Adding Emotion to Marketing is Crucial for Brand Strategies in 2018

Forbes reported this week about the Top 3 Disruptive Marketing Trends of 2018 and the focus for marketers is all about creating emotional connections with consumers. Billee Howard, who is the CEO of BRANDthropologie, talks about how stories have become such an important currency for businesses. She explains that goods and services have now become so commodified by price that customers are choosing to buy from brands that they can believe in and self-identify with.
For marketers in 2018, it’s all about developing a brand purpose and making this an important communication strategy for both internal and external audiences. Marketers need to stop leading with the sale, but rather craft meaningful experiences that lead to the desire to buy. Brand stories needs to evolve away from “why and who” to experiences of the heart that can establish a lasting emotional connection.
Marketers can measure the emotions of consumers using these types of implicit techniques:
EMOTIONAL APPEAL TEST
Identifies preference, purchase intent, or level of engagement.
What It Does?
The Emotional Appeal test measures the strength of association between positive/negative emotion and the tested stimuli.
What It Tells You?
It reveals the subconscious preference in the context of emotional engagement with the tested stimuli. These measures correlate to actual market behavior.
SELF IDENTIFICATION TEST
Uncover familiarity, relevance, importance, attitudinal loyalty, or level of attachment.
What It Does?
The Self ID test measures the strength of association between the respondent’s sense of self and the tested stimuli.
What It Tells You?
These measures reveal the relevance of the stimuli to the individual and are correlated to behavioral loyalty. Respondents with a high Self ID score are more likely to pay a premium, share with their social networks, and less likely to substitute.
DISCRETE ASSOCIATION TEST
Reveals discrete attributes or emotions that are true, unique, and/or valuable.
What It Does?
The Discrete Association test can measure discrete attribute or emotional associations with any number of stimuli.
What It Tells You?
When discrete association measures are compared across each of the tested stimuli, you are able to detect which perceptions are (1) true, (2) distinct, and (3) and valuable when correlated to a dependent variable.
When you combine implicit data with explicit survey data you can improve the accuracy of the research. Here are a few ways you can do that:

• Crosstabs: Compare and/or combine explicit and implicit results in order to achieve a more holistic view of consumer decision making.
• Drivers analysis: Correlate discrete implicit perceptions to stated preference (or other dependent variable) to determine importance/impact of subconscious responses.
• Segmentation analysis: Apply segments (High/Low Self ID, Frequent/Non User) to profile results.
• Storytelling: Offering hypotheses and potential explanations as to why consumers showed certain implicit or explicit reactions.

Sentient Decision Science is leading the way for emotional measurement techniques and proving that by including these measures, you can identify the crucial distinctions that strengthen a brand’s story. Our products deliver a real competitive advantage by testing emotions in all advertising stages and experiences to uncover how your consumers really feel about your brand. Our clients are ahead of this trend as they are already seeing the benefits of including emotional insights.
For more information on how emotional connection and self-identification with brands helps drive consumer decision making, check out this presentation by Dr. Aaron Reid, Founder and Chief Behavioral Scientist at Sentient Decision Science: How the Consumer Sense of Self Affects Buying Behavior.