Emotional branding: defin­i­tion and examples

What comes to mind when you hear ‘Coca Cola’? How do you feel when you see McDonald’s, Apple, Bentley or Mini? Can you visualise the products? Beads of con­dens­a­tion dripping down a cold glass in summer; a sleek, fu­tur­ist­ic car; a shiny smart­phone, elegant as a jewel. But why is it that the simple mention of a brand’s name brings up these images for us? The answer is because of emotional branding.

What is emotional branding? The term ‘branding’ ori­gin­ally referred to marking cattle with hot metal. This visible sign of belonging was extended to marketing and helped brands build iden­tit­ies. For emotional branding, this is achieved by evoking strong feelings to ensure the brand stays in customers’ minds.

Emotional branding is, therefore, intended to create a long-lasting, emotional con­nec­tion between customers and a brand. This emotional bond allows you to build up trust and loyalty among your customer base, in­creas­ing the reach and value of your brand. The best way to reel in customers is not through logic, but through emotion. Unlike feelings, emotions occur before we even notice them. They form in the limbic system, an ancient part of our brain that largely eludes our con­scious­ness.

The person behind the idea of Emotional Marketing is Marc Gobé with his 2001 book, Emotional branding: The New Paradigm for Con­nect­ing Brands to People. According to Gobé, un­der­stand­ing the human brain and cultural be­ha­vi­or­al patterns is more important than any economic theory. He said that money might not be able to buy love, but customers can be led by a strong brand. The customer-brand re­la­tion­ship must be exactly that – an emotional bond built on trust, loyalty, and respect.

Strong emotional branding speaks to our hopes and desires, our fears and needs, and gives us the feeling that the brand is on the right side. A brand’s potential for emotional iden­ti­fic­a­tion is decisive, and to achieve it, several factors need to be taken into account. This includes design, color psy­cho­logy, moral stand­points, political and char­it­able com­mit­ments, and emotional marketing.

When we talk about emotional branding, the ex­pres­sion emotional marketing in­ev­it­ably comes up. However, emotional branding and emotional marketing are not the same thing. The biggest dif­fer­ence between them is their focus.

Emotional marketing pertains mostly to films, concerts, political parties, cars, and tourist des­tin­a­tions. This type of ad­vert­ise­ment uses different tech­niques to create an emotion-based marketing campaign. You can sell your product or offer using colours, music, guerilla marketing, in­flu­en­cer marketing or viral social media campaigns to build up emotions and reach a wider audience. However, there doesn’t ne­ces­sar­ily have to be a brand or product behind it. Think of charity or­gan­isa­tions that try to raise awareness of social or en­vir­on­ment­al injustice.

Emotional marketing can work in­de­pend­ently from brands. Emotional branding, on the other hand, aims to develop a brand using emotional in­flu­ences in customers’ minds and lives, thereby setting up a long-lasting customer con­nec­tion.

To be able to un­der­stand emotional branding, you need to know Marc Gobé’s 10 com­mand­ments for emotional branding. With these, Gobé il­lus­trated how suc­cess­ful emotional branding lets a brand sell products not just because they are useful, but rather because they create ex­per­i­ences and emotions.

1. From consumers to people: Customers must have the feeling that a brand doesn’t simply consider them consumers, but rather respected, in­di­vidu­als.
2. From product to ex­per­i­ence: Products should not just cover a need, they must also fulfill customers’ hopes and desires, becoming a memorable life event.
3. From honesty to trust: Customers expect honesty, so trust and likab­il­ity are needed to create brand loyalty.
4. From quality to pref­er­ence: Products and brands can only rely on their quality for so long – they also need to consider how the product fits the customers’ lifestyle. Customer pref­er­ences dictate which brand is preferred, but pref­er­ences can change. Brands should always know the pref­er­ences of their target group in order to remain a preferred brand.
5. From notoriety to as­pir­a­tion: Being known is good, but it doesn’t foster emotions. Brands that give customers a good feeling, that improve their lives, build emotional con­nec­tions through their needs and desires. Think of Apple, Tesla or Gucci, which are not just a part of customers’ lives but rather their whole per­son­al­ity.
6. From identity to per­son­al­ity: There are a lot of re­cog­nis­able brands, but a clear brand identity doesn’t auto­mat­ic­ally mean per­son­al­ity and charisma. Brands – like people – need ethical and moral values. They should be flexible enough to slot into customer ex­pect­a­tions and life­styles without sac­ri­fi­cing their con­sist­ency.
7. From function to feel: Products should not simply be practical solutions to a need, but rather embody an emotional ex­per­i­ence and the meaning of a customer’s par­tic­u­lar aesthetic. Smart­phones, which have evolved from bricks into elegant, sleek, and stylish objects, are the best example of this.
8. From ubiquity to presence: It is not enough to be as visible as possible. What’s more important for a brand is to be present in places and media where its target customer base hangs out.
9. From com­mu­nic­a­tion to dialog: Simply ad­vert­ising the benefits and use­ful­ness of a brand is one-sided com­mu­nic­a­tion and does not build customer re­la­tion­ships. An in­ter­act­ive dialog between the customer and the brand involving feedback, social proof, and ac­cess­ib­il­ity is how the re­la­tion­ship is built.
10. From service to re­la­tion­ship: A brand that just wants to sell products and services doesn’t build re­la­tion­ships. They first need to connect with the cultural pref­er­ences of the customer base to establish loyalty. If you accept and take on board criticism and sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ment from customers, they will feel like they are part of the brand rather than just a source of revenue.

