Why Emotional Branding is important for Luxury Brands and how to use it?
People don’t buy luxury for logical reasons but for emotional reasons.
It’s Saturday morning as I sit to wonder about a recent comment I made on an Insta Live session on the Indian Luxury Retail Industry (a must-watch if you are into Luxury Retail), hosted by Ghalia Boustani. I spoke about how luxury communication is meant to be emotional and it is necessary that we tap into its Emotional Quotient now more than ever before.
This got me to write about the power that Emotional Branding holds and how Luxury taps into its emotional potential.
This blog is going to help you understand:
- What Emotional Branding is?
- Why does Emotional Branding work?
- Emotional Marketing Strategies that luxury brands use (along with some examples)
- Benefits of Emotional Branding
Luxury has always been associated with splurging and wasteful lifestyle, which is why for a long time, it was limited to aristocracy and members of the upper class. But with an increase in demand for luxury products, brands were required to sell much more than products, that’s where we witness the concept of selling EMOTIONs.
What is Emotional Branding?
Emotional branding uses emotional appeal and emotions that an advertisement triggers in a consumer. The consumer attaches deep emotions of love, nostalgia, empathy, pride, shame, anger, etc. to the advertised product or the lifestyle and makes the purchasing decision more easily, even if the price of the product is extremely high. This explains why luxury products that represent status symbols, associated with pride or glamour — will always be purchased even if the price exceeds the real value of the product.
Coming to the Golden Circle concept of Simon Sinek — Let’s take his approach of the WHY, HOW, and WHAT emotional branding holds for Luxury Brands.
Why do Luxury Brands need Emotional Branding?
Avoid Brand Dilution
Numerous companies have adopted growth strategies based on the diversification of retail into clothing items, fashion accessories, perfumes, cosmetics. Fashion brands like Armani and Versace have introduced interior designs and furnishing with their Armani/Casa and Versace Home Collection.
However, this product diversification might fail (like in the case of Pierre Cardin) if they don’t associate with the symbolic value of the brand.
Over-abundance with aggressive competition
In recent years, the luxury industry has witnessed numerous mergers and acquisitions which has led to the creation of diversified companies controlling a wide spectrum of brands.
Off recent, LVMH completed the acquisition of Tiffany & Co. However, each brand has its own set of differences making them unique. To keep their uniqueness intact they need more than simple marketing strategies.
Strong brand connection
Millennials and Gen Zers- the influential expect luxury brands to know them and show a solid understanding of their needs and cultural orientation.
Luxury brans while building their branding strategies need to shift their focus from capturing the market share rather than capturing the share in the mind and emotions of their consumers.
Competitive advantage
Brands face the challenge of adapting every aspect of their business to serve each individual completely. With having a large number of similar brands, brands now need to adapt their physiognomy in order to become an entertainment center or a local cultural center. Also purchasing a luxury is like purchasing a piece of art that requires a set of cultural training and more pronounce interest of buyer — where the name of the brand is the most important differentiator.
The Power of Emotional Branding:
Emotional branding stems from the right partnership and communication. Triggering the right emotion is the biggest investment in a brand. It is a promise that a brand makes to its consumers permitting them to enter and enjoy the world of its own.
How EB works?
EB helps create a long-lasting impression — Associating a brand with emotions more than just its idea of rarity and exclusive craftsmanship, brands. Attaching your brand that brand or product stands out in your mind.
Emotional branding helps people decide with their hearts.
Think if you were to buy the Chanel 2.55 bag?
Consider all the factors that finally led you to finally push “buy”?
Sure, the price is exceptionally high and you researched well regarding its craftsmanship and investment value if in case you ever thought of selling it — but your final decision was made by your willingness to associate with the emotional dream that the brand has and I’m betting you relied on your heart over your head.
What are the Emotional Branding strategies?
SENSORY EXPERIENCE
Sensory marketing engages and heightens consumers’ senses (i.e., sight, sound, feel, taste, and smell). All these five senses react to emotional responses to goods, services, — with a sense of sight is the most powerful sense of smell triggering the most vivid memories.
Sensory branding tends to influence consumers’ perceptions, judgment, and behavioral responses toward a particular brand.
As stated in the book Brand Sense, a brand’s appeal to consumers’ senses allows them to experience the brand more deeply and thereby have an emotional connection with it at a profound level.
Fashion retailers are successful in providing sensory experiences to consumers in their brick-and-mortar stores and, to a lesser extent, online stores.
We now see retail technology further enhances sensory experiences among fashion brands too. Parada’s “smart closet” where electronic chip tags are sent to an interactive touch screen, allowing customers to virtual experiment with sizes, colors, or fabrics.
