I finished reading Emotional Branding over Spring Break. Great read, especially if you're interested in how brands interact with people and how they should try to appeal to people's emotions in order to stand out. Because I don't want to do a cheesy book review or preach my knowledge, here's a extremely quick summary of some of the highlights.
To grab attention. Brands need to connect to consumers emotionally.
Brands need to:
attract by creating brand awareness.
sell by creating brand identity
deliver by creating customer dialogue and service
Also, there's this cool section and chart about how different generations value different things (really??? no way!) and want different experiences. Baby Boomers(37-55) respond to cues of achievement, status and performance. Gen X(25-36) values imagination, creativity and relationships. Gen Y(6-24) responds to fun, interactivity and experiences.
These are really, really general. I guess the author was trying to say that those are the things the specific generation responds to the best. Just because Baby Boomers value status and performance doesn't mean Gen Y doesn't value these things, too. But that section and the section on what women want was pretty interesting.
I think the main thing I got out of the book was that I started thinking of how some brands are good at emotional branding and others could definitely improve. One thing that would definitely improve people's shopping experiences is food and appealing to taste. I know some grocery stores do this but one place that comes to mind is Total Wine. Every Saturday, they have wine tastings in the store (this is especially good for me since I know hardly anything about wine). I hardly ever go there, and even if I do, it's usually because they have such a good beer selection and lower prices than grocery stores. But when I've been there the wine tastings do a good job of keeping me in the store.
Food and drink should definitely be made available by more stores so that people will have a better shopping experience. And not just grocery stores. I'd love going shopping with my girlfriend if Express or whatever clothes store had a bar and some beer. Yeah, I might have a couple drinks and the store might lose a couple bucks on the beer. But they'd gain a lot more, since my girlfriend wouldn't worry about me wanting to leave. She'd stay in the store longer, pick out more clothes and spend more money.
I wouldn't mind if she spent ALL DAY trying on clothes and spending money, as long as the drinks kept coming. Emotional branding at it's finest...