Emotional branding works best when it is focused on Greek philo­soph­er Aristotle’s three pillars of rhetoric for per­sua­sion: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

In emotional branding, ethos rep­res­ents sharing cred­ib­il­ity and moral character. Customer-winning brands convince the target base not only that they have good quality products, but that they have ethical and moral values too. A brand’s ethos can be strengthened by political en­gage­ment, trans­par­ent company politics, re­li­ab­il­ity, fair working con­di­tions, customer sat­is­fac­tion, and en­vir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and then made more visible by feedback in the form of reviews and social proof.

Pathos drives customer attention through igniting targeted emotions and needs. This involves a sense of urgency when making the purchase – a fear of missing out (FOMO) – as well as a feeling of belonging and safety. A brand can use a visual and musical rep­er­toire to awaken emotions such as surprise, curiosity, love, fear, hope or security right from the first im­pres­sion, thereby creating a direct re­la­tion­ship. Emotions are behind 95% of all purchase decisions, making pathos one of the most important points in emotional branding.

The pos­sib­il­it­ies of emotional branding are endless. But two questions in par­tic­u­lar are important: What target group do you want to reach, and which emotions would you like to be as­so­ci­ated with your brand?

An ex­per­i­ment conducted by Facebook in col­lab­or­a­tion with Cornell Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia showed the effects of targeted emotional ma­nip­u­la­tion on users. In the study, 689,000 Facebook users’ newsfeeds were filtered to show primarily positive or negative posts from their friends. The users did not know that they were part of the ex­per­i­ment. However, their online behaviour did reflect the trend of negative or positive posts depending on which emotion they were shown. The name of this phe­nomen­on is ‘emotional contagion’.

Nowadays, it’s actually quite difficult to not move in branded circles and not be exposed to forced emotions. This makes it even more important to be able to surprise and touch customers in their hectic daily lives, no matter whether you run marketing campaigns using tra­di­tion­al media like film, TV, radio, and sport and music events or rather via social media, sponsored ads, and in­flu­en­cers. Brand building can be both sym­met­ric­al and asym­met­ric­al and you shouldn’t be scared to ex­per­i­ment.

The following emotional branding examples will show you which aspects are the most important when it comes to brand building.

State­ments such as ‘Red is for passion’ or ‘Yellow is for happiness’ are basically mean­ing­less without context, as colours speak above all to our sub­con­scious. They strengthen the intensity of our senses and emotions. For instance, yellow can stand for both joy and sickness, or red for love and anger. Colours support the emotional power of the brand, if you work colour psy­cho­logy into your logo or associate a par­tic­u­lar colour or colour palette with your brand.

A famous example of colour psy­cho­logy in emotional marketing comes from the charity or­gan­isa­tion One Campaign and their licensed brand (Product)Red in 2006. Companies such as Apple, Coca Cola, Nike, and American Express supported the Red Campaign in its fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa by offering red products bearing the (Product)Red trademark. 50% of the proceeds were donated to the Global Fund and par­ti­cip­at­ing charity or­gan­isa­tions.

Actively in­ter­act­ing with customers increases brand attention and reach, and makes for a deeper emotional con­nec­tion with customers. A brand should not just be a useful item or a back­ground detail, but rather a true facet of a customer’s lifestyle, becoming part of their identity and their social life.

As an example, Coca Cola increased customer en­gage­ment with their Share a Coke campaign. Instead of the Coca Cola logo, per­son­al­ised bottle labels showed common names from different countries. Coca Cola en­cour­aged customers to post pictures to social media with their own personal coke bottle. This boosted global revenues and the brand’s reach across social media.

Customer loyalty has to be earned. More than anything else, it comes from feeling good. Customers who associate a brand with positive ex­per­i­ences are more likely to return to it.

Starbucks took this concept to heart in the most literal sense when they worked with dating app Match on the 2015 ‘Meet me at Starbucks’ campaign. Match users could use the app to set up their first date in Starbucks directly. The campaign targeted emotional con­nec­tions between people and sub­con­sciously extended this con­nec­tion to the Starbucks brand. Ever since, Valentine’s deals have been one of the most popular and suc­cess­ful events Starbucks runs.