Chanel
Chanel incorporates its signature colors of black and white as brand recognition in all its channels. Since touch increases the probabilities of purchase, it places accessories where customers can feel the products. For example, Chanel has LED signage that visually promotes its signature tweed. In New York City, its flagship store lights up in the shape of a perfume bottle at night. Chanel’s London flagship store has a gravity-defying staircase and hand-blown Venetian glass focal point reminiscent of Gabrielle Chanel’s iconic pearls (Larocca 2013). The London store has curtains with hand-stitched pearls as a means of authenticating the brand. Chanel boutiques have a sitting area that features tweed chairs, plush carpet, fireplaces, and coffee tables stacked with Chanel books on each floor for visual consistency. In addition, the store sprays Gabrielle Chanel’s classic Chanel №5 perfume to enhance the customer’s olfactory sensory experience (Larocca 2013). Indeed, Chanel is one of the successful brands that have utilized multi-sensory stimuli to intensify their customers’ experiences.
STORYTELLING
Well-told stories are far better remembered and are convincing than facts. Through this emotional influence, storytelling brands are able to deliver their holistic image and convey to consumers the desired information
Storytelling can be used via digital media as well as traditional media. Valck and Kretz (2011) conducted a study on fashion and luxury blogs to examine whether fashion opinion leaders use their blogs for narratives about fashion consumption practices and self-brand association. Based on the result, they promoted fashion blogs as a new method for advertisement.
Burberry
Since 1865, Burberry has been known for its high-quality trench coats and signature plaid. However, Burberry gradually lost its charm and was in need of a new way forward. In 2006, Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, took the brand through a massive revitalization of the brand, focusing on rediscovering the brand’s story which centered on its iconic trend coat and moments in history.
The story communicated the brand’s authenticity and quality by featuring icons like Shackleton (the British polar explorer) who wore Burberry’s trench coat to the Antarctic, and Lord Kitchener (the British Secretary of State) who is known to carry it across Africa during World War I. They capitalized on the heritage is central to the brand’s story, as told on social media and an augmented reality app targeting millennial.
CAUSE BRANDING
Cause branding, or cause marketing, has been a successful strategy for the new luxury consumers. This type of branding offers consumers opportunities to make a cause-based purchase that would allow consumers to be part of a positive change for social issues other than personal benefits.
When a brand addresses relevant social issues, it builds emotional bonds with its customers.
Cause branding helps to enhance consumer perceptions of the long-term image of the brand which ultimately leads to a financial gain for the firm.
Levi Strauss & Co
Levi Strauss & Company established a charitable foundation over 65 years ago (Levi Strauss and Company 2018). Supporting the company’s core values of originality, integrity, empathy, and courage, the foundation promotes social changes related to HIV/AIDS, workers’ rights, worker well-being, and communities where they do business.
In the recent event of Covid — we have witnessed many luxury brands come to be a part of the bigger cause and offer help. This has indeed increased their credibility.
EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment marketing overthrows traditional marketing tactics, making the consumers the real heroes who have the power to fulfill their lives. When a brand uses empowerment as a marketing strategy, it helps consumers to boost their self-efficacy as well as self-esteem.
In the age of the Internet, consumers are empowered by the brands by co-creating brand content which gives them moderate control over brand direction to express their opinions. The virtual brand community gives an opportunity for its members to co-create value for themselves, other members, and the brand by sharing their interests in an interactive platform. As a place of information sharing, emotional support, and collective value creation, this community forms emotional bonds among its members.
Nike
The empowerment campaign of Nike’s “Just Do It” focuses on internal battles and determination that ultimately lead to heroism, further leading to consumer loyalty.
Click here to know more about their branding strategies
BENEFITS of EMOTIONAL BRANDING
Differentiation from the competition: An emotional connection with one brand cannot be replicated for another. Chanel resonates with the emotion of a strong and independent woman, whereas Gucci resonates with the emotion of being eclectic and free-spirited.
Human connection and positive brand recognition: Once brands are successful with conveying their messages through emotional branding strategies, they don’t have to focus on the push strategy. The customers resonate with brands for a cause much deeper than a product. They don’t just buy another suitcase when they purchase a Louis Vuitton, they buy a ticket into the world of humans who share an exquisite sense of exploration.
Brand Loyalty translates into greater retention and customer lifetime value: A product is bought once but an experience of buying it could stay forever. Brands who are successful in portraying a dream, aspiration, and sense of desire that falls in sync with yours, becomes your companion.
Omega stands for perfection. As you continue to strive for perfection, a brand like an Omega constantly inspires you to strive for that perfection.
Better ad targeting which can increase ROI: Using these Emotional Branding techniques, if targeted to the right set of audience, generates far better ROI
So what do you think?
A strategic weaving of emotion into a brand’s branding and marketing strategy acts as a way to attract, resonate with, and encourage their audience to act.
Brands should use their Emotional Branding as their unique secret weapon.
To successfully put emotion in branding strategy, the brand needs to know their audience well and know which emotions would resonate the most with them.
