People will act to reinforce their self-image
One of the strongest underlying motivations for any human is centered around a person’s self-image. We humans spend most of our days thinking about ourselves. We’re concerned that people are talking about us, or we’re concerned that they’re not thinking about us at all.
Remember this when crafting your brand’s expressions. Too often, we encourage people to love our brand, but consumers need to see the brand through their own experience. A brand should be crafted in a way that allows them to love themselves and reinforce their own self-esteem. Think about the defiant, cult-like loyalty of Diet Coke drinkers or the way Jeep has become a lifestyle.
This becomes increasingly important during inflationary times. UC Irvine’s Dr. Tonya Williams Bradford suggests in her research that being emotionally connected to a brand, where a consumer sees the brand as a part of them, makes them less likely to trade out of that brand for a cheaper version of it.
The advice here is simple. Make sure your brand’s expression is congruent with how your audience wants to see themselves. Do they need to see themselves as powerful? Smart? Open? In control? Youthful? Unique? Creative? If you can’t identify how your brand connects with someone’s self-image, you have some work to do.
Context affects experience
Context can affect someone’s literal experience of an event—or trust of a company or industry. Dr. Tiffany Barnett White from the University of Illinois notes that the most effective way for a disruptor to erode trust in long-time industry leaders is to alter the context of someone’s experience by illuminating category “crimes,” creating an opening for a new way of doing business. Dr. White says that if done effectively, this positioning can erode trust in the leaders and rack up trust points for your disruptive brand, citing how Ally Bank’s 2009 launch campaign effectively poked holes in the practices of traditional banks.
Whether you have an inherently disruptive brand or not, take control of the context of your competitive set, even if it might mean leaning into the negatives about a category. And, because context is so critical, it means that marketers must pay attention to anything and everything that might influence their customer’s perception, even though the customer might say that it doesn’t matter.
