The exaltation of reason over feeling leads to a society of reasonable duds.
—Rick Jarow
Emotions are where the fire, the juice and the opportunity lie. Emotions are also where unknown minefields may be lurking. Do you know how people actually feel about your product, service, or brand? How do they feel about your competitors? Have you ever wanted to know but not thought it possible to find out?
Right-Brain Brands has worked extensively with a remarkable methodology that identifies the emotional associations people have with your brand. It goes beyond the kind of conscious playback you might get on a traditional survey to identify the underlying feelings that haven’t come to consciousness. Yet those deeper feelings are precisely the ones that offer most power.
In many, if not most cases, these deeper feelings reveal areas of motivational potential and opportunity. In some cases, they may reveal areas of peril.
A cautionary tale
Several years ago, a global communications and media firm commissioned work with this methodology to augment its planned research on potential new positionings. An early pioneer in its field, the company was now steadily losing customers to other competitors and not gaining many new ones.
In the course of creating an emotional profile of the brand, the methodology uncovered extraordinary levels of unconscious anger among its customers. Consciously, people knew they were unhappy with the company, but their level of unconscious anger was quite literally off the chart. What’s more, people were actually ashamed to be customers of this company. Not a recipe for growth, nor something that a new positioning, however ingenious, was likely to fix.
These findings went down with out a ripple and were dismissed immediately. There was a huge disconnect between how the company saw itself and how its customers saw it. In the immediate aftermath the company developed a new positioning based on results from the planned research and went on its way. Its way was not so merry: a non-stop decline. A few years later the company was spun off, an embarrassing drag on the overall firm. Today it barely survives as a shadow of its former self.
Could there have been a different ending? The company’s story is complex, and business experts have shed much ink over its spectacular rise and sorry tumble. But the emotional findings presented years earlier had a raw truth and waved a giant red flag. Receptivity to this unwelcome truth might have given them a chance at a time when other courses were possible.
How can Right-Brain Brands help?
Using this distinctive methodology, RBB can work with you to:
- Understand the emotional profile of your brand and its competitors
- Test your communications for alignment with your emotional profile
- Understand differences among segments
- Develop strategies for tapping areas of opportunity