In the last two parts we talked about the difference between BRAND and BRANDING and about how your product/service becomes a brand.

With this in mind, let’s have a look at who is really making the decisions and how these decisions are made.

EMOTIONS… yes or no

People talk about emotions so much more today than ever before, especially when it comes to Branding.  After all, in our business, what is our ultimate goal? It is to make our customers LOVE our brand and turn all our customers into loyal advocates.

We are all told we must reach our customers on the emotional level… makes sense, right?

But how do we do that, how does this really work?

There will be many who are reading this, who will disagree with me. But this is not just my opinion, this is a scientifically proven fact: EVERY DECISION WE MAKE IS BASED ON EMOTIONS…. and I can’t stress enough the word EVERY.

LEFT BRAIN OR RIGHT BRAIN…. IT’S TEAM WORK

The theory of left brain versus the right brain is well known. I am sure you were all told at some point that you are the right brain type of person (are you creative and emotional?), or the left brain ( do you analyze everything and are driven by logic?)…to a degree this is true… we may have a stronger creative side, or be very analytical.

When it comes to decision making… sorry left brain people… the decisions are made by the emotional side of your brain. However, the analytical and the emotional side work as a team.

The analytical side is in charge of analyzing what you need / want, and justifying the legitimate reasons for it. Once the analytical part does its job, the emotional side kicks in and makes the final decision.

We could talk much more about the incredible thing our brain is, but this is not completely about neuroscience. So let’s see how all of this relates to branding.

Create a BRAND FANTASY

How you develop your brand and its identity is really about how we play into the hand of the “decision maker” (the emotional side of the brain).

What is a “Brand Fantasy”?

Brand Fantasy is when we create a positive “gut feeling” in your customer’s mind about your product/service. It is not so much about making your clients feel an emotion, rather more about guiding their unconscious feelings to you brand so that they feel positively toward it and more likely to choose it over your competition.

We don’t just perceive the physical attributes of whatever we are looking at, we see what it means to us.

For example: let’s look at Nike again. With their cutting edge product design and innovation, their publicity with top athletes and envelope pushing advertising, their image stays a step ahead. Its Brand Fantasy feels forward thinking, motivating (“Just Do It” tag line) and athletic… for everyone, athlete or not.

As you can see, it really is more about science than anything else.

Having had a glimpse into how the brain works, the decision process, and how it all relates to building a strong brand, the final thing to look at is, how does all of this relate to the tactical approach?

In the last part of this blog, we will look at the basic 6 elements to consider in the branding process from the tactical point of view.

You will see that it is not all about your logo, creative graphics and imagery. It’s not even all about the colours and fonts used.

It is all of that of course, but it is so much more….

For more conversation on Branding, let’s connect!

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