the way of their success and achievement.
3. Operationalize your policies, sourcing, behaviors, standards and commitments to achieve alignment with your stated mission and your commitments to sustainability readiness.
4. Reconsider the entire brand message map to optimize the focus on your consumers’ needs, their desires, how you can help and support them, ahead of a linear trip into feature/benefit selling. The product message can be woven into the narrative. But it should be crafted within the coaching and guidance paradigm rather than straight self-promotion.
5. Bring social channel strategies into clear alignment with this strategic approach. Social is exactly that – an area for users to share experiences, ideas, concerns and success stories. Too often we find social treated as a monologue of outbound product selling rather than a community founded on conversation. Your social content platform should be built around engagement not just selling. This is harder to do than it appears.
6. Looking ahead, recognize the significance and importance of cultural change and the related dynamics of consumer attitude shifts that will be reflected in behavior changes. Things are evolving at a faster pace now and staying on top of this is vital. There is no such thing as resting on your laurels.

Evolution. Change. Transformation. Speed and Humanity should all be held close.

What do you think 2022 will bring in changes and shifts to strategy? Use this link to share your views. We will publish the observations and comments in an upcoming post on 2022 marketing best practices, as envisioned by you, our valued readers.

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