Brands shouldn’t shy away from socio-political state­ments. In the era of social media, customers pay attention to a brand’s ideals and values. Fair trade, human rights, fair pro­duc­tion line con­di­tions, and en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion play a decisive role in a brand’s image. Brands can turn support for veganism, in­clus­ive­ness, human rights, and fair pro­duc­tion into the heart of their emotional branding. Customers who feel that sup­port­ing a brand means sup­port­ing a better world vision will stay loyal to that brand.

Oatly, an oat milk company, always places its products in the context of en­vir­on­ment­al pro­tec­tion.

It is important for a brand to be re­cog­nis­able and to adapt with the times. The best example for this is Apple. Apple began with chunky computer designs like the Apple II, which was the first Macintosh home computer, and then the Macintosh Portable, before changing its style with the bright iMac col­lec­tion in 1998, the stylish iPod in 2001, and the first iPhone in 2007.

The history of Apple is one of game-changing product design and marketing, from the legendary 1984 Macintosh com­mer­cial to the U2 iPod campaign. Apple’s marketing strategy zones directly into customer needs, aes­thet­ics and desires, and lovers of Apple products are driven to purchase because of the logo, not the price tag.

Apple managed to turn itself into a cultural, almost religious phe­nomen­on by using new tech­no­logy and emotional branding to work its way into consumers’ homes, ears, and pockets as well as every nook and cranny of social life. Apple’s success shows how important flex­ib­il­ity and openness to change are for a brand to ensure that it can meet the needs of new gen­er­a­tions while still being seen as con­tinu­ous and relevant.

Emotional con­nec­tions between customers and brands are most likely to happen when customers feel like they’re centre stage. Un­an­nounced changes in design, price or offer with no thought for customer desires can be deemed insulting by customers.

Think of the customer feedback to Ferrero in 2017 when they changed their famous Nutella recipe and risked losing the trust of their target group. The change wasn’t announced in time and the reasons for it were not made trans­par­ent, which visibly weakened customer trust. A similar thing happened with Toblerone chocolate bars. In 2016, the producer, Mondelēz In­ter­na­tion­al, decided to market a shorter bar with more space between each chunk in the UK. Customers had the feeling that they were receiving less for the same price, which resulted in outcry and Mondelēz back­ped­alling.

Customer focus and com­mu­nic­a­tion are essential if you want to avoid risking customer trust. For a more current example, the ride­shar­ing company Uber brought customer focus to the forefront in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic by offering free trips or food de­liv­er­ies for medical pro­fes­sion­als, seniors, and frontline workers and those most affected.

Stories get through to us 22 times faster than dry facts. Our brain activity is increased by a factor of five when we hear a story. The most important thing is that stories incite feelings and in­spir­a­tion.

IKEA always surprises people with its original B2C storytelling. Slogans such as ‘We help you make it’ became part of a gen­er­a­tion’s col­lect­ive con­scious­ness. IKEA’s emotional brand also developed through ima­gin­at­ive storytelling, and short ads full of humour and empathy became part of the brand’s identity. Their Christmas com­mer­cials or other situ­ation­al clips stay with us. Who could forget the poor lamp abandoned by its owner on a rainy sidewalk?

Emotional branding provides a brand with many ad­vant­ages. It increases attention and en­cour­ages sales. Your customers will develop an emotional con­nec­tion to your brand, building up trust, and staying loyal. Your brand will acquire a spot in their everyday lives, thereby in­creas­ing its reach.

If this is used correctly, a brand can follow in Apple’s footsteps and become bigger than the products it sells. In­creas­ing di­git­al­isa­tion, wearable tech­no­logy, 5G, and the influence of big data on the market opens up many new pos­sib­il­it­ies for emotional branding. In her best­selling book No Logo, the author and brand critic Naomi Klein warned of the ubiquity and monopoly of brands such as McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Apple, and Microsoft. As early as 1999, she pictured the brand-dominated world in which we live today.

Brands have even turned into political powers with an ever-stronger influence on people and social relations. The de­vel­op­ment of Amazon is a good example for this. Initially little more than a digital su­per­mar­ket and bookstore, the company and brand ‘Amazon’ grew into a film producer, a self-publisher (Amazon Pub­lish­ing), and space tourism agency Blue Origin with plans to go to the moon.

A similar thing happened with Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX brands. Not only will Musk possibly be the first private space agency to make it to Mars, but he also wants as­tro­nauts to drive around the red planet in Tesla vehicles. You can't get more visionary and emotion-packed branding than that.

On the other hand, brands such as Facebook and Google are regularly cri­ti­cised for reasons relating to data pro­tec­tion, political influence through neur­omar­ket­ing, and selling user data.

Given the potential power of a brand, it's in­creas­ingly important to not lose sight of the strategic, emotion and value-oriented emotional branding required to make customers the prot­ag­on­ists of their brand. A brand doesn’t have to be big enough to be in every city in the world. However, it does have to be valued and relatable enough to find its way into its customers’ hearts.