emotional brands

My friend Eric likes to say that there are no low-interest categories, only low-interest brands (which is why he looked to household cleaning when he decided to start method). 

On every brand team I've joined, we've spent some time "climbing the benefit ladder" from product benefits to emotional benefits, trying to mine some emotional insight that will cause consumers to give our brand their undying loyalty. 

I've always enjoyed these sessions, but also find them really funny.  It's just so rare in the business workplace to talk about emotional issues at all.  There's something ridiculous about sitting around a corporate conference table talking about the guilt experienced by a time-stressed mother of three.  And why this guilt can only be sated by our brand of frozen broccoli-with-cheese-sauce.

I've been thinking about emotional brands lately, and it inspired this cartoon. 

It also reminded me a bit of this cartoon I drew a while back on brand loyalty.

Comments

[David Taylor (brandgym)]

Tom,
Genius. There's also you're brilliant "laddering" toon, where the team end up with "World Peace" as the brand idea... I used it a post on "Emotional ladders and snakes" here:
http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/ladders-and-sna.html

David