How To Articulate Your Business On An Emotional And Functional Level
Have you seen the new Stella Artois ad with Lenny Kravitz? Choosing the life Artois looks tempting; watching Lenny bang on the drums is not a chore, and it’s sweltering here in London.
Yet I’m not tempted, and I do like beer.
Because years ago, when I first arrived in London, it was the ruffian’s drink of choice. And there’s nothing like having a chair levelled at your head by a resident psychopath you’ve been told not to serve any more alcohol to put you off their beverage.
‘Wifebeater’ was the telling nickname for the beer during the 1990s. But around 2008, the company decided to tackle this violent association that people had with their product.
They reacted by dropping the alcohol level from 5.2 to 4% and having their lobbyists and marketing campaigns hammer home the news that this was a new dawn for Stella Artois; they did not want to be associated with domestic violence.
Of course, the connection between alcohol and abuse don’t magically disappear because Stella Artois has rebranded. Still, the way they tackled the functional and the emotional orientation of their product at the same time is worth noting for small businesses.
We, humans, love labels and brands. Why? Because it helps us define ourselves easily and identify with one another. It creates a picture of the person we believe we are, all nicely packaged.
I imagine brands like Stella Artois had an enormous promotional budget for their new, improved drink. When the product designers were done with the new beverage, they probably handed it over to the marketing team with an instruction to find the emotional value.
Because emotion sells, emotion drives decision making.
When neuroscientist Antonio Damasio conducted a study into people with damage in the emotional part of the brain, he discovered that they could not make decisions, highlighting the power of emotion in driving our behaviour.
Even when we do our best to stay logical and unemotional in a situation, our subconscious is ready to jump in, quash our good sense and send us careering down a decision lane based hopelessly and utterly on emotion